Covid-19 on the afternoon of St. Patrick’s Day 2020
The above picture is a moment in time that I wanted to capture on this blog because this is a moment I want to look back on. Kind of like that night in 2009 when Brian and I drank a bottle of Three Philosophers and decided to start a brewery.
Today we made the decision to close the BARn taproom to the public for the weekend–a decision that goes against everything I want to believe about the local brewery. In 2010 as we were building the BARn, we built our barn loft tap room thinking it would be a cool place to hang out with our friends. Little did we know we had so many friends! And we were planning to celebrate with a few hundred of those friends on Saturday at our 9th Aleiversary.
All those plans and the idea that the local brewery is the place for the community to gather and commune with a pint have come to a near halt with the very real information shown in the Covid-19 map from Johns Hopkins above. A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed the upcoming sleepless nights, the countless “what if” conversations, the decisions our small business has had to make. Who knows what the next week will bring?
So we’re taking a pause at the BARn.
This weekend the BARn will be closed.
The CDC recommends that we all take a break this month from gathering to help flatten the curve of this global pandemic. I know personally that our local healthcare facility can only handle so much. I know that there are a limited number of ICU beds and ventilators in Missouri’s hospitals.
We will take a pause and see what the upcoming weeks bring because we care about you, our staff, and our community. It’s a scary decision to make, and these are slightly terrifying times. We are a small business and an employer of several people in our community. What we do extends well beyond our own business to our distributors, to the retail partners we share and the many, many people that work in the US hospitality industry that pour pints and sell six-packs every day. Not to mention the suppliers in Missouri and across the US that we purchase raw goods and supplies from every day. The local breweries need your support right now and more than ever.
We DO need you to stock up on Piney River along with your TP and your canned goods. You could virtually swing by our online store and pick up some merch. There are some restaurants and bars that are not under mandates to close, and they have fresh, delicious Piney River beer on tap for your enjoyment. The Piney River Taproom in Waynesville is open with draft beer and root beer, package beer and root beer, and delicious pizza and pretzels.
Did you know that Shakespeare wrote King Lear while quarantined? Did you know that Newton created calculus after being sent home from school? Okay, maybe you aren’t going to write a play or invent a new form of math while you’re at home flattening the curve, but here are a few things our family recommends doing this March:
Listen to favorite tunes with your family- Take a walk in the woods
- Hunt for morel mushrooms (in the woods)
- Practice your turkey call
- Head to a stream with your fly rod or learn how to cast a fly rod
- Pick some daffodils
- Bake a pie or some bread
- Read a book…or this entire blog that we’ve been writing for 10 years
- Leave some baked goods with a neighbor that really ought to stay indoors right now
- Build a fire (or a bonfire) in the backyard
- Go kayaking or canoeing
- Make homemade pasta
- Start some seeds for a garden
Most of all, take care of yourselves, friends! We plan to raise a pint with you on the other side.
–Joleen, Brian & Andy
