Here We Go Again
Back to blog8/15/23
Well Well Well…
Here I go again learning a new web technology to see if it will make me a better developer. I just can’t help myself but implement something I see on Fireship’s YouTube channel. Those damn videos are way too catchy!
I could justify spending time on this, however, for the infamous Perley Barn Event Center project. As an undergrad in my Junior/Senior year my father-in-law propositioned me to build a website for a real estate project he was working on. The idea is a wedding venue in rural Minnesota…
The property had an old farmhouse and the stereotypical big red barn. After waiting patiently through the pandemic, I finally got to visit the property this week (to provide free labor, of course). Despite my concerns about this project, especially around the intended, I was very impressed. The barn had the roof and siding updated, the shop-house (henceforth reffered to as shouse) is immaculate on the exterior, and the upper level of the shouse is AMAZING. Imagine 1-level 2 bed 2 bath 2000 sqft slab-on-grade house that is brand new.
Regardless of how impressed I was, I still can’t help but worry about the profitability of this venture. Here’s what I keep hearing
“I only need to host 6 weddings a year to cover the cost!” “I only need to host 8 weddings a year to cover the cost!”
I wonder how many weddings will be required to break even the next time this project is brought up. Again, that’s the number of weddings needed to be hosted to BREAK EVEN. You might think, “8 weddings a year isn’t that much. They will easily break even over 12 months.
That’s where you’d be wrong. Out here in North Dakota/Minnesota, we have 9-month winters. Technically the venue has heat and whatnot, but considering how rural the venue is, roads won’t be cleared immediately like they would be in a more metro location if at all. I’m not aware of the zoning of the driveway, but I doubt city or state workers are going to clear that after the multiple blizzards we will have.
Ok…winter aside (which is should be a major consideration), the venue is surrounded by farm land. So, customers likely won’t want to have wedding pictures there before or during planting season (April-May). Customers also won’t want to be there during harvest (August-September). For those paying attention, prime wedding season for this venue will only be during June and July.
Is it possible that people will have 8 weddings in two months? Sure! Does the fact that there are only 2 viable months give me major anxiety? Also, yes.
Let’s be clear. I am not invested in this even a little bit. I have nothing to lose or gain from this project, but this is my family. I want them to be successful, but I can’t help but think there will be multiple seasons where this venture loses money.
Why did I mention all of this and what the fuck does this have to do with me learning Astro? Well, now that my life is considerably less chaotic than it was when I was initially propositioned to build their website, I’m considering doing this for them. Astro is cool, fast, and has a great developer experience. Building this useless blog proved that to me. However, I’m not sure I can count on non-technical people writting posts in Markdown, and I definitely can’t count on them to redesign anything as it’s all code. Granted it’s just HTML and CSS for the most part, but that still puts every little change on me. I think a traditional CMS may be the way to go for this project if I decide to do it. Since I use Typo3 professionally and it’s open-source. That is my top candidate.
Well if someone somehow wound up here, thanks for reading!