Berry What?!

Berry College—like the fruit—is where I had my sights set. And *spoiler* it’s the name that’s about to be on my diploma this spring! 

Jorie, circa 1998, ready for an All-American lifestyle (read ‘til the end to see why this American flag picture is relevant!).

Remember that 27-minute phone call I had with the golf coach in the last post? I think you need to know the backstory, because it’s wild. That is all.

In the fall of 2015 (during my senior year of high school), Coach was driving the women’s team to their tournament in Destin, Florida, when my initial email came through on his phone. He miraculously had a player in the van from Ohio, so he showed her my email. She didn’t know me directly, but sent my name to her former teammate who was still in high school in Ohio. Turns out, we’d been paired together in a tournament that summer. Talk about a small world.

Jorie + Mom, 2020. We’d end up making thirteen (13) trips back and forth from Ohio to Georgia between college-shopping and home-buying. Needless to say, we make a pretty good travel pair. And we’re pretty good at finding random beaches to visit everywhere we go.

That kind of sounds like one of those “my sister’s-cousin’s-neighbor’s-great-granddaughter knows-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy” stories, and that’s actually not too far from the truth. The chances of the Berry College golf team having a player from Ohio were slim-to-none, but there she sat in the van, about to help me out tremendously.

After a decent recommendation from that teammate-of-a-teammate, the next week Coach Farrer drove 9 hours to watch me play a few holes in the state championships, and the next weekend I visited Berry for the first time with my mom.

At this point it really wasn’t that long ago that I thought Berry College was a tenant in a strip mall along I-75 in a forgotten middle-of-America zip code. As my first step on campus revealed, Berry was, in fact, not a strip mall, but…

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE I’D EVER SEEN.

I mean, it has a castle. Come on.

Coach proceeded to spend 8 hours showing my mom and I around campus—the castle, the water wheel, mountain campus, the chapel, the gym, both golf courses and practice facilities, the dining hall, and a little bit of Rome community. There was nothing I didn’t love, and the thought of spending four years in this fairytale setting made it reallyyyy hard to finish out the next few months of high school, and in the dead of winter nonetheless.

Berry College. Need I say more? Except for the fact that yes, those are people canoeing in the reflection pond.

This time the 10-hour trip through farmland and cornfields back to Ohio didn’t seem as long. My mom and I left campus with a little more hope than the previous trips, and our heads spinning with the excitement of finding my home at Berry. We could see our years of planning finally coming together during a time when we really started to question everything we were giving up for a little sunshine and a few rounds of golf.

I regularly joke about my parents following me to college because—who does that?! But when you look at the situation as a whole, God aligned every part of the process that made the decision almost a no-brainer. I was an only child with parents nearing retirement, with no siblings, or even pets, to hold us in Ohio. The weather really was a driving factor, and once all of us got on board with the thought of southern living, everything seemed to fall into place, but not without a lot of prayer and too many setbacks to count. We may be a family of three, but I think we’re a family of three hoarders. Literally. U-Haul almost ran out of moving trucks for all our stuff (and that was after 26 SUV loads of stuff donated to the thrift store).

Please, no judgments.

You may be wondering what this all has to do with baking cakes. Well, without me, there are no cakes to be baked. So basically I’ve roped you into reading my whole life story. But if you’ve made it this far—congratulations, by the way—you’re probably not going to stop now. Especially when I tell you I ran a bakery out of a college dorm room (which I wouldn’t recommend for many reasons, but hey, you can’t re-write history).

In summary, I found where I wanted to go to school, was offered a spot on the golf team, and had narrowed our home-buying radius significantly to a three-hour circle around Mount Berry, Georgia. 

You’ll want to stay tuned to hear about the tiny little town we settled in. Let’s just say it may be the polar opposite of the lifestyle we’d grown accustomed to in Ohio. But there’s no doubt it encompasses the heart of southern hospitality.  It’s definitely not lacking in the pickup truck, cowboy boot, or American flag categories either (maybe my patriotic baby picture foreshadowed all this?).Before I publish the next part of the story, I encourage you to watch this music video of “Redneck Yacht Club” to get an idea of my family’s current living situation. Just know that it’s spot on, and we absolutely love it.

See y’all next time!

jorie