I used to hate public speaking. I used to be very nervous when I performed. I performed a piano, I competed nationally, played tennis, like competing nationally, I used to get very nervous. Now I don't care. Two time cancer survivor, and I think I've learned to be so embarrassed or worried about things that that I am who I am, and this is what I bring to the table. And love me or leave me, Love her or leave her.
Lydia Higginson has taken on the challenge of her career running a startup business in the Hudson Valley of New York. We'll meet her and one of Public Radio's most accomplished correspondents on this edition of On the Job From Hired to Retired, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. Over the past thirty four years, Express Employment Professionals has put millions of people to work in meaning full and fulfilling
jobs and careers. If you're looking for work or want to grow your workforce, go to Express pros dot com. Now here's Karen Michelle with Lydia's story. Her last name, Lydia Higginson is a presence and for the past year the head of Haunt Show at a startup business. We're at Duchess Spirits at Harvest Homestead Farm in Pine Plains, New York. Pine Planes is a tiny and somewhat remote hamlet in New York's Hudson Valley. Lydia Higginson isn't tiny, has bright red hair straight to her shoulders and a
laser focus. I have a lot of talents. I mean, I think a lot of them. I learned when I was very young. My father used to have me help um whether he was doing catering before he had his own restaurant, so I was very used to the hospitality, welcoming people, greeting them, and I thought that was very important. Those skills are very useful no matter what career you're in. And the fact that I have a bunch of different talent, some of some of them are useful, some of them
are not so useful. I think, just give me a broader understanding of other people and relating to them. And sometimes it wasn't so clear how our young talents would apply to making a living. Saying playing tennis and classical piano, or majoring in French and Spanish in college I had no idea. I just I had a passion for languages. I love to travel. My my family were big travelers. My father was from England, my mother's family was from Wales, so I spent a lot of time overseas growing up.
When I was in college, I spent a semester abroad in France, and then I worked at my uncle's pub in northern England. My parents had had a several year honeymoon when they got married and traveled all around the United States, in Europe, and they settled in New Jersey. But they were very good about every year. We had some big trips, so we were very well exposed, not only the United States. We drove around the United States, Canada, Mexico,
and primarily the UK. But it was just ingrained at me, you know, to travel and experience what of cultures had to offer, And somehow I thought the Spanish and French was going to tie into that. I knew I didn't want to be a teacher, but I found that those things translated well in tourism because I understand what a visitor wants and I understand what people are looking for
when they're traveling. After graduating from college, in Lydia, started working for nonprofits in New Jersey, and after a few years, I decided to move up here to be closer to my family. And I moved up here without a job, and I started out at Berkshire Schools the associate director of the Annual Fund and from that I learned about how big the area that Berkshires and the Hudson Valley were for tourism. I then had a brief stint at the Hudson Valley Guide, which was a tourism guide, and
loved tourism. That was really my passions. Start the movie Welcome, Where did you come from? Uh, well, we live in Brooklyn, but where you have a place in Milleritot. She parlayed that passion into a gigus director of development for the Samuel Morris Historic Site, you know the guy who came up with Morris Code. And then she spent ten years as the vice president for Duchess Tourism. Duchess County is less than a two hour drive north of New York City and it's full of farms with the freshest eggs,
the plumpest poultry, and truly gorgeous produce. And about five years ago I saw that this new distillery was opening and they were doing a tasting at Arlington Liquor, and I went and I met Ariel Schlene, who was the founder and the president, and said to him, you don't know me, but you're going to know me. You're going to be working with me. And five years later, here I am Olidia is the is definitely the face of
the place. Ariel Schlene looks more like a slick, hip, dark haired New Yorker than a gentleman farmer or distiller. The co founder of Duchess, he had been a banker. I never wanted not that I never wanted to run Duchess, but I'm much more of a developer a builder. So, you know, having built it kind of to this level, um, it was then up to me to find someone who could then bring you know, those people who could bring that that network or that community that they already had themselves.
And Lydia was certainly that. And you know she she's absolutely the face of Duchess, because that's what you called me when you hired me. I can't recall your retirement plan. Yeah, my retirement plan, Yeah, Lydia is my retirement plan, you know, not like I said before, whether Lydia was working here or outside of here, She's always been our biggest advocate. She's the one that's out there. And you know, I heard you say she knows everybody. She knows everybody. She
knows everybody. Everybody who knows her to know where is to love her. Like you know, I'm I'm a big fan of no brainer decisions, and Lydia was probably the ultimate no brainer decision. You know. She she likes to think that that was her idea. You know that five years ago. You know, you don't know me yet, but I knew. I knew then, you know, So it just took it just needed to set the stage and I needed to really I had to make sure that this place was ready for Lydia, you know, sit the other
way around. After we come back more about Lydia Higginson's job change from working for a local government agency to private enterprise and Booze. You're listening to independent producer Karen Michelle with a profile of one of her unique neighbors in the Hudson Valley of New York State. On the job. From Hired to Retired is brought to you by Express Employment Professionals one company is on a mission to put
a million people to work each year. Sounds like a big number, doesn't it not to Express Employment Professionals seeking a skilled labor position or administrative order. Maybe you're an executive looking for a career that fits supporting and we take pride in connecting the right people with the right company. Express Employment Professionals is on a mission to put a
million people to work each year. Let us help. We'll open doors for you to go to Express pros dot com to find a location near you and welcome back to on the job from hired to retired once again. Here's Karen Michelle from her youth Lydia Higginson has been unafraid to take on a challenge as she grew up and went out into the workforce. She worked hard, always
looking for the right fit. It just took me time, like the trying trial and error different jobs, like yeah, this is close to what I want to do, but each time figuring out. I mean, you know, ten years ago there were no distilleries in Duchess County, so I wouldn't even have conceived of it. I knew I didn't want to be at a winery. Winery wasn't my passion, but booze is you know, bourbon, moonshine, brandy, and this
distillery connects with another of Lydia's many passions history. My parents had a seventeen twenty in my uncle's pub in England was over four years old. I grew up in a hundred and seventy five year old converted barn, and I now live in an eighteen fifties carriage house. So by nature, I know appreciate it. I also feel very strongly about using history. I'm not of the let's just look at it and walk by it. Like the fact that people can go in our bunkers and do things
makes me really really happy. And I think people get a real kick out of being in a place and saying, wow, I'm hearing a lecture or I'm watching a movie where Dutch Schultz was. I mean, we're living that history. Dutch Schultz proved quite willing to violence himself and to kill people. I mean, it's not like he was a mechannibal or something. I mean he was, yeah, he was a bad guy.
But I think people, just like you know the popularity of the um Godfather movies and stuff, there is a certain romance to the mobsters and the gangsters, but we don't glorify anything he did other than making the booze. Dutchess Spirits is a distillery with an unusual history. Briefly, during Prohibition, Dutch Schultz and his men lived and made moonshine right here. Most visitors go on a tour many weekends.
They're led by Lydia's wife, Cameron Anderson. Um. Here you can see the top of one of the bunker's and all the exhaust pipes. And here's another bunker. Right here you can see um. You can see how easily it pointed into the environment. Visitors canna walk or crawled depending through the tunnels and into the bunkers where the hooch was made and the mobsters hit. Though the distillery Slash High Out Slash Farm was a big producer, it was in business for less than a year. Lydia reads from
an account of the final raid in October. This is from the local newspaper after the farm was rated by the FBI. Was rated twice and they didn't find anything. Third time they came back. They reached the farm at six o'clock, finding two stills in operation. And in the charge of the two men arrested. They seized to two thousand gallons stills, columns and condensers, too, high pressure boilers,
gallon vats of mash. This iteration of the distillery started eighty years after that bread and while it's unlikely the activities back then, we're of a very social nature. It's now part of Lydia Higginson's job to devise and host events, speakeasies, paranormal explorations, mom themed movies and on this afternoon, Hi, how are you? Are you here for the book signing? Great? If anybody would like to have a seat, We're gonna
have Debbie start in a couple of seconds. There are more than two dozen guests milling, buzzing, clearly looking forward to what's it? Thank you all for coming today. I'm Lydia from Duchess Spirits. This is the site of Dutch Schultz's underground bootlegging operation during Prohibition. At the end of her talk and after she sells some books and you eat a little taste, we're going to take you on a tour and you need to go in the bunker
with dutchell as bootlegging operations. Later that night, there'll be another event again prep for and hosted at least partly cleared up by Yeah, so how many hours you think you word? Friday was fourteen, Today will be about fourteen. Tomorrow I'll be ten of taking Monday off, then I'll be working six hours Tuesday, my other day off, and then back to eight and nine hour days just Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, than another twelve hours next Saturday. That's the hospitality biz.
But yes, I came in. I started at nine this morning and I'll be here until about one in the morning, so I will sleep well tonight. A few hours I get. But so do you feel um differently motivated because you have a stake? No, I did the same kind of hours for tourism. I mean I would go from event to event plus work my normal work day um to be a part of the community and active at other events. So you have to have that drive, though you have to be willing to say, Okay, you know sometimes I'm
giving up things. Lydia's committed to making Duchess spirits rise again, whatever it takes. Well, would you like to try today? You love that? I mean, if I could tell my twenty two year old self you know, to be I'm not so afraid of what's out there and just go for it and try. I mean, I'm I mean, it was a big risk to move up here and leave a job that it had for six years in New Jersey, to move up here without a job, But I had confidence in myself and and and being able to find
something that would suit me. And it may have taken exact, you know, a little while you have to pay the bills in the meantime, but each step gave me some mother's skill or skill set that helped me get to where I am now. I will probably work until I'm eighty. Something I gives me meaning, you know, to get up. I mean, I don't have children, so my legacy will be what I did for tourism, what I did for these different sites. Um, and that's what gives me my
little legacy. Hello, how are you good? Are you just getting here? I have a lot of friends that work for very big corporations, and none of them are happy. Yeah, they're making good paychecks, like they are not happy. There are times here, yes I'm sometimes weed whacking, sometimes I'm scrubbing the floor, But in the same token, I'm creating Marketing.
I'm working with partners to create exciting events here and and it's all part and parcel of being willing to do anything and pitching in and it makes me happy. Now they literally just started. They should be in the corner of the distiller party, so they're that's Lydia Higginson, CEO of Duchess Spirits and Harvest Homestead Farm. I'm producer Karen Michelle in the Hudson Valley, New York. That's all for this edition of On the Job from Hire to Retire,
brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express prose dot com. This podcast is produced by Steve Mencher for men'sh Media, Red Seat Ventures and I Heart Radio. Find us on I Heart Radio and iTunes, where we hope you'll leave a nice review that helps other folks find us too. And of course you can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for this season. See you on the Job.