Heather McElyea-Chunn stands in her large kitchen with some of her baked goods.
Heather McElyea-Chunn takes her hobbies seriously.
Her husband, Jeff Chunn, calls them “feral hobbies,” she says, because her hobbies tend to run wild.
One of them developed into an online business that she still works at all the time. Another one is pottery, that she is developing into a semi-business. And the newest hobby gone wild is baking sourdough breads and other baked items.
It is fairly new but it is developing into a business rather quickly.
“I got interested in baking after we moved to Blue Earth two years ago,” Heather says. “I discovered I really liked baking and especially sourdough bread. I got my first sourdough starter in June 2024.”
She started baking all the time, and sharing the bread with family. She was constantly looking for new recipes and new sourdough items to bake.
It was becoming such an obsession that eventually Heather and Jeff talked about selling her sourdough products locally.
“I created the name, Blue Earth Cooperative Bakery, and got my cottage food license just this past May,” Heather relates. “Then in June I contacted the Blue Earth Farmers’ Market group and signed up with them.”
On June 7 she was going to be at her first Farmers’ Market event and she says she was very nervous about it.
“I baked for two straight days, day and night,” she says. “My family helped. I was pretty scared and nervous about it.”
She didn’t need to be.
“We almost completely sold out in those two days,” she says. “Then, because I already knew about the business side of online business, I started doing that, with people ordering what they want and then picking it up at my place.”
She also takes her products to events, like the Ryno Repair’s Moto Fest and the Fairmont Farmers’ Market on Tuesdays. She was also at Holiday Sampler last year and plans to be there again this year.
She still is doing the baking on her regular kitchen stove and oven, but she is already making plans for creating an actual bakery.
That is because she has the space for it.
“Yes, Jeff and I are ‘those people,’ the ones who bought the old creamery building here in Blue Earth,” she says with a big smile. “That seems to be how people here know us.”
The couple, who met in Texas 11 years ago, moved to Aurora, Colorado, in 2021.
“I have four daughters from my previous marriage,” Heather relates. “Three were out of high school by then and we decided to make the move to Colorado for a new adventure.”
It was there she discovered pottery.
But two of her daughters moved to Minnesota, including one who went to Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.
“And one of my daughters had two children, my grand kids, and they were in Minnesota,” Heather says. “So Jeff and I decided we should move to Minnesota.”
Jeff was working for a company out of North Dakota and doing it remotely, while Heather had an online jewelery business.
“We looked at all kinds of possible places in Minnesota,” she says. “We wanted a large space and maybe out in the country. I just didn’t want to be where there were bears.”
The old creamery building in Blue Earth popped up among all of their Zillow pins online.
“We just liked the look of it and the size of it,” Heather says. “So we decided to fly to Minnesota and take a closer look. We just said please don’t let it be awful, ’cause we just loved it. It had all the things we were looking for.”
They signed the contingent offer that day, and flew back to Colorado and started packing up.
Heather says she still feels that it was meant to be, them buying the creamery and moving to Blue Earth.
“It is a huge, weird building, but it fits us very well, for what we need for space,” Heather explains. “And we just love Blue Earth, it is such a wonderful place and not as super busy as Colorado was.”
Heather remains self-employed with her online jewelry business and Jeff has just started a new job, with Computer Technology Solutions in North Mankato.
Her jewelery business is Mainland Silver that started as a hobby and now has been her full time job since 2020.
It can be found on her own website and places like etsy and ebay.
And then there is the pottery and sourdough baking hobbies.
“I think of myself as a maximizer,” Heather says with a smile. “I take something, like baking, and maximize it, take it all the way.”
She got her first sourdough starter in June of 2024, and a year later, in June of 2025, she was selling her product at the Farmers’ Market.
“I don’t really like to just do the same old things, so I am always trying something new with baking sourdough,” she explains. “Right now I am making sourdough bread in the shape of pumpkins.”