Category Archives: Management

About doing and coordinating

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Early May 2012

So we’re barely out of April, but still loads going on.

(I hope really soon to start back up with the menu-building posts– because it could mean *I’m* back on a menu.)

We decided to sell Cream. It was really hard for Natasha and me.

The one consolation we could offer her is that she now has her very own rabbit. It is the last silver fox (cross) we have, and Natasha named her Black Beauty. We’ve given Natasha full ownership (along with care) and Natasha will be able to keep BB as long as she lives, if that’s her desire. She just has to maintain the present level of care.

We sold all of the non-Orpington chickens (and the extra rooster) last week, and I’ve sold a total of 14 meat rabbits so far, for breeding stock.  I expect to sell one more trio this week, along with the angora buck (and I’d let the mama-A go to, if I could find an interested buyer).

I have a few small baskets of angora from what I’ve collected over the last year, so I think one will do fine to keep me as busy as I want to be with wool.

It was a relief to find critters leaving (nearly) as fast as we wanted, and then this week I went out to feed the chickens and found a slaughterhouse.

A marten had gotten in and torn out the throats of every bird in the place.

Thankfully for me, three of the hens broke out; they were the only ones to survive (but they mean I still have home grown eggs so I can still eat eggs). I stayed up till after 3a.m. Thursday morning, trying to work through salvaging all the meat. Continue reading →

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Sickness

We’re currently fighting a serious bug going through our house.

Melody’s fever seems to have finally stayed away (after four days of persistence), and everybody’s been pretty listless on both ends of the fever (N and E have had symptoms as well.  And it’s been interesting to observe how feeling yucky really does make you act yucky. It’s a backwards sort of nice that I can say, Woah, this is really out of character!)

Melody went through an entire square box of tissues Saturday. Elisha and Natasha picked up her cough by Sunday evening, and until yesterday (Tuesday) Elisha’s the only one who could hang on to energy.

Sunday I stayed home with the younger two. Elisha was a great helper, and Melody got dressed, which was an accomplishment compared to Saturday.

Monday both girls held their low fevers and needed lots of holding by Mama. Which was fine, accept when people want to eat, too.

Conveniently, when they’re feeling this crummy, they don’t seem to care as much about food.

 

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April 2012 Update

So it just took asserting how much I planned to blog (both here and at Untangling Tales) for life to expand and fill all writing time.

So let me just give a quick two week update, since a slow one would take two hours.

Jay was gone for one of the last two weeks. While he was gone:

  • I got an average of 6 hours of sleep/night (leaving me with a 14-hour deficit).
  • Both our baby goats got sick.
  • Buttercup (a rabbit) had a litter of *9* kits (though she was down to 7 three days later. Those all are doing well.)
  • I forked the compost from the outdoor coup and filled it with chickens.
  • One of our chest freezers died, and I had to do a Tetras/canning scramble to save as much as I could from the meat freezer.

On the upside the freezer-death happened right before the weekend my mom had offered to keep the kids, so my marathon work sessions didn’t have to fit around the needs of the kids. I just didn’t have the time/brain cells to do as much novel work as I’d hoped to accomplish.

Cream (the white faced doe kid) was close to skin and bones and she came back with a few days of focused care, but Friday night (two days after Jay got home) her twin, Sugar, died. It wasn’t really expected, since Cream had looked so much worse than her sister and recovered.

So now we’re left with the question of whether to get a second goat (because all the writing talks about how goats don’t do well alone), or to sell Cream so she’s not living as an only-goat.

We’d rather keep Cream, it’s the second goat that’s tricky.  The kids- all 4- and I went to see a Nigerian doe today, but “Molly” was much too rough and aggressive with Cream, so we had to pass. (Made me *so* grateful we’d brought Cream and knew before we brought a new goat home that they weren’t compatible.)

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The snow is almost completely melted here, Jay’s moat is doing it’s job just as it should, and we’re beginning to simplify our life here in other ways.

I’ve been looking at my choices and thinking about how much of what I do is externally motivated and how much intrinsically motivated.  I realized I was doing too much just because it was “sensible” and “could pay off later,” but that preparation was reducing my margin now, and margin is what I need, more than I need (say) rabbits that people might pay more for later.

In this case I’m referring to showing and keeping records.  The level of detail and engagement required to do them well eliminates my breathing room for things that matter more to me: like reading and meal planning.

Yeah. Reading and meal-planning matter more to me than a “potential” side business– especially considering the low level of payoff that looks to be available.

Anyway, we decided we’re not interested in stretching beyond what our family needs/is using, so we’re in the process of selling off extra/older rabbits.  We just finished selling all the mixed-breed chickens, today, so in a couple of weeks if we still have hens that want to go broody we should be able to let them and still end up with consistent layers.

We still want the eggs (since store-bought make me ill), and the “ethical” meat, but I’m sick of how much I’ve been trying to manage.

Along those same lines, I don’t anticipate a garden to be in our plans for this summer.  If it happens it happens, but I think for now we’ll just work at stabilizing our ballance. Once we find it.

(I’ve got other projects/ideas percolating– primarily having to do with food– and that’s where I want to spend “extra” energies.)

No promises any more. I’ll give what I can, and no more.  There will always be more to teach and learn than I can be a part of, and accepting that is part of accepting reality.

Admittedly, hard for me, but I’m learning.

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Schooling (and a birthday trip TMI)

Melody wrote this story shortly after Grandma Florie let her bring a pillow home.

“The tale of Melody’s bed.”

“My bed is the best bed in the world. It has a pillow which came from Grandma’s house. It has a dinosaur blanket on it. Like I said, my bed is the best in the world.”

She read it aloud to me, which helped me translate it for you. This is the longest stint of voluntary writing she has yet done, and she was very pleased with it.

Her face and body language as she shared it reminded me irresistibly of a puppy, tail like a propeller, nearly jumping our of her skin with joy.

BTW, this is what school looks like at my house. When I’m not there with them (say, reading aloud) they have their set of workbooks they plow through.

I’ve been very thankful for how motivated they are by workbooks: being able to say they’ve done X# of pages, or that they’re this close to the end of a chapter spurs them on better than any of my praise or requirements.

And it seems to help, too, when they have similar subjects.  I can be frustrated by their attention to fairness, but it creates a mellow endurance for work they’re not interested in, and I am thankful for that.

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Yesterday, for Jay’s birthday, he took they day off and flew our family to Tok in his mom’s 172 (it lives at the Fairbanks airport and is the plane Jay used when he learned to fly). Once we landed back in Fairbanks Jay and I had a forehead-smack moment where we realized we hadn’t taken *any* pictures on the trip. Continue reading →

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Animal Talk: Rabbity Week

We had a number of rabbit-events this last week.

On Wednesday Serena had her litter, a day later than I’d expected.

The absolute coolest part was that, since she was under my desk at the time, I heard someone squeak and was able to watch the end of the delivery. So cool.  And everyone seemed so much more vigorous than earlier litters, something I assume is due to the warmer introduction to the world.

She has got to be the messiest rabbit I own.  (I’m going to experiment with fostering one of her littles to a meat mama, once the babies are close to the same size: see if neatness is something kits can learn).

Continue reading →

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Kid Events February 2012

We’re still having fun with the kids.

Company got to join in the fun; Lilia seemed fascinated, but wasn’t always sure what to think of all the attention. Once again I was so thankful they’re small.

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Elisha finished his kindergarten math book this last week, and yesterday started the first-grade book.  He is very proud.

“I love math!” He says over and over again.  His sisters try to burst his bubble (“Wait till you get older and it’s actually hard!“) and I try to nip it in the bud.  But at least so far they’ve not been able to dampen his enthusiasm.

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Melody still loves the camera and has a standard pose that she takes when she asks me to take a picture of her.

She’s almost ready to lose her second front tooth.  The first adult front tooth has already made it’s appearance, so she might never be without “apple” teeth.

And here is Natasha modeling my latest finished project, and my first “chemo” hat.

One of my goals for my rabbit wool is to knit super-soft, super-warm, close-fitting hats for folks who have lost their hair.  This hat is for a dear lady I met last year who wore a creative range of head-coverings all summer.  She had hair the last time I saw her (a long time ago now), but because she was the one in-mind the whole time this idea grew, well, I knew she had to get the first one.

Natasha says she would like one of her own. “Exactly like it, Mama! Colors and everything!”

You can’t tell in the picture, but only the bottom half is dual-strand knitted, because I used up all my angora yarn about that time.  So I’ll have to spin some more before I can do anything new.  I like this pattern, too: it’s easy to remember without looking too simple.

Oh, and Natasha’s news is that she’s becoming quite proficient in the kitchen. She can break-up and watch the ground meat or sausage while I work on the rest of dinner, and she’s mastered the Lara(esque) Bars in Katie’s Healthy Snacks To-Go.

Today she came to me at lunch time and (rather than complain she was hungry) simply asked if there was anything she could make for lunch.

I love that attitude!  She and sibs made their own cheese tacos for lunch.

This growing independence can be fun 🙂

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Animal Talk: Introducing the goats

This is Cream. Her twin sister, Sugar, was a bit more shy tonight and  wouldn’t come up for the camera.

They’re only interested in jack-in-the-boxing when they’re being ignored.

Like when we’re making lunch.

That’s where the goats have  been hanging out for the last week: in a tarp-lined Pack’n’Play with a shavings-bed.

They’re in our main room, so, yeah, the same room we eat in.

It’s the room Jay and I sleep in too, so it’s definitely been like having infants: their little (but insistent) bleating whenever they think were’ awake (and therefore should be FEEDING them, of course).

Continue reading →