Category Archives: Management

About doing and coordinating

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The Tipping Point

I’ve wondered a long time what to call this… lifestyle we’ve taken on with the move just over a year ago.

It’s something I’d consciously wanted for over five years, and probably on some level since I was a kid (what little girl doesn’t want to be surround by cute furry things that she’s in charge of?).

Okay, maybe the necessity of both components is unique to me.

But somehow a herd of rabbits and a flock of chickens is hard for me to name.

It helped when I took over the animals’ daily care (my good husband had been doing it all as a gift to me, but that meant the only time I interacted with the animals I was managing was during breeding and birthing.  It felt too unbalanced).

We are in the process of planning a garden, and a rather extensive first-go, at that; but even the seed-starting is a month or two away, and doesn’t seem quite real.

Then, yesterday, we jumped at the chance to get our own milk goats. And now, with that addition, calling our place a little homestead seems legitimate for the first time.

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Animal Talk: The Rabbitry Learning Curve

This is Mneme.  She is 6 months old and having her first litter Friday.

(That’s one of my favorite thing about rabbits so far: their due-dates are so much more predictable than humans’)

The three Muses (so named because all of their line have “mythic” names and came from one breeder, as opposed to the B-rabbits, whose names, originally enough, all begin with B) were housed in a single cage until they reached breeding age.  We culled a few cages to empty, split out the girls and bred them that same day.  Or tried to. We bred all three of “The Muses” when we separated them, but only Mneme took.

This has been our learning curve: taking General Principles and filtering them through actual experience.

Continue reading →

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Saying What You Mean

So Jay and I have been talking about a milk animal for our family.

Currently we have a goat-share which is down to a gallon a week, and we’re burning through that in a few days.

The next question is what kind of animal. Jay is more interested in a cow, while I’m just a bit overwhelmed at that idea, and used to the goat milk now.

We read this goat v. cow article which (humorously enough) reinforced both of us in our current bias.

Jay did more reading and became intrigued with the issue of A1 protein (in milk) vs. A2.  Which lead to a whole other speculative discussion about what it takes to import animals to Alaska, and how I didn’t want to go to that length until we’d lived with a cheap cow for a while first.  Assuming we did cow and not goat(s).

Anyway, even with Jay’s timeline putting such acquisition two summers out I’ve been trying to nail down a sequence at least (Blame it on my J-preference. It’s what I do), and was having a hard time following Jay’s patchy description.

Finally I cornered him (he was tethered by earphones to his computer and the weekly football watching).  “Just a little clarity,” I begged,  “I’m getting mixed messages, and have no idea where to apply my imagination.”

Now, someday I hope to do a whole post on this, but applying my imagination to something is so much more than “day-dreaming” or wishful thinking.  It’s a way of entering into a possibility and consuming it (The Blob fashion) to find the nooks and crannies and knowables to learn what it is I don’t know, in order to fix that.

It’s the best way I’ve ever discovered to learn about something.

Jay was admirably self-controlled despite my untimely interruption and said, “You’re getting mixed messages because that’s what I’m sending.”

So we’re not particularly further in the process, but I get the relief of at least knowing we’re on the same page: that he’s under no illusion that he’s actually given me enough to work with or to expect anything specific from me.

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The post that needs pictures

…that I don’t know how to take.

This is going to be a very chatty, busy post, because that’s what I have today.

You see (actually you can’t see) our house is (by USian standards) very small.  We have one bedroom, that the kids all share.

What’s funny about all this is that I still read those “simplify your life” blogs (or posts) and consider what else I could do to maximize the space I have.  And this Christmas break (Jay’s been home) we’ve done quite a bit and I’m *thrilled* with the results.

Only there’s no way really to show you through the computer, so you’ll just have to come visit, ‘kay?

Since last month (you know, back before our massive rabbit expansion) here’s a list of the space-makers that have improved my quality of life:

  • Changing to a full-size stacked washer/dryer
  • This is huge to me: I can sort (and fold!) laundry in the laundry room now.  Baskets fit in the laundry room instead of spilling into the hosting bathroom.
  • Jay put counter top in the wellroom, so I have a place for my Vitamix and Kitchenaid to hang out and stay easily usable.
  • I moved the miscellanea cabinet into the wellroom, which left my main kitchen feeling more roomy and got my measuring cups and mixing bowls closer to where I use them most.
  • We hung up lots of stuff. Which means it’s contributing to the environment, not cluttering it.
    • There was the stuff that makes the spaces more comfortable/attractive, like my gordian knot quilt in the main room, a miniature knot in the kitchen, and a two hangings in the wellroom (to mute the intense yellow all around).
    • And there were the little things that just made life easier: my Thread Elephant (okay: one of my New Year’s resolutions is officially to get my camera to talk to my laptop.  You all need to hear the thread-elephant story, and it just doesn’t work without a picture.) and a few other things, but the BIG ONE is that Jay hung a florescent tube light fixture in my office (which also happens to be under our double-size loft bed).  This is a big deal because we’re going to add full-spectrum bulbs once we go to the store again, and I’ll be getting that oh-so-important light therapy while I do my writing and computer time.

    Another life-enhancer is just the plain cuteness of bringing in glossy baby angoras.  I’ve been reading about rabbit agility (don’t roll your eyes. You love me, remember?  Just smile at my quirkiness and be supportive, please), and it made me think of the work I used to do in a similar vein with Joule.

    Yes, I miss her.  No, we’re not likely to get another dog.  Jay is loving the pet-free house far too much.

    Rabbits are proving to be a good match for me: they can go from bare-minimum interaction to lap-pet with remarkable dexterity.

    Two of the three new angoras look to be torts (half-way down this page, if you’d like an estimate), and very high-energy.  I expect I’ll experiment with one of these for agility.

    Continue reading →

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    Reproducing like Rabbits

    Okay, we now have evidence we’ve got this Rabbit-breeding thing figured out at last.

    With the four mamas that delivered Tuesday we now have 30 baby buns in the Rabbit/chicken house.

    We also have the hard decisions to make: namely, who to eat and how many to keep breeding.

    Two of our “first-timers” kindled this month, and produced the awesomest nests I’ve yet seen on our property.

    The nesting boxes we use have bottoms made of pegboard, so the infants’ natural instinct to burrow down ends up setting them against the holes.  But but Buttercup’s nest had a solid felted floor the littles couldn’t crawl through.

    Joan, our single “silver fox” (mix) rabbit also made a nice nest.  I was contemplating “retiring” the older generation and letting all the youngsters carry the flock, then I realized that the older mama’s bebe’s had, well, distinctly fuller tummies.

    I still don’t have an easy way to snap a picture in dim light, but observe this shape: db

    Now imagine that the staff is a little’s ribcage, and the bulbs are its belly.  They doin’ some seriously good eatin’ in those nests.

    My favorite thing about baby bunnies?  Holding.

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    Now That’s a Nice Curriculum

    We went to a Christmas party tonight, where we got to watch the pod race from the Star Wars (I) movie in the movie room: widescreen, 3D TV with surround sound speakers making it impossible to hear anything else.

    Elisha wandered in partway through and couldn’t move for watching (I scooped him up and brought him to my lap on the couch).

    On the way home Jay made a comment about reminding himself not to be jealous; that he had plenty of nice things that he liked, and he just chose to spend his money differently.

    From the backseat Natasha piped with a surety that convinced me she’d picked it up at Sunday School: “Some things God chooses not to give us and we should be content with what we have.”

    Jay didn’t hear her and asked Natasha to repeat herself, which she did, word-for-word, adding shyly, “I memorized it from my science book.”

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    So Much to Process

    Yesterday Melody had her first dentist appointment (looked in her mouth a week or so ago and could see cavities).

    Turns out she’s got a gobzillion cavities, and the dentist looks at me and asks, “Has she been brushing twice a day for two minutes each time?”  And I felt like saying something totally rude about how he shouldn’t assume everyone has heard those standards, and I’m not an idiot, are you taking a survey over how many people who follow the standards still get cavities?

    Maybe I would have felt guilty-er if I hadn’t just had a conversation a week ago with a mom who does hyper-regulate her kids’ teeth hygiene and was crushed that her 8-year-old has cavities despite her efforts.

    Anyway, they give me a quote for half her mouth (they schedule one side at a time because they don’t expect a kid to sit through the whole procedure at once) and blow off my questions/distaste for metal fillings.  “[Tooth-colored fillings] are more expensive” was all they’d say to me.

    The friend who referred me had warned me about the negitive response the workers gave when asked about health issues, so I tried to make it about aesthetics (hey, this should be solid ground, I thought), and still felt invalidated.

    I guess I should have taken that story as a reason not to go, but I wanted to get Melody checked and here was somebody known by somebody.  Anyway, after looking at the estimate (pushing $2000.  For one-half of her mouth. BLEW my mind) I told Jay, “I am totally calling around for prices.”

    And I only had the energy to call 3 offices, but that was enough to establish that we visited an expensiver place (annoyed me) and that there are providers that are already rejecting the metal fillings themselves, so I don’t have to but heads with an establishment.

    So I have to finish calling around tomorrow; one more place to meet Jay’s request of four new offices, and one call-back to compare oranges with oranges.

    I’m totally getting the impression that this isn’t playing by the rules (going to place A then hijacking the x-rays and exam to have the work done elsewhere).  If office A hadn’t charged plenty for the initial exam I might feel more compunction about changing, but I’ve given the worker his due.

    Continue reading →

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    The Other Difficulty With Differences

    I outlined my basic observation of differences here.

    Another angle is that by doing things differently we begin to measure personal success in terms of success of the model we employ.

    For example some parents (usually of only one child), directly attribute their child’s good behavior to their exceptional parenting skills.

    This could be accurate, or it could be self-delusion.  I tend to take their gushing advice with a grain of salt, wary of such a small sample size.

    Just yesterday I was talking with another mom about homeschooling and we were comparing methods (not competing, just finding out. She’s literature-based; I do half our subjects with workbooks and the other half orally).  I felt a warm, cozy comfort at our easy conversation, how we both tied our choices to our personalities and lifestyles, rather than the inherint *rightness* of the method itself.

    I said so to her, saying how thankful I am to have several years “this way” behind me now, so I can compare a  track long-enough to let me see both when and how my method really works and when it doesn’t.  But how, over all, it averages out as effective.

    My biggest discomfort in these “differences” interactions (whether it’s about parenting or schooling) is when someone attributes to the method what could just as easily be individual variation.  For “failures” or “successes.”

    Natasha was reading by age five.  Melody, in the same environment, was still slogging through her phonics workbook at age six.  Some people asked if we were doing the right thing. If we were using the right curriculum.  And I did compare it to some other options, but felt nothing offered more than what we were using already.

    Now seven, and nearly finished with those questioned phonics workbooks, Melody has a *solid* foundation that she builds on every day.  She has developed independent study skills, problem-solving skills (we’re still working on focus and speed, but we’ve got time), and I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress she’s made.

    ~ ~ ~

    There is so much individual variation between children that I really think once you have something solid (by any objective standard you can measure), as long as it’s not actually making life more complicated (we had one of those, too), it’s a matter of persevering.

    Elisha has begun the same series of workbooks– despite my intent to hold him back one more year– and I can already see that he, like Melody a year ago, isn’t quite clicking with it.

    ~ ~ ~

    I haven’t decided if I’ll do an enforced hold until he’s older (my original plan) or keep working intensively with him.  One of the reasons I love the 50% workbooks approach is that it allows me to work independently too.

    The books we use are so gradually advancing that the kids can frequently “self teach,” which is really important to me.  Not because I want to keep them out of my hair (they wouldn’t be homeschooled if that was important to me), but because I se my life as been one long string of self-teaching.

    I consider it one of the most-valuable life skills they can learn, so I’m thankful to have found texts that reenforce this value of mine.

    ~ ~ ~

    One of the reasons studying personality has been so important to me is how it allows me incorporate that understanding of equality into interactions where differences could start to look like mistakes. Like someone “getting it wrong.”

    What I want to remember, what I want to extend grace over, is that correct can be a lot-broader of a path than I choose to walk myself.

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    Seasons Change

     

    I think this time of year is the hardest for me.

    I’ll have to double check this at -40°, and sometime between January and February, when I’ve been out of the sun for my longest stretch.

    I’m speaking of these weeks surrounding the solid freeze-up. At no other time of year is 35-40 degrees F so cold.  In February it’s outright balmy, I don’t want a coat, and can never understand why my teeth start chattering when I’ve been outside too long.

    Water freezes over night, so I have to judge whether to give critters water in cold bowls, or wait til the water thaws in the afternoon.

    Until the afternoon doesn’t get warm enough to thaw the water.

    Thursday’s high is supposed to be 35, which means manually watering the outdoor animals twice a day, to make sure they get enough.

    Jay’s been building a small barn inside the big shed that’s behind our home.  I’ve been *so* impressed at how fast it’s going up, and thankful that in (probably) less than a week we’ll be bringing all our rabbits and chickens in “out of the cold.”

    But building in the cold has its own challenges, in addition to this is happening around the edges of his regular full-time job.  Which means most of what he’s doing is not only in the cold, but it’s only lit by his headlamp, because there’s no electricity in the shed.

    The stress was palpable off of him tonight, as we passed after the kids’ bedtime on our respective projects.  “Is there anything I can do to make your life less stressful?” I asked, bracing myself in case he needed to say “eat all the animals,” just to get it off his chest.

    “No,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

    And as I walked away I realized there was something I could do.  Basically I needed to switch into winter mode and just buckle down for the new season.  Because my attitude and the energy I approach my tasks with really make a difference in the energy-level of my house.

    So I wore a hat tonight while feeding the rabbits. And my light leather gloves; enough for brief work requiring dexterity.

    And I was quite comfortable, thanks for asking.  So now I think I’ve officially made my transition.

    Winter’s mostly here, but we’re mostly ready, and we’ll do fine.