Triying to Find Balance

Finding Balance

          How do I balance my personal life & interests, my job and my businesses? With farming, it seems like the business of farming is my personal life. It is a lifestyle choice and that’s fine with me. But I do have an absolute passion for colour pencil painting, yes – art work done with colour pencils is called painting, as is art done with pastels, air brush and a number of other media. I love the sketching, inking, and colouring my work. Have been doing cards as they are small and I can complete them in a few hours but since about March I haven’t had any time for even those. Miss it but starting a business takes priority.
          I have a full time job, 7.5 hours a day and about 50 minutes in commuting (25 minutes each way). We milk in the evening at around 7:30 pm and that can take upwards of 2 hours. Milking in the evening also includes chores of feed hay to all the goats; the bucks, the dry stock (babies and yearlings) and the milking does. Every pen needs water, the chickens need to be locked up if they are roaming around and the dogs are fed. So it’s not just milking.

          There is also the paperwork in running the dairy and the new paperwork for the gelato business. Then there is the bookkeeping, which I seem to be behind on. But I am managing to get the HST/GST refund paperwork in – getting money back from the government is pretty motivating. That’s why I like doing my taxes; it’s the challenge of figuring out how to get as much back as I legally can.
          I really like to sleep as well. Some people seem to be able to function effectively on 6 hours sleep or less but not me. If I don’t get a good 7+ hours, I am not a happy camper. Lack of sleep and menopause makes me into an extremely cranky person and isn’t conductive to good public relations – I have to bite my tongue & just shut my mouth, a lot.

Pouring concrete in during our lovely Hot Summer! I love watching other people work :)

 

          Weekends are getting work done around the farm, daylight needs to be taken advantage of. Fall is a good time of year as it’s more putting everything to bed and battening down the hatches for the winter storms. This fall (2012) has been exceptionally dry and sunny and I am amazed at how much stuff has crept outside. In our west coast climate, we generally have rain a couple times a week but this fall there has been no rain for 90+ days – amazing! Today’s Oct. 11/12 (ohh 10/11/12 – cool numbers) and there is a gentle mist of rain falling.
          I am coming to the realization that I am going to have to get up earlier in the morning, get to bed on time, & not read in bed. That will give me a bit more time to get some paperwork done.
          I also think I will have to leave some things undone as well. The hard part will be deciding what is and isn’t a priority and being flexible to change as time goes on. Not sure how I will go about it, I probably will just mull over the possibilities for a bit and then make some decisions.
          Everyday brings new challenges and new decisions to make – keeps life interesting.

Naive or just Stupid?

             I guess I am somewhat of a Pollyanna, overall. I always seem to expect the best of people and events. I figure most of life will have a happy ending. I seem to be able to find the silver lining in most clouds.

              I am always surprised when a person I know turns out to be “bad”. I have no illusions that people are perfect and don’t expect them to be anything more than just a person. So what is a “bad” person? It’s not a liar, everybody lies or exaggerates at some time to boost their ego or make him or herself, or their family look better. Or they lie to avoid something unpleasant or uncomfortable – I get that; self-preservation is a very strong drive and in the big picture, not important. And it isn’t necessarily when someone breaks the law or commits a sin (as in the 7 deadlies) or even breaks a commandment (they are just guidelines to me).

              It’s when people lie or misrepresent with the objective of tricking someone or hurting another person – on purpose. It just strikes me as wrong, and a waste of time & energy. They are bound to be found out and then there will be a mess.

              I had thought the business world ran differently. Perhaps it’s because I am somewhat new to business. Maybe lying and cheating it is just the normal way of doing business, I can’t say for certain but I don’t like it. I am very uncomfortable with bullying as well, I still have a hard time standing against it, but I just hate to see it.

              I have learned through my life that if a person will screw over one person, they will screw over anyone. They might say “it’s just business”, implying that they don’t behave the same way in their personal life as their business life, but it isn’t true. Or they say they wouldn’t do this or that to their friends but don’t believe it for a second. The worm will turn on you.

              Perhaps I feel this way because when I commit to something, generally I do it. I take the commitment seriously and I expect other people to do the same. Don’t say it if you don’t plan on following through. Many people don’t feel the same way or share the ethic, and it’s disappointing. Perhaps it is me who needs to toughen up – but at what cost?

              To me there are not a lot of things in this life to depend on but you need to be able to depend on your friends. Many of you probably have family you can depend on as well – lucky you, cherish it. I am an only child and my mother is in a care home (dementia of some kind), Dad is dependable but he is getting up there in age. I have many cousins and I know they wouldn’t turn me away if I showed up on their doorsteps, but we aren’t close.

              I think this is another set of skills to learn. If so, I am on it, unwillingly and with my heals dragging but I am on it. Got to learn how to be ruthless and aggressive and demanding – like on the TV programs “Dragon’s Den”/”Shark Tank. I’m smiling to myself as I write this – it’s not really part of who I am and what I consider “right”. It is not in my nature and I can’t see changing that much. So maybe I will learn to keep my eyes open and not to expect too much from others – which I probably can manage.

              Any tips or hints or words of advice would be appreciated.

              I’d love to have some comments.

Goats and genetics

I find genetics absolutely fascinating. What genes are dominant, what traits are recessive, why mixing X with Y sometimes gives you A and sometimes B. How tiny little disturbances in DNA can cause catastrophic failure in the organism. How one gene controls so many different parts of an animal. It is all so interesting.

It is breeding time for my dairy goats (Sept/Oct 2012). We have 4 intact bucks, one (Dean) is too young to breed right now but the other 3; Sultan & Max at 21 months old, and Mousse at 8 months old are ready & eager. Intact boy goats, call bucks, are very precocious and able to breed at about 5 months of age. The only limit to Mousse’s ability to breed is his height. Some does are too tall for him and we use one of the big guys.

My goal for next years’ baby girls (doelings) is for them to be more productive, to produce more milk. All three bucks have very productive dams. Mousse’s dam more so but, as I mentioned, he is not quite tall enough to breed some of the taller does.

All this kids have the same sire.

In goats, milk production is somewhat genetic (~35%), so it’s no guarantee that the daughters will be better milkers than their moms. That is where monitoring production and repeatedly choosing to keep the best milkers comes into play. The colour of my goats, the Toggenburg breed, is also a non-dominate genetic trait. White is the most dominate colour among goats, if you breed almost any colour to white, most of the babies are going to come out white.

A quick aside here. Perhaps you are familiar with Mendel and inheritance “laws”; he was the monk that experimented with peas with both colour and texture. Did you know he faked and forged a bunch of his data? The general principle is sound but genetic inheritance is in  no way as simple as he made it. There is so much more to the way genes interact and the influence of the environment on the resultant offspring.

A good example of that is in cloning. When scientists clone a cow or a dog, the baby is an exact duplicate of the parent. When they clone cats, the colour and pattern of the cat's fur varies – same genetics, different colour. Interesting, isn’t it? I wonder what influences that?

It’s kind of like with human families – same parents and all the kids come out different, even with twins. Though there is a British genetic study, (anonymous of course), showed that 25% of kids in a family have a dad that isn’t the father of the other kids. That could explain some variation, but not in the twins.

The variety of possibilities that result from the mixing of genes during reproduction is just awesome and amazing. Nature, or God’s hand if you prefer, constantly stuns me with its beauty and diversity. We live on an amazing planet – we are so fortunate to be alive in this time of discovery & exploration – from outerspace to the smallest gene, it is all just wonderful!

Karen's Arachnophobia

Today's offering is by LegatoGelato's other business partner, Karen Fouracre.
Karen has been my best friend since high school - she wanted to add to the blog.
Here's her first posting. Any comments????
Warnimg - there are photos of spiders in this story.
Jaki

I’m Over my Arachnophobia… almost.

 

I use to be very arachnophobic until I started living on a farm.  So I guess that whole “exposure” method has some merit.  It used to be that when I would unexpectedly see a spider up close I would get that whole startle response, gasp of breath, heart rate shoots up spring of fear.  And it WAS irrational. I knew there was no reason to be that afraid of something sitting quietly still, not interested in me and making absolutely no threatening moves.  After about 3 or 4 years living with trees and bushes and outbuildings all over and constantly walking through cobwebs (which I use to have nightmares about) and not finding myself covered in spiders, I slowly got over it.  It just became a hazard of walking around or a really good substitute for a hair net as those webs are amazingly strong.

Going through the raspberry patch, with canes averaging 7 feet tall, it was impossible to come out without some of those teeny tiny spiders lowering themselves from my bangs or the brim of my hat.  Now I just catch the end of their little web with my finger and attach them to something else.

We routinely get a jumping spider living on the walls and ceiling of the kitchen.  His name is Reggie.  He hangs around for a couple of months and then disappears again. I find naming them helps.  Now it’s a pet.  We make sure we shoo him off the stove top if we’re going to use it. (photo off the web) (Hah!)

We also have black widow spiders living in the basement. They’ve been there since we moved in 17 years ago.  I have never had a problem with them as they prefer quite out-of-the-way places, they move slowly and are very territorial which means I’m not going to find other spiders in their area.  I always wear gloves when dealing with firewood and am careful lifting things that have been sitting around for a while, which in the basement can mean years.  And we have an arrangement, they can stay in the unfinished side of the basement but if they show up anywhere else in the house I vacuum them up.  And you can tell the second you put your hand in a black widow spider web because it’s about twice as strong as any other web you’ll encounter.  I remove my hand very quickly but by then the spider is already hiding.   I know where to look for them but they’re still hard to find.

 

Now I find if I climb a ladder in the fall when dozens of the fat-bodied, short legged spiders with the brown stripes are making their fantastic webs, and I come nose to back, I can actually admire how pretty they are and how amazing their webs are and not fall off the ladder in my haste to descend.  Think about producing all that silk from their own bodies and then constructing those fantastic patterns.  Or the really optimistic ones that manage to string a web right across the drive way to try to catch the truck.  I don’t even clear the webs out of the milking parlour in the summer now because I’d rather have them catching the dammed flies and mosquitoes and no-seeums.  They do it much better than I do and all we seem to catch with those sticky fly strips is chickens.  It’s darn good goo - removes a lot of feathers when you have to pull them off.

 So I’m almost over my arachnophobia with one very distinct exception.  Wolf spiders.  Now wolf spiders are all leg, fast, sneaky and BIG.  They are all over our area in the fall and like to come in the house.  They crawl up drains and down pipes.   (Note from Jaki: They are called House Spiders)

One evening Mom put Susan and I in the bath together, and we were splashing away. After a while I think we need more water so I turn on the tap and a wolf spider washes out of the spout and into our tub.  Evacuate—evacuate.  Is it any wonder I’m afraid of the dammed things?  How did it get in the faucet when the tub had already been filled?

 When my youngest sister was about 2 years old she was very bad and was sent to her room just across the hall from the kitchen.  She was holding onto the edge of her crib and weeping, she’s always had a theatrical streak, when suddenly the whole tone of her crying changed to something more like terror.  We all go running and frozen in terror, dead center in the bedroom door way as a massive wolf spider.  (I’m not sure if they were all really huge or I just remember them that way.) Anyway, Mom to the rescue with a broom and then Cathy gets a cuddle and allowed out of her chamber of torture.  That evening she gets the “Lil’ Lamb” side of the bib with the picture of the lamb until I can switch it to “Lil’ Stinker” side with the picture of the skunk.

 

Then where was the summer morning at the lake when we’re drying dishes after breakfast and Susan feels a tickle on throat and brushes it and a big wolf spider that has just climbed out of her shirt falls to the floor.  Screaming ensues with some interesting dance steps. 10 min. later the neighbour comes over.  He feels something in his pants and slaps the top of his inner thigh and a big wolf spider falls out the bottom of his jeans.  More interesting dance steps and we learned some new words.

 

My friend and I lived in a rented house for a couple of years that was built into the side of a hill and the wold spiders would be in the sink and tub in the bathroom every morning.  Our cat was in heaven and we’d let her in the bathroom 10 minutes before we went in so she could clear the place out and have her breakfast. 
 

One afternoon in this same house I went into my room and laydown on the bed to read.  I’d been there about 30 seconds when I looked up and right above me on the wall was this huge wolf spider.  I ran screaming from the room.  It must have been 3 inches across the legs (looked like 5 from my angle) and how could I not have seen it before I got on the bed?  Answer, they’re sneaky and it sneakyed up on me. They enjoy jumping out and saying boo.

 

Staying at my parents one summer when they were at the lake, I was in the downstairs bedroom, just off the laundry room where the basement door is.  I’m lying in bed in the evening reading and I feel this weight on my foot.  I look down and this wolf spider has crawled on to the bed.  It’s so big it HAD weight.  I screamed, kicked (you’ll see a trend here), it goes flying I don’t know where.  I sleep upstairs.

Next morning when I walk into the laundry room there are 17, count em, 17 wolf spiders on the walls, floor and ceiling of the laundry room.  I found an old can of Raid in the kitchen cupboard and sprayed everywhere, shut the door and stayed upstairs.  Who really needs a toothbrush anyway? The basement door now has weather stripping. Thanks Dad.

 (plus 15 buddies!!!!)

Then there’s the numerous times when I’ve been trapped standing on the couch because of some wolf spider strolling through the livingroom.  These ones really show off the speed of 8 on the floor.  The ideal way to get rid of a spider is from as far away as possible, but when throwing shoes and newspapers from the couch only gives them an obstacle course you have to resort to Superman leaps to get to the vacuum cleaner. What did people do before this wonderful invention?  And when you finally snake the end up to it and it gets sucked in you still have to live through that horrible clunk as  flies past your hand and up the tube.  I leave the suction on for a few more minutes just to make sure it doesn’t crawl out again.

 

About 3 summers ago, Jaki was away at the fairs so I was trying out her wonderful new mattress.  I was sitting reading and I notice some motion out of the corner of my eye.  I look over and a young (slightly smaller) wolf spider is climbing into bed with me. So that’s why they’re called wolf spiders. Ah ha.  I scream, hit it with my book,  I don’t know where it goes so I flee down the hall while chastising the cats for not having killed it when I saw it climbing the basement stairs earlier in the day and sleep in my bed.  Next morning I have to apologize to the cats because there’s a dead one on the basement stairs too. Never did get to sleep on the new mattress.

 

So while I don’t like waking through spider webs and I wouldn’t have a tarantula as a pet, I no longer have that instant fear reaction to spiders any more - except for the wolf spider. I also have 4 cats now.  People think it’s because I like cats.