Unity Farm Journal - Third Week of August 2016

I ’m on “vacation” this week, working remotely from the farm, so no Wednesday blog post, but here’s the Unity Farm update.I always tell my staff that management is balancing scope, time and resources.  To much scope and not enough makes resources very grouchy unless they are augmented.The same thing is true about managing a farm.  Unless you set a scope that is achievable with the resources you have, the time (defined as the seasons in the farming year), living things, including your own well being, will suffer.As we plan for 2017, something we ’re doing during my slack time this week, we’e set a scope that we believe is achievable with two people (Kathy and me), taking into account our responsibilities to family members, work life, and finances.Kathy*beekeeping (scope = 100 hives, about a million bees, processing 2500 pounds of honey/year) with a motorized 20 frame extractor, electric wax melter, mobile uncapping table, and bottling tank*poultry (scope = 100 chickens of various ages, processing 500 dozen eggs/year)John*craft cider (scope = 250 gallons as limited by the production of Unity Farm orchards - about 6000 pounds of apples per year) with a 36L press, a motorized grinder, food grade fermenters*honey lager (scope = 250 gallons requiring 170 pounds of Kathy ’s honey) using 20 gallon stainless steel boiling pots and food grade fermenters*compost (scope = 10 tons per year, screened and bagged with the custom motorized equipment we built)...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs