Efficiencies

Our farm is made up of many different farm products. We grow hay, vegetables, chickens, eggs, cattle both meat and cow calf with the overall objective of having their life cycles work together. Because we have so many operations going on at one time we are constantly busy moving or preparing to move one or more of the products to the next stage of its life cycle. Like an assembly line or any other mode of production, the more you specialize on a single product or just a few similar products you can scale to larger efficiencies and limit your resources and processes to those specifically designed for your given product or products. This in general is the corn and bean farmer. There are specific tasks that need to be done, and one person using ever larger and technically specialized equipment can produce many times the amount that once took many people to produce. Well that's not us! We want our product's life cycles to efficiently interact in a symbiotic relationship to the benefit of the animal and plant products. Right now we run from one activity to the next moving chickens, making pens or harvesting hay. It makes for long days and requires jumping from one task to the next leaving things half done so that you can complete another before "it's too late". There was a small window of time to get some hay cut and baled and at the same time chicks were ready to be moved to the pasture which meant building chicken huts. They both needed to be worked at the same time so it made for long days and lots of jumping between tasks, with the normal chores needing to be done in the process. Today it's raining so we can concentrate on our planning and recuperate from the long, long work days.