Timesaver

~ This article first appeared in the Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

I think if I boil down my life desires into one word what I want most is time. 

Farmers possess a unique timesaving strategy that I will share with you today.  Thus far it has proven entirely unsuccessful but we keep at it with persistent certainty that it’s bound to kick in any moment now.

The first thing you need to do is identify any free space in your day and immediately fill it with some new activity. 

For example, I was feeling stressed shortly after our son was born and needed a little extra time at home, so I started a compost company in order to generate income that will in turn give me the financial freedom to do less.  Now, moving material and turning the pile with a shovel is hard work, so I devoted the free time I had to working out a system to make the operation function more smoothly.  The time needed to work the compost came out of my already too small time budget required to do my daily cattle chores, thus adding to the stress at home.  I marked the compost company as a success that hadn’t quite matured yet, and so I needed a plan to get more time from the cattle-compost boondoggle.

Obviously chickens will help.  There is nothing better to save time than nurturing peeps in the garage.  The garage, after all, is combined into our split level home and so the convenience factor is much higher than cattle and compost, both of which are kept at a distance.  With the chickens so close I now was able to save the time I had at home by tending the little flock during the off hours of “kids’ bedtime” and “you really need to bathe”.  By way of diffusion the smell of chickens permeates every corner of our living space, a reality that helps Gina participate in the enjoyment of poultry.  My goodness, it’s another success.  It simply needs a little more time before it’s functioning smoothly. 

I needed a plan to extract time out of the cattle-compost-chicken chaos, and what better way to add efficiency than raising and killing meat chickens?

Meat chickens are such a natural addition to the time saving strategy that I’m amazed it didn’t occur to me sooner.  Because they use much of the same infrastructure as laying hens I was able to save time by integrating another aspect of the poultry game into what I already have.  Meat chickens, unlike hens, need killed and packaged and stored at home, thus adding convenience and saving time by filling the freezer with food that we can most certainly obtain elsewhere for exponentially less effort.  Keeping the broilers and preparing the time to process them cut in to the time required to run the cattle and turn the compost and maintain the laying hens, so I chiseled a little moment out of my day during the whole breakfast tradition in order to more efficiently complete the chore of meat birds.  Without time to eat, shower, or put the kids to bed I have physical proof that my plan to save time by increasing opportunities to make money that will in turn give me more relaxation is functioning better than I could have ever dreamed; it’s just not quite over the hump yet.  It will get there.

With all this success taking place I need to plan ahead so the ball keeps rolling along smoothly.  I think a hobby is in store and I’d a railroad fanatic to the core, so the best way to relax is to create an outdoor garden railroad display that I can use as an attraction that advertises my compost company to guests who come to see the trains but leave in awe of the lush gardens that are a result of the compost I make and use in abundance.  All I have to do to enjoy a hobby is figure out how to convert my locomotives to battery power and then do some extensive landscaping and lay the track and plant the plants.  I can likely accomplish these minor chores during what has traditionally been considered a sleep cycle.

I think it’s plain to see that I’ll soon be kicking back and relaxing with my wife and kids because I’ve worked out such an amazing strategy to save time – it’s just not quite pulled together yet.  If you’d like a life coach to help your family in the matter of timesaving I think I can work that in as a side business.  In the meantime, I’m a little short on free time and I think a Guernsey milk cow will nicely free up the precious moments that I’m so desperately seeking.  Surly that will work.