Food in, feed out

We're halfway to that magical day of the week when I travel into town with a full load of fresh food, and return to the mountain with a bunch of feed.  Deliveries require a constant array of coolers for transport.  They work pretty well for our conditions, actually.  Then, at the end of the day they get stacked up front in the bed of the truck to make room for feed.

It's a rare day when I don't come home with at least a quarter ton of something.  Last week was a 3/4 ton of alfalfa hay.  Today I'll bring back a ton of barley.  Just got the alert that local oats will be ready on the 26th.  I'll get half a ton of them, maybe more.  And probably 40 bales of oat straw too.

It's a continual shuffle.  Money in, money out.  Lots of work in the meantime.  I haven't looked at my timesink into the farm recently.  Last time I checked into it, before the interns came, I was working about 100 hours a week.

Now that we're post-interns, I'm finding some ways to make my motion more efficient.  Cutting corners without cutting quality or profit is always a challenge- but it's necessary to sustainably get the job done.  If I burn out, we're done.

It would be pretty easy to scale back to a farm that only supports the local area within walking/riding distance.  Offload a lot of livestock, sell some equipment, and go back to just feeding my family and few others.

But I don't know.  I LOVE what I'm doing.  Looking my customers in the eye each week, hearing their questions and feedback and gratitude... it makes the work worth the time.

Am I making enough of a monetary profit to want to keep doing it?  I mean, it's so much work.  I'm not the typical stay-at-home mama anymore.  My toddler wakes up to an empty house every day while I milk.  There's not time to do leisurely things like make cutout cookies or even socialize.

And then there's always the concern- what happens if I get really sick or seriously hurt?  Who will cover every milking, do deliveries, harvest birds, take care of orders and customers, etc?  Still seeking a backup plan, as you can see.

Meanwhile, all my focus appears to be on growth.  Fence more pastures for rotation, drill a well!, improve shelters and feeding systems, get more goats.  And sheep.  This time I'm looking for Finn sheep.  And maybe 8 pigs for next spring.  But no more chickens.  I have enough right now.

Then there's the question of all that poop and all that feed, and transporting it all.  I just need a bigger system and a clone.  That'd be the ticket... find someone with a big truck who wants to drive around and pick up supplies.  Oh, and a huge warehouse with grain silos to store it all.  

One foot in front of the other.  Better get off here, and call the barley farmer and make a plan.  Gotta go.