Yin and Yang

As we've moved into a Winter schedule, a lot has changed.  There are so few outside and traditional farm jobs to do.  These normally fall into my domain and all through the season I enjoyed being the masculine lifter, cutter, builder, hauler, and wrecker on the farm.  It was very satisfying to feel like the success of the farm was literally being carried on my shoulders.

However, now that those jobs have disappeared, I realize how many other jobs there are the farm...and more importantly who has been doing them!

My wife, Shae Lynn, is the answer, and she is sensational...not to mention beautiful.  From sunrise to well after I've fallen into bed, Shae Lynn was the force that keept me and the farm going at the pace that let us meet all of our 2010 goals.  I don't want to bring the honesty of this post into question by assigning an undue or unrealistic amount of kudos to her, but the fact is I would not have achieved on my own anything close to what we did together.

In addition to doing chores with me every morning and evening, Shae Lynn managed our business, marketing, customer contact, inventory, dealing with feed and equipment suppliers, the construction of our website (which should be ready soon), sales, the home laying hen flock, the food at home, the data we collected on the animals, designing/refining our mobile livestock shelters, and handled the bulk of the research and work we did for the non-profit land trust PLANT! that we work with.  It fills with me with such a deep sense of pride to be able to share this because I'm just now seeing it clearly too.

To top it all off, just recently Shae began work on getting our bread business off the ground, which will hopefully help get us some income through the chickenless winter months.  After talking with the people at Pie Ranch and working out an agreement where we could use their wood-fired brick oven, she rushed out, bought her supplies, mixed the dough, and spent a day baking 150 loaves of simply delicious artisan bread as a pilot program (I particularly liked the roasted garlic and butter ciabatta).

I don't want this to sound like I am gushing, but it is just so easy for the blog I predominately write to seem a bit one-sided.  Maybe when Shae Lynn stops doing so much work she'll have time to blog!

P.S.  I am not sure how many of you subscribe to Gentry Magazine.  I assume roughly 80%.  I am more Pleb Weekly type.  Regardless, I also should note that Shae Lynn will be featured in a piece on women in business in the January issue.  Here she is during her photo session where the words "make love to the camera" were, in fact, mentioned.