journal/Notes/Family Friendly Farming Notes.md

# Ch1: My Vision
- We want tight-knit family groups, small business, multigenerational business/trade/land control, and elderly usefulness, reverence, and care.
- Contrast this to our general structure: Geographically distant families, multinational corporations and the global economy, job-jumping and short-timing, elderly obsolescence, retirement, and disrespect.
- The modern home is vacant during the day.
- The modern home interests do not center around home and hearth, but something beyond the front door (and then on top of it, we bring the world in via the WWW)

> BIG Q: WHAT IS YOUR VISION?


# Ch3: Money
- Money is amoral
- Good farmers producing good food deserve premium prices
- "I hate money. I love money. That settles it. Actually, maybe it does."

# CH4: Goal Setting

These are cheap or low value goals:

- Earn a net income of $50,000
- Double our income at farmers' market
- Get 50% market share
- Raise 12,000 broilers
- Save $20,000 this year
- Double our customers this year
- Produce 15 bushels of premium grade apples per tree

Compare these to another set of goals:

- Add one complimentary enterprise this year
- Reduce customer negative comments to two for the whole year
- Knock one person-minute per chicken off processing time
- Drop from two-day to one-day paddock rotations
- Increase Omega 3 fatty acids in eggs by 100%
- Turn dropped fruit into something of value

Money and the like comes out from the goals, not vice versa. No shortcuts. 

Beware the kind of goals you make. Put real emphasis on wording them so they really express your most heartfelt values. And word them so that they are noble enough to not only justify your life's work, but that of your grandchildren as well. Financial goals are cheap and unrewarding in the long term. Values goals, on the other hand, are worthwhile and tend toward multi-generational striving. That is noble.

> BIG Q: WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?

# CH6: Making the Break from Outside Employment
- Nothing is beneath you.
- Be encouraged. Be committed. Be willing to do anything. 
- It took about 5 years to get out of the woods.
- What are your strengths?

> BIG Q: WHAT ARE YOUR STRENGTHS?
- I love to work and work hard.
- I am honest.
- I am stronger than I look.
- I am likeable. I can carry on conversation with about anybody and am interested in most things. I can make people feel heard.
- I am theologically- and philosophically- minded.
- I question underlying assumptions.
- I am creative.
- I understand technology in a way that most people don't
- I am dependable - I get what I said I'm going to do, done.
# CH7: Restoring Community
- Work as close to home as possible; preferable in the home
- Personal responsibility for healthcare, elderly care, education, etc - I must become knowledgeable and make decisions
- Help one another without keeping records of who god the better deal
- Community responsibility and interdependence for insurance-type calamities
- True servanthood - I'll take the poor house site, you take the better one
- My happiness comes from seeing you prosper - I'm not an empire builder

For decades our church groups have been more interested in making sure baptism was performed technically correct rather than taking care of single moms or our own elderly. We had doctrine down pat but retirees frittered away their wisdom years tooling around in RVs playing golf and visiting the opera. We knew Scofield's meaning of each New Testament parable but sent kids away to public school to receive a good enough education to get a job a thousand miles away from home that paid well enough to hire nursing homes to take care of Mom and Dad. We were so busy intellectualizing spiritual gifts that we became physical pharmaceutical junkies.

We have been in this place since 1961, yearning for community. In just the last five years [since 2001 - so 35 years], it is beginning to develop. We schedule workdays to help each other. We actually have to require each family to submit a project because our cultural paradigm considers it un-American to ask for help. See what I'm saying? We've cut trees, demolished buildings, built barns and brainstormed landscape plans.

In our group, we do not live on the same land. We are scattered around the area. But we have now done some projects for neighbors of our fellowship, creating a wider community respect and visibility. We've had folks come and go. Plenty of pain has accompanied gains. But our family is committed to community in all its social, accountability, economic, and outreach ramifications.

THOUGHTS
- Salatin's geographic position is actually pretty similar to ours in Illinois. That's encouraging. But just because he's making things work doesn't mean we can or should in the same way. Still.

# CH8-18: 10 Commandments

## 1: Integration into every aspect
 - Kids should be part of the process; but it has to be genuine work not make-work. It has to be appropriately scaled.
 - Kids should not be above anything
 - Look at the farm through the eyes of a child. Identify where involvement is being discourage and see if that can be restructured to a more child friendly technique.
 - This is why small animals are nice.
 - This is why diversified production is nice.
 - Some work stations are not child friendly. In those cases, create a symbiotic one nearby so that the children can still be nearby doing their age and size appropriate jobs.

> BIG Q: HOW CAN THIS BE DONE ON THE FARM?

## 2: Love to Work
- A problem is that most parents to day are unsure of what they believe so they pass on their lack of resolve to their offspring.
- True child abuse is growing up undisciplined - it's reaching maturity thinking that the night is for partying instead of sleeping for the next day's important work.

## 3: Give Freedom
- The young generation must feel a genuine acceptance on the part of the older generation to offer input and new ideas into the operation. Otherwise, the young people never feel a part, never feel ownership, and never develop a love for the business.
- If kids don't feel like their comments are welcome, they won't offer any. This happens between any two individuals, but it is most acute and most devastating between parents and children. Intergenerational discussions can be the most awkward exchanges imaginable. The piercing sinlence within the deep discussion is pregnant with unspoken hurt and pain. Mom and dad, stalwart and rigid, try to make the best of the situation. The child - age doesn't matter in this scenario - breaks inside with unspoken anguish: "If I could just tell them how they make me feel."
- For all my imperfections, I want my kids to be able to say: "Dad freed me up to pursue my projects." Each of our children is different, and each will develop different interests. The idea is to allow these interests to develop freely and be used within the framework of the family farm.
	- Another good reason to have a diversified farm
- "Do I have enough confidence in him to trust him to pursue his dreams?"
- Boards can be replaced; children can't.

## 4: Create Investment Opportunities
- Let the children invest in the farm.
- "As soon as Dad knew I wanted to farm, he quit buying things."

## 5: Encourage Separate Child Business
- Have things that are genuinely the child's, rather than the parent's.

## 6: Maintain Humor
- Be positive and cheery!
- "They don't remember the good times until the golden shackles of their Dilbert cubicle fills them with anguish. Then they remember the simpler life. And they want to go back. But it's really a memory trick, whitewashed over the years to reveal only the pleasantries. They reason I know this is true because if it were as enticing as they now recall it, they would have never left in the first place. True, some people will leave regardless. But generally the fault lies in the parents for not creating emotional and economic opportunities for the next generation."
- Take time to enjoy the humor on the farm. Watch the calves run across the field, kicking up their heels. Tussle with your children in the hay mow after the last bale is in. Enjoy the sunset. Go to picnics, even if it's just to the back field. Too often farmers feel like they have to go elsewhere for their enjoyment. Build a pond with an adjacent barbecue pit. Create your own recreation and entertainment. In a diversified farm, who needs to go away for excitement?
- Part of the annual "to do" list needs to include items that will enhance our quality of life.
- If our vocation does not energize us, then we're probably doing the wrong thing or at least doing it in the wrong way.

## 7: Pay the Children
- Pay the children for their labor.
- No allowances
- Get rid of the time-clock-punching mentality

## 8: Praise, Praise, Praise
- Praise your children.
- Men are driven to excel, win, compete. But we need to not be fussy.
- Be OK with children's lower tolerances. And other's lower tolerances. Will it do the job? Yes? OK!

## 9: Enjoy your Vocation
- Enjoy the farm yourself.

## 10: Back Off from Personal Domains
- Don't micromanage

# CH18: Pleasant Farms
- Make farms nice places to be. Sweet smelling. Well adorned.

# CH19: Creating Safe Models
- Be kind and gentle
- Work with nature, not against it
- Don't be a sadist

# CH20: Multiple Use Infrastructure
- Diverse and multi-use infrastructure can be redirected, repurposed
- Allow for the next generation to do something different
- Be skeptical of single-purpose equipment (combines)

# CH21: Complimentary Enterprises
- Complimentary, transitional enterprises
- Ramp up as the kids get older - and parents decline in productivity
- "The problem is that farmers generally never think about complimentary enterprises. Dairy farmers can only think in terms of milking more cows. That takes a greater land base, more machinery, more buildings. A beef cattle farmer thinks in terms of more cows, creating the same problem as the dairy farmer. A crop farmer thinks about more acreage under cultivation."
- Let the new generation utilize the existing capital (land, buildings, machinery) to greater capacity in order to keep startup costs low. The enterprise must not compete for existing capital. Adding beef cows to a dairy operation is adding cows to cows. That's competing.
- Adding cherry to apple, beef to dairy, is diversity, but not complementary diversity.

> BIG Q: WHAT COMPLIMENTARY ENTERPRISES COULD WE BUILD?
- Orchards
- Chickens.
	- Make our own meal.
- Ducks (need a pond though)
- Logging
- Timber Framing
	- Sheds/cabins for outdoor retreats, etc.
	- Rustic hand-tool furniture to go with
- 

# CH22: Create a sense of Plenty
- The world is awash in resources
- Stay put in the promised land, yet be fruitful and multiply.
- Under proper stewardship the land should become more and more productive.

# CH23: Greenhouse Kids
- Don't shelter the kids
- But start them under shelter
- Gradually harden them up
- Greenhouse analaogy: greenhouse plants are the healthiest

# CH24: Socialization: No Hermits Here
- The family farm is magnetic. Because of its diversity in production, it's an interesting place. Interesting places are always fascinating to visit. How many people want to visit a 1,000 acre corn farm? Nothing really exciting happens, except during plowing and combining. But a few minutes of that, and you've seen all there is to see. It's the same thing, over and over and over again.
- Direct marketing = a steady steam of customers coming to the farm
- Zoning makes things difficult

# CH25: Baggage
- Everyone has baggage.
- In a family friendly farm, baggage must be fairly open.
- The alternative is pulling into my shell, doing my own thing, not listening to others' advice, and becoming autonomous.
- Here are some keys:
	- Mutually agreeable vulnerability and openness
	- Recognition that all of us have baggage
	- Radical honesty
	- Assume no-one is vindictive and everyone is compassionate
	- Accountability in attitude, action, and philosophy
	- Some people don't want to cooperate - don't blame yourself for it
	- Don't wait for someone else to open up first - go ahead and start
	- Time is real - both to accumulate and heal
- Love is too subjective and a cop-out.
- There's no magic wand.

# CH26: Noble Literature
- Read good stuff!!!

# CH27: Balancing Stimuli
- You can't do everything.
- We don't need to be heavily exposed to everything in order to be relevant.
- We've failed our children if they have no more gumption, no more cultural savvy, than to become farmers.
- When we create a hunger and desire for what is right, the child will never depart.

# CH28: Family Council
- Genuine, formal planning time
- On a daily basis - daily todos!
- You cannot run too far ahead of your family or they will be lost
- "Now you don't have to fix anything. I'm not asking for solutions. I'm just going to unload for a minute."

# CH29: 10 Deadly Destructive Deeds
10. Conventionalism
9. Secrecy
8. Manhandling
7. Disinterest
6. Doting
5. Perfectionism
4. Authoritarianism
3. Bagging
2. Screaming
1. Inconsistency

# CH30: Nutrition and Lifestyle
- So many of our problems stem from poor nutrition.
- If white bread and Lucky Charms are your nutritive base, all sorts of emotional and physical maladies will show up.
- Witholding refined sugar from problem kids fixed them in a few days. But then they load up and come back and they're as bad as before.

# CH31: Industry vs. Biology
- Specialized vs. Diversified
- Routine vs. Flexible
- Mechanization vs. Biological
	- "I think the pig should've been made this way"
	- Pigs have a plow on their nose - could it be something useful instead of a hindrance?

# CH32: A Sense of Ministry
- To carry an enterprise multigenerationally, the business must literally gush with outreach, big picture, missionary worldview.
- Marketing is light fighting.
- "When I produce a clean, nutriotious chicken for an appreciative cheerleader patron, the business and its product are not just 'neat', 'cute', and 'different'. I've taken a swipe at evil and won one for righteousness. You say I'm taking this too far? Go out and market something at less than this intensity and see how far you get."
- Truly successful farm marketers have a deep philosophical conviction about a rightness and wrongness in food production.

# CH33: Business Charity
- Look for opportunities to be charitable and especially for the business to do things that do not return money.

# CH34: Retirement; an Alternative View
- Don't spend your kids inheritance

# CH35: Inheritance: Performance Distribution
- It's only fair to give your son who IS keeping the farm, the whole farm.
- Don't split your inheritance equally. This is silly. Bad. Evil.

# CH36: But We Don't Have Children
- Court an apprentice and give them the farm
- Same if all the kids leave