I’ve been slack on posting to our website lately. Part of that is because our hosting company managed to blow up our server which caused all kinds of drama. Part of it is that I’ve been busy with the Civil Air Patrol and Spork, and our involvement with it. Part of it is because I’ve been working on putting this plan together for quite some time. It takes more time than you think to go through all this data and get a plan put together.
And last, part of it is because I’ve been sleeping like a baby. Like all night. Without waking up. I used to get up at 2am, 3am, whatever, and come over to the barn to work. It kept me from waking the Mrs and the kids and let me be productive. However lately I’ve been afflicted with this need to sleep 6, 7, even 8 hours at a time. It’s terrible. I can’t get anything done. Luckily, I did something dumb the other day and made the Mrs mad at me. Since I’m always slightly concerned she’s going to kill me in my sleep anyway, we ratcheted things up to DEFCON 1 and viola! Up at 2am. Phew! I was worried this sleeping thing would never end! Who knew being stupid could come in so handy.
After cleaning off my desk, responding to about 1000 emails, procuring our health insurance for next year, getting IRAs set up for the kids, calculating how much hay we’d need for winter, reconciling the 6 months of back logged bank statements, ordering Christmas presents, fixing all the guns that were languishing on my bench, and generally making things sort of organized in this chaos that is my office, I was able to finally work on the 2017-2018 cattle plan. And thank goodness I did.
I hate not knowing what I’m doing. But worse yet, my guys hate when I don’t know what I’m doing. Part of being the boss is you are supposed to have some form of leadership. Bumbling from crisis to crisis isn’t leadership. It’s an overpaid employee with a fancy title. So after a few hours of work, here is the current cattle plan for the next few years. Comments and explanation to follow.
| Number | Ear tag color | Weight | Date born | Finished date |
| 759 | Red | 1255 | 02/01/15 | 01/01/17 |
| 43 | Yellow | 1289 | 07/01/14 | 03/01/17 |
| LF18 | Red | 1219 | 02/01/15 | 04/01/17 |
| 21 | Red | 987 | 07/20/15 | 05/20/17 |
| 47 | Yellow | 1006 | 10/15/14 | 06/01/17 |
| A4 | Yellow | 908 | 07/14/16 | 08/14/17 |
| A12 | Yellow | 902 | 07/14/16 | 09/14/17 |
| 54 | Yellow | 817 | 05/11/15 | 10/11/17 |
| A9 | Yellow | 810 | 07/14/16 | 11/14/17 |
| 30 | Red | 875 | 09/20/15 | 12/20/17 |
| 55 | Yellow | 755 | 07/22/15 | 01/22/18 |
| 57 | Yellow | 810 | 09/01/15 | 02/01/18 |
| A3 | Yellow | 764 | 07/14/16 | 03/14/18 |
| A6 | Yellow | 753 | 07/14/16 | 04/14/18 |
| 42 | Red | 787 | 12/01/15 | 05/01/18 |
| A1 | Yellow | 677 | 07/14/16 | 05/14/18 |
| 40 | Red | 743 | 12/01/15 | 06/01/18 |
| A7 | Yellow | 650 | 07/14/16 | 07/14/18 |
| A2 | Yellow | 668 | 07/14/16 | 08/14/18 |
| 41 | Red | 689 | 01/01/16 | 09/01/18 |
| A11 | Yellow | 650 | 07/14/16 | 10/14/18 |
| 37 | Red | 632 | 01/20/16 | 11/20/18 |
| 13 | Red | 663 | 11/20/15 | 12/20/18 |
| A8 | Yellow | 524 | 07/14/16 | 01/14/19 |
| A5 | Yellow | 515 | 07/14/16 | 02/14/19 |
So what does all this mean? For that, you’ll have to wait for part two, where we discuss cattle finishing, land plans, expansion plans, and general farmer dreaming.