Prologue

As I have previously written in the first post, December post, and our May post our journey to the land started and is progressing slowly. This post is our annual update since its been a year I left full time employment at IBM and started the move from urban coastal Texas.

I am just jotting down key highlights but each section can be a tome in itself based on the life we have experienced and how the Most High has blessed us.

Living on the land

We have been living on the land going on almost 4 months. We live in our tent (my nickname for our RV) which is parked in the garage for now and has some ameneties of shower, kitchen and bed. We had invested in the RV in 2018 as a way to get our sons to enjoy camping again (as we did in 2002-2005) and has been put to good use.

My bride has been the best help for me as she has transitioned well from our palacious coastal home to our tent. Its not been easy for her, but I wouldnt be able to do this without her constant help, counsel and support.

The experiences of RV life in the garage is a post in itself and hopefully I cant get to it some time.

No internet and poor connectivity

The goal all along has been to been more connected with our Creator, creations and with each other. This caused us to look at how much connectivity we need and such. On the land, we dont have good cell coverage, until I go up to the top of the hill or the specific north side of the barn. We explored getting land line and the cost was exhorbitant for so-so service. We decided to use a 3G box for emergency and that is our home line and cell coverage on smartphones is on and off even on the north side.

My bride has been handicapped as she lives off her iPhone planning, coordinating across the two households we are managing (our sons in the city and on the land). There is also our various friends who are suffering health challenges and she has been in constant communication with them in past, but now its only at set times and so on.

Although, what feeds our animals today is my part time contract work with IBM (which I am very thankful for), requires connectivity, I have set it up so that I can do most of the work offline and sync as needed - either when I go into town or drive up a mile to my neighbors who has internet.

I plan on doing series of posts on this for my previous colleagues, productivity geeks, any GTD or Deep Work folks and developers in general, as most of my work is programming with lots of thinking. Here are some topics I have been pondering:

• IT project from farm lense
• Planning, replanning and then plan again
• Using pen/paper for building systems
• Working offline when work is connected
• Sheep are more forgiving than enterprise customers
• Systems in place before you onboard customers
• Mock testing in real life - lessons from TDD/Agile/AOP/XP and such
• Its not done until its done - dont rush
• Being a generalist pays on the farm
• Lessons from fencing to consider edge cases in your system
• Your planning ability is only as good as your experience

If you are interested and need a preview, prod me over mail, email or text

Onboarding of animals

We started with our dogs, who are the corner stone of our farm. They provide the safety and base to decide how to scale and bring animals in. Fences are also key (see the penultimate section on Fences). These are meremmas and some of the best dogs we have owned. They work and were anxious the first few weeks we had them. But they are doing good so far with their wards.

Then we brought in our rabbits and chickens from our city plot, so we can free our sons of the daily chores.

We then onboarded the first set of sheep. They were high maintenance as they all came with their lambs from this spring and we had to get a handle on our management systems. We had to learn basic vet skills as well as observation of the animals with record keeping.

This was followed by the second set of sheep - lamb ewes I brought from KY.

In the meantime, I started thinking about intensive grazing, rotational grazing, multi-species grazing and other ancient practices that nomads of Abrahams time followed. The only difference was adopting it to our boundary area of the land, which is set and not the open region/country that the ancients had. After quarantining them for 21 days each we started assimilating and moving them onto the pasture, as I had built the fence infrastructure.

I used this opportunity to separate rams (they are still under 7 months) from the ewes. This required more fencing and shelters.

We also got poultry on sale for getting our egg production up, insect population down and small predators in check - with baby chicks, guineas and geese.

We added kittens as our barn cat, Zach who is the best dog we have had, was aging out.

The latest addition has been alpacas. We await more to come with a Llama, but that will have to wait as I make an update to this post

Births and death

Farm life has been very rewarding already, from daily chores, seeing happy animals, seeing growth and such. But the natural cycle of life and death is ever present. Whether its the predators that our gaurds kill (dogs, cats, geese) or the various insects that are eaten by our birds or deaths that happen - due to disease, old age and accidents.

Our cat Zach who is over 16 years old, who has been our best dog who has been with us through 5 moves, passed last week. It was extremely emotional for me as I was there as he passed and he has been one of the best animals we have ever owned. I never cared much for pets, as growing up in India in lower middle class, pets were for the wealthy. With Zach as we moved into the Ozarks, he always was there when I called him. He was more obedient than any dog I have owned till date and handled reptiles and rodents. He walked behind me on farm walks, stayed loyal till the end.

Just in days of his passing, we had 4 new baby bunnies born to our Californians and 4 others who were still born to a brand new doe. This was bitter sweet as the heat had a factor to play on fertility and delivery.

We almost lost one of our sheep to worm load, but with my wife treating and caring for her, she has pulled through and is on the pasture as I pen this.

Fences and more fences

Good fences make good neighbors is an old adage. When you see coyotes, black bears, cougars, bob cats and mountain lions, you need good fences with multiple layers of protection. There definitely is a principle in security design that can be learnt from this.

Currently, on paddock 1, I have a perimeter wire fence that is tough, then cattle panel and coral fences for sectioning key areas and then electric fence for containing and easily moving the animals. A caricature is provided below on how I have thought about this.

Fencing and moving the animals every few days has been one of the hardest thing I have learnt and done on the farm, yet. It requires physical strength, patience, endurance, working through various terrains, knowledge of electric current and circuits, understanding of catenary and tension, spatial planning, fractions, animal behavior and area calculations and general awareness of surroundings.

Ask me some time if the electic fences work or not :)

Living on less

I also wanted to make a point about how not having the constant access to urban stores and ameneties, has made my bride and I plan better every day/week/month on what we should do if we had to go to a near by town for groceries, ameneties or emergency farm supply.

For many that know me, know I have been a starbucks supporter, patron and abuser. My badge of honor was the points I had on my fancy iPhone app. With our move to fram life and the transition I started pre-covid, its been almost 3 years since I have religiously been to starbucks - I used to park my self there for work, meetings, outings and even fancy dates with my bride. The last time I was in starbucks was earlier in Jan to use my points accumulated to get espresso beans for making coffee in the tent.

I have enjoyed plain water from our well in this heat. Simple things like fresh strawberries, icies and frozen meals are more appetizing after a hard day of work on the farm. Gnne are the days when I crave a special indianmeal or italian or thai. With so much to be done and cared for, you eat to live and not live to eat.

My day typically starts at 0600 and ends close to 2330. At some point I will document a typical day through this move, so it might be available to my grand children to see how long it took thatha (grand father) to do some things.

In summarizing a year, its been very fruitful, painful, tough, joyful, fulfilling and calming all at the same time. None of this could have been possible without the Most High and we continue to thank Almighty for His blessings and the learnings through this process.

Godspeed