The Boss'

Now for a long overdue update, in completely random order.

Today we killed our rooster. He’d officially worn out his welcome after he went after Ben the other night. I’d been keeping him around since he was such a great looking Aracana. However, we can’t have the kids getting chased by an aggressive bird. My brother-in-law happened to be over and offered to give me a little tutorial. It was a brutal business, I must say. I was shown the old “grab them and break their stinking neck” method. Rough. He turned out to be really skinny too, so that was a little disappointing. Maybe it’s the breed.

We’re getting 6-10 eggs a day now from our hens. Need some? Still working on the business model but the kids are pretty sure they’re going to get rich in the egg business.

Grace broke her arm at the Right to Life picnic at Post Family Farm. She fell off the zip line just as Emma was helping her get on it. It was a painful break, right at the top of the Ulna…the Olecranon section of the Ulna, if you must know. She was quiet as a mouse throughout the proceedings, in typical Gracie fashion. First of our children ever to break a bone, and the last one we would have expected.

We spent a week at a cottage on Green Lake, like we’ve done for the past few years. The weather was a bit on the cool side, but a good time was still had by all. Four adults, 10 kids, little cottage, and we all survived. That’s saying something.

I started working on what I’m calling a sleeping nook for Emma. It’s a tiny little alcove in the attic space adjacent to the girls bedroom. It would be a tiny little place for Emma to sleep and read and possibly store some of her books and clothes. It’s probably more accurately described as a berth. The tight confines remind me of the cramped quarters aboard a sailboat. That will likely inspire the design to some extent.

Here’s some pics of the progress. Below you see the existing girls room, and the adjacent attic space. Then there’s the pic after I knocked a big hole in the wall. That’s my motivation to finish this thing before cold weather sets in.

Here’s where I’m at right now, after a couple of days of working on it. I added the 2×12’s to create a cavity for R-38 insulation. The girls room is typically one of the hottest/coldest rooms in the house, so, even though this really limits headroom, it was a must. You’ll also notice the styrofoam baffles that create a cold airspace against my roof. These are a cheap and a great time saver.

So, that’s a brief update. If you really want to stay up to date, you can visit my profile page on facebook. Lindy is on facebook too, if you want Boss related news from her perspective.

Excellence and scarcity. That’s what I’ve been mulling over in my mind low these many nights. When something is really, really great, it is also likely to be somewhat rare. Does that make sense to you? Part of it’s apparent greatness is likely to be due to it’s scarcity. Take diamonds. Please. Take them. If you could walk down any gravel road, scuff your feet and uncover loads of diamonds, would they be the stone of choice for engagement rings? Probably not.

Consider consumer products. There is a WalMart version of almost everything. A while back, I saw a deal on Woot.com for sleeping bags. Two mummy style bags for $20. What a steal! I snatched them up on the spot. Are they the greatest bags on earth. No. Would I put them up against the latest North Face bag in a side by side comparison? No. People understand instinctively that because of the scarcity and expense of the North Face bag, it is likely to be far superior. Now, if it turns out that the North Face bag is really no different than my $20 Woot bag, then North Face has a problem. The marketplace will hand them their hat and say, “Thanks for playing, but you lose.”

I was listening to an audio show the other day where Jay Leno was interviewed about his Pratt & Miller Corvette C6RS. That car illustrates this point perfectly. Jay took an already rare car, the C6RS, and the folks at Pratt & Miller turned it into a completely custom, one-of-a-kind automobile. And, as we would expect, Jay paid a premium for it. It’s not cheap to get something really excellent. Are there exceptions to this rule? Maybe…but I can’t think of any. If you think of one, leave it in the comments.

We know this without even being told. Then…why am I telling you? Uh, because we tend to forget this when arguing about public policy.

I have an idea! Let the government design your next cell phone. It will include all of the latest and greatest technology, as determined by a committee, and will be state of the art hardware-wise…well, almost state of the art…because of the length of the contract and negotiation process, the hardware will be a little dated, but it will still be awesome! And it will run all of the latest apps…nobody’s apps will be left out or discriminated against. Everyone’s apps deserve an equal shot to run on this great phone. Except maybe if it’s an electronic Bible app, cuz we don’t wanna be cramming religion down anyone’s throat. And the best part about this wiz-bang, slightly outdated but still really awesome phone? It’s free! You read that right. Free phone kiddies. Come and get it.

Any takers? Undoubtedly some will find this phone to be really useful. Some folks may have found it impossible to buy a phone and so will really appreciate the free gov’t plan with it’s free text messaging and unlimited minutes. Is the phone really great? Well, maybe it’s not the best phone in the world, but at least it’s free, right? Now that the government has designed our phone, do we really expect it to be excellent, or merely adequate? I would argue that all of us would expect something adequate at best.

Now, can the same be said of something like, say, public education? Really, I’m asking. Not trying to start a flame war here. When the government rolls out a scheme to educate EVERYONE, for FREE, do we set aside everything we know about the market and how things work in general, and hope against all common sense that what they deliver will really be world class? If the government is going to guarantee access to something, a product or service, at no cost, to everyone, wouldn’t it likely be the most rudimentary version of the product or service. When the government provides assistance via food stamps, we don’t expect that we will be taking home lobster and filet mignon from the grocery store. We rightly expect that the government will supply us with food to keep us alive, but certainly not the highest quality foods from boutique producers. I feel the same must be true of healthcare. MediCare is a useful government program which helps lots of folks, but I don’t think anyone is going to go out on a limb and claim that the treatment available via MediCare is as good as it gets. If anything, it serves as a baseline upon which private sector plans can improve.

I wish policy makers would admit that there is a tradeoff…between real excellence and universal availability. Think of anything you’ve bought on the open market, and imagine the government providing a low/no cost version to every person that wanted one. How do you think the government version would stack up against the one you bought?

The one exception that I can imagine to this rule would be our system of national defense. Our nation has one of the most well equipped and highly trained military systems in the world. But even in this case, isn’t it often private firms competing aggressively against other private firms to develop cutting edge weapons systems which they in turn sell to the government?

For the sake of clarity I referred above to the government providing something at no cost, but of course we know that anything that the government provides comes at a cost…often a very high cost, paid for of course with our tax dollars. Public education is a prime example of this as well. What’s per pupil spending at these days? Around $10K? Bang for our buck? Not so much. However, if the motto of our public schools was something more realistic like, "Teaching you just enough to get by", voters might feel like we should ratchet back that per pupil amount just a wee bit. However, I feel like that motto would be more accurate, and more honest.

The appeal of mass public education is that it is available to everyone without exception, I just wish we were more realistic about what the government is capable of providing. I somehow imagine a bronze statue of a bureaucrat with fist raised in the air, head thrown back, tie flapping over his shoulder with the inscription, "Mediocrity For All!"

Is it possible for the government to provide a world class education to everyone? Or healthcare? Or…fill in the blank? You may argue that the school that YOUR kid goes to really does provide a top notch education, and that’s great. But the fairness police would say that others who are less well situated deserve access to exactly the same resources that you have access to. How do we take that same program and make it universal? Seems impossible to me.

Don’t take this as a screed against public education, per se. It’s not that I’m against it, I’m just confused by it. It doesn’t seem do-able, or work-able, or afford-able.

I got the call today…our pigs were finished. Two weeks ago, the butcher man came to the house and slaughtered our two hogs as the rest of us stood around and watched, somewhat stunned. Today, they returned to us, nicely shrink wrapped and labeled. Last week I bought a 15 cubic foot chest freezer. Today, that freezer is filled with pork. I’ve kept pretty close track of our expenses throughout this process. Here’s how it breaks down.

• $325.75 – Processing. Includes $70 for the on-location slaughtering, 89 pounds of smoked products at $.75/lb, and a general processing fee of 420 pounds hanging weight (combined) at $.45.
• $130 – The pigs themselves in the spring. $65 each.
• $249.15 – Feed. This is a rough figure. I may have missed a $13 bag of feed in there somewhere.
• $704.90 – That’s my rough total for the whole enterprise.

Here’s what that looks like…shrink wrapped and stuffed in grocery bags.

Here we are trying to figure out how all of the meat is going to fit in our freezer. It was quite a puzzle, but we managed to get everything in…minus the two pounds of bacon that we kept out for tonight’s supper.

Jack, cooling off by clutching a pork steak. We’ll have to remember this technique when things really heat up this weekend.

Here’s our freezer, fully stocked. Notice the little tubes in the baskets. They hold a pound of sausage each. Unseasoned on the left, seasoned on the right. With the sausage in each basket are the shrink wrapped packages of bacon. There’s also a full basket of bratwurst patties. He packages them as patties because it saves money not having to have casings, and he also claims that the flavor is better minus the casings. We’ll take his word for it.

And let’s not forget how all this started. Buckus and Clovis. R.I.P

Here we have the girls thanking the chickens for their eggs.