Oogiem
0
Totally missed last week entirely and really felt I needed to stop and get this one done now no matter what.
It's been a very stressful week, BLM is again trying to steal our water and they are the feds so it takes a lot of lawyers and time to protect it. Without our water we can't farm so it's a high priority project. This on top of legal challenges in court on some filings on springs that provide some of our water that we have to argue for and also a mining issue that threatens to subside the ditch making the water unavailable for us. So water wars are taking a good bit of my time right now.
Then I've been coordinating the shipment of groups of rare bloodlines of sheep all across the US and Canada. The last bunch of 6 sheep are en-route to their final destination now and should arrive by Monday. We are also moving up the yearly semen collection for our cooperative USDA research in sheep reproduction to next week, instead of in November, and that has me stressed as we are not ready. Pens are still filled with last years' manure and need to be cleaned. I have 7 sheep in quarantine that will need to be collected and have to figure out how to do that without causing quarantine issues. We also have to figure out which ewes will be used as the jump ewes and get them down so they are handy. We weaned some more lambs, still have 10 in with their moms. They are so slow growing that I am worried about them so gave them an extra dewormer and will have the vet take a look when she comes to do the health inspection on the new boys.
On to Barb's questions:
I really do need to fine tune the way I handle my e-mail inbox waiting for system. I leave the waiting fors in there until they are done. I've tried putting them into a waiting for folder but then I never look at them and when the responses come in I can't easily match the response to the request because they are across folders. I've tried pulling them all into my Omnifocus system and ran into issues with ease of responding back if required. Seems like there is no e-mail integration I can make work for me.
I also need to really look at the last quarter/year end projects that are coming up to start at the equinox. With all my system changes this year, especially to on-line financial statements and the identity theft issues my whole year end checklist is woefully out of date. Problem is I know that revamping that checklist is a project in itself that will take a minimum of 1-2 hours or so of uninterrupted time and I haven't had that much time in one chunk for months. My next action is to see if there is any way to make the time requirement smaller, break down the tasks or something. But it's planning and for that I usually need larger chunks of time because it takes me so long to get going on that type of task. I can't pick it up and put it down unless I document how far I got and that takes a lot of time.
The deadlines I have really are deadlines and can't be re-negotiated and I have more stuff than I can finish so I am looking at all optional projects and putting them on hold. It's really hard to do, some of them are things that are seasonal so if I don't do them this season I won't get back to them for at least a year. It's very hard to say no to things like that.
Which brings me to the last question. There are a bunch of projects that we could use some help on, but so far we have been totally unsuccessful in getting help when we needed it. The projects are sheep related and we have to do them based on weather and time. The people who are willing to come work can't handle the short notice that these projects require. I've got 5 people trained in how to effectively help us do major sheep tasks all willing to come, but they need a weeks notice and often the final decision on a day to do the task isn't made until the night before, when we see that we've got a window of good weather, not too hot or too cold or rainy. The terrible quality and inaccuracy of the weather service in predicting weather means that I can't really determine what day or days will be suitable until the evening before, when I can look at the radar and weather map myself. Most other stuff is really only doable by me or my husband.
Ah well I have to get back at it. Off to doing now.
It's been a very stressful week, BLM is again trying to steal our water and they are the feds so it takes a lot of lawyers and time to protect it. Without our water we can't farm so it's a high priority project. This on top of legal challenges in court on some filings on springs that provide some of our water that we have to argue for and also a mining issue that threatens to subside the ditch making the water unavailable for us. So water wars are taking a good bit of my time right now.
Then I've been coordinating the shipment of groups of rare bloodlines of sheep all across the US and Canada. The last bunch of 6 sheep are en-route to their final destination now and should arrive by Monday. We are also moving up the yearly semen collection for our cooperative USDA research in sheep reproduction to next week, instead of in November, and that has me stressed as we are not ready. Pens are still filled with last years' manure and need to be cleaned. I have 7 sheep in quarantine that will need to be collected and have to figure out how to do that without causing quarantine issues. We also have to figure out which ewes will be used as the jump ewes and get them down so they are handy. We weaned some more lambs, still have 10 in with their moms. They are so slow growing that I am worried about them so gave them an extra dewormer and will have the vet take a look when she comes to do the health inspection on the new boys.
On to Barb's questions:
Barb said:
I really do need to fine tune the way I handle my e-mail inbox waiting for system. I leave the waiting fors in there until they are done. I've tried putting them into a waiting for folder but then I never look at them and when the responses come in I can't easily match the response to the request because they are across folders. I've tried pulling them all into my Omnifocus system and ran into issues with ease of responding back if required. Seems like there is no e-mail integration I can make work for me.
I also need to really look at the last quarter/year end projects that are coming up to start at the equinox. With all my system changes this year, especially to on-line financial statements and the identity theft issues my whole year end checklist is woefully out of date. Problem is I know that revamping that checklist is a project in itself that will take a minimum of 1-2 hours or so of uninterrupted time and I haven't had that much time in one chunk for months. My next action is to see if there is any way to make the time requirement smaller, break down the tasks or something. But it's planning and for that I usually need larger chunks of time because it takes me so long to get going on that type of task. I can't pick it up and put it down unless I document how far I got and that takes a lot of time.
The deadlines I have really are deadlines and can't be re-negotiated and I have more stuff than I can finish so I am looking at all optional projects and putting them on hold. It's really hard to do, some of them are things that are seasonal so if I don't do them this season I won't get back to them for at least a year. It's very hard to say no to things like that.
Which brings me to the last question. There are a bunch of projects that we could use some help on, but so far we have been totally unsuccessful in getting help when we needed it. The projects are sheep related and we have to do them based on weather and time. The people who are willing to come work can't handle the short notice that these projects require. I've got 5 people trained in how to effectively help us do major sheep tasks all willing to come, but they need a weeks notice and often the final decision on a day to do the task isn't made until the night before, when we see that we've got a window of good weather, not too hot or too cold or rainy. The terrible quality and inaccuracy of the weather service in predicting weather means that I can't really determine what day or days will be suitable until the evening before, when I can look at the radar and weather map myself. Most other stuff is really only doable by me or my husband.
Ah well I have to get back at it. Off to doing now.
We both had a great time and I always learn something every time I shoot.