Life and times of a new farmer/homesteader
Today, plus my job history (a play on stream of consciousness) {
06:06
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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A bit overcast, but not rainy. If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I will cultivate my bird food garden and recultivate the north plot in my food garden. I might even get to my grain field. Still haven't decided whether to plant barley and overwinter a cover crop, or plant field peas and overwinter wheat. I have about a month to decide. The locals tell me the latest frost date here is normally the 15th of April. This will be my first foray into small grains. I don't have the tractor implements to do it right, but I do have a scythe. I figure if I keep it to under an acre I should do fine.While up at my folks old place on Saturday, I found an anvil. I'm so excited. It has been used for silversmithing, not blacksmithing, and it's smaller than one I would use for blacksmithing. I really need a decent shop for doing my metal, wood, and glass work. I can do some glass, wood, and fine metal work in my house, but some of the stuff I want to do will take an actual shop. Hopefully I will make enough at market this year to build a good pole barn shop in the fall or early winter. It's been a long time since I have done foundry and forge work, but I have the skills and knowledge to make my own machine tools and forge. If this kind of thing interests you at all, I would strongly suggest signing up for Lindsay Publications free book catalog. I was introduced to them when I was apprenticing as a machinist, and I still love getting books from them. They publish books from the industrial revolution, on all sorts of topics, along with new books by do-it-yourselfers on how to make your own shop tools and how to use them. I highly recommend anything by Dave Gingery. Lindsay can be a bit, er, irreverent at times, but it is a fun read. It's one of my two favorite catalogs, right up there with American Science and Surplus. Both are a must for tinkerers, like myself. You might wonder, if you have been paying attention, how many jobs and careers I have had over the years. I have mentioned alot of different jobs I have had. To tell you the truth, I have lost count. I started at sixteen, first bucking hay, planting trees, then digging ditches and basements. My first paycheck came from the week I was a butcher. I immediately started working at Burger King after that, at age 17. I worked there for a year, until I graduated, when I went to work for the local paper mill for three summers while going to college. I got married at 20, got laid off from the paper mill, and went to work at a lumber mill in the maintanance department. After they went under, I did some construction, some logging, built roofing trusses, and did some day labor moving furniture and painting interior walls. Then I got on at Orbit Industries, a small metal fabrication shop. I started as a helper, doing painting, shipping, and grinding. I was a good grinder, so I ended up being a welders helper for a while, learning how to MIG and TIG weld several metals. I got tired of the heat, so I moved into being a machinist apprentice. I went to night school for about a year while doing that, and learned how to use a variety of machine tools. Once I started getting bored with that, after about four years, I left Orbit for a high tech job at Hewlett Packard. Almost every job I ever got from then on told me that my experience as a machinist was an important reason that they hired me. I started as an assembler at HP, and worked my way into maintanance. By the time I left HP, about four years later, I was designing and building production lines. I saved that company millions of dollars by being able to tell an engineer when they had way overdesigned something. One example I remember well was when the engineers wanted to add a robotic transport system to move assemblies from one part of the line to another, at $350,000 a line. I suggested moving the work station, eliminating the need for an expensive robot. There were eventually six production lines that used my idea. The managers loved me, but the engineers weren't as kind. Heck, I didn't even have a degree, why should they listen to me? So I started going back to school. I was working 60 hours a week, and going to school 17 hours a week, and my marriage was suffering. So, I went out and found another job. I worked in a couple different companies as a line designer or maintanance technician, when an opportunity to be a particle physicist dropped into my lap. I was at a tech fair, having just recieved my first degree, when I struck up a conversation with a lab manager at a small division of Phillips, a company called FEI. "Focused Electrons and Ions." They made scanning electron microscopes and tools for the semiconductor industry. I apparently made an impression, as I got a call from him about six months later for a job I wasn't qualified for. I had the most gruelling interview and testing process I had ever experienced. In the end, I was chosen from among several candidates, including people with doctorates in physics. I had an associates degree in electronics engineering. What I found out later, from both my new boss and the other people I interviewed with, was that not only did I understand everything they were talking about, but I asked questions no one had ever asked, and re-explained things in language that everyone else, from HR, to sales, to production, to the scientists, could understand. I was hired as a particle physicist, but my job ended up being a go-between for communicating concepts to people who had no background in what we did, from people who's first language was mathematics. I wrote a ton of technical documents, and helped design some interesting electron focusing columns. Once again, my having been a machinist helped me there. I left after almost two years. I went from there to being an engineer for a clay and computer animation studio, Will Vinton Studios. They do the M&Ms commercials, plus several clay animation projects. My boss told me he gave me the job because of my machining background. I worked there for almost a year, designing special effects and improving lighting and camera equipment, before the company lost two lucrative contracts and downsized by about 2/3s of their workforce. It's really too bad, as I loved that job. I got a good insight into the amount of work that goes into animation, and I have never looked at a cartoon the same way since. After that, I worked at my last job in high tech, Veris Industries. They make environmental controls and monitors. I kept looking at their products, and seeing ways to apply them to the agriculture industry, especially greenhouses. My desire to be a farmer, to grow crops and animals, was becoming too great to ignore. After a year and a half, my marriage fell apart, and I did as well. With the tech crash in 2001, I got laid off, and went on to being a hermit for about three years before going to work for my mother in her hardware store for about three years, first part time, then full time. I always worked for her on occasion, since helping her start and stock her first hardware store back in 1992. Mostly weekends, while I worked high tech, but enough that I was getting a feel for it. By the time I found my homestead, moved here and left the working world, I was very good at customer service and hardware store knowledge. I still work there on rare occasions, when someone takes a vacation or something. I really love the hardware business. So, what's next? Who knows. I really should get a job, and people are starting to hire around here again. I'm pretty versatile at what I can do, and I can fix anything that doesn't include an internal combustion engine. Ok, I can do that too, but I'm pretty slow at it. Maybe I'll try being a short order cook. I haven't done that before. I do know I want flexible hours, part time, and to make about minimum wage. I'm a bit too qualified for most of those jobs, but when someone does hire me they will be pleased. Oh yeah, my day. Played with Polly, took a walk, played with the chickens, cleaned up a bit. Nothing too special, although here, everything seems special. Peace. Raymond { Last Page } { Page 21 of 181 } { Next Page } |
