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"Remember how long you've been putting this off... There is a limit to the time assigned to you, and if you don't use to free yourself it will be gone and will never return."

-- Marcus Aurelius --

Happy New Year 2021! What is that thing you've been putting off? I'm not really talking about procrastination in the traditional sense, I've been putting off some bookkeeping details all year, fortunately Casandra at Collins Bookkeeping Solutions tolerates my procrastination, and helps me to get it done when I finally get to it. No, I'm talking about putting off that life change, the dream of which brings you truly alive. Make 2021 the year you take that on; you won't regret it. Speaking of which, what is the thing that on your death bed you would regret not having done? Memento mori, "Remember that you must die."

Black Cherry King Bed; Loren V., craftsman extraordinaire. Patience is a virtue, stacked rough cut lumber from May 4th 2018. You simply can't buy this family heirloom... "for everything else there's Mastercard."

Primal Woods

January brings with it a lot of work with Casandra, as I mentioned above. All those receipts and little details I've been leaving undone throughout the year. Frankly it's not something I enjoy, but what I do enjoy is being able to use the clean and accurate books as a window on the business, a window which typically sheds light on a number of "problems," aka opportunities for improvement. But not today. Ha! When the work is done I'll let you know how we did in 2020 as compared to prior years, and what opportunities presented themselves.

Detailed view of Loren's headboard. Gorgeous.

When it comes to the projects selected for 2021, they should either create an asset, or reduce or eliminate a liability. So what are assets and liabilities? According to Rich Dad Poor Dad "an asset is something that puts money in your pocket... the reality is that unless something is putting money in your pocket, it’s not an asset." And conversely, "a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket. Common liabilities include things like cars, vacations, clothes, eating out, unused subscriptions, and more. You must learn the difference between an asset and a liability—and buy assets." I highly recommend Rich Dad Poor Dad, and if you want to teach your kids about money without lecturing them, you can't go wrong with the Rich Dad Poor Dad board game, Cash Flow; Monopoly on steroids.

Portable Sawmill Services Getting the pictures from Loren were a real gift this holiday season; truly there is nothing more fulfilling than seeing what he as done with the rough cut Black Cherry we made. Thank you Loren!

I wrote last week about "Finished Lumber," and this week I've had a chance to reflect on what we're doing, and to better define the niche we are trying to carve out for ourselves. I would say that we want to offer to our customers a "Logs to Finished Lumber" service. That is not the sale of lumber per se; I don't want to be in the retail lumber market. Logs to Finished Lumber would include Milling, Drying and Shaping, beginning with the customer's Logs. At some point that niche might be expanded to "Trees to Finished Lumber" with the addition of a "draft animal logging" business component. Okay, so what does that mean for 2021? I think it means building out the air and kiln drying asset base to satisfy demand, and possibly dipping a toe into the "Shaping" waters. Although I can't say now what "dipping a toe" would involve, I am bouncing some ideas around in my head. It is safe to say that 2021 projects will be centered around Drying. A first step will be to put together a process flow chart for creating Finished Lumber, together with the necessary assets and processes, not unlike the Pure Maple Syrup Process Flow Chart I've been using and updating for years now.

Top Loading Stove being considered as heat source for the north side of the Sugar House

Pure Maple Syrup The stove pictured, or some reasonable facsimilie, will be used to heat the north side of the Sugar House in the future. This will be one of our projects for 2021. In general I think that the syrup business is well capitalized, and I don't see the need for significant investment. There is one thing that does need attention though, and that is getting a syrup confections business off the ground. We've had in mind Maple Sugar and Maple Candies for some time now, but it's down to me, I just didn't get it done in 2020. Launching the confections business is at the top of the list for 2021. I'll sketch out some possibilities and discuss with Geri in the near future.

Buy Pure Maple Syrup Now!

Let's talk horses. I'm bound and determined to have horses in the business, unfortunately horses are a very costly hobby, if they're not employed the better part of full-time. And frankly the 4 to 6 week Pure Maple Syrup season is not enough to fund horses. A real conundrum. What can be done? Well, as usual this can be approached from a number of angles, one of which is having more use for the horses' outputs, in particular "paying work" for the horses to do, and a second is to reduce the cost of external inputs to the horses, specifically food. More on this dynamic balance below in the Lifestyle section. The answer to the lack of work may lay in the "draft animal logging" possibility of the Sawmill Services business. I think that long term, horses in the Pure Maple Syrup business must be combined with horses in Sawmill Services business. Honestly I've not committed a step-by-step plan for achieving that end to paper, but I intend to do so as a first step in this direction.

Maple Syrup Process Walk-Through; Luke and Chance, Belgian draft horses were introduced in the 2020 season.

Products and Behaviors of an animal, a Goat in this case. "Analysis of these inputs and outps are critical to self-governing design. A deficit in inputs creates work, whereas a deficit in output use creates pollution."

Lifestyle I borrowed the approach to analyzing animal inputs and outputs from Permaculture: A Designers' Manual, by Bill Mollison. The example given in the book was, conveniently, a chicken. Considering the animal as an element in the Permaculture design, the idea is to minimize external inputs and maximize internal use of the products and behaviors. External inputs in the case of Primal Woods means those that cannot be satisfied on-site, preferably satisfied with the product or waste of some other design element. Conversely, we want to maximize on-site use, internal use, of the products and behaviors. The same sort of analysis can and will be performed for the horses, but I think you get the point. External inputs typically cost money and should be avoided to the extent possible. I think the biggest input to most any animal design element is food, which is why we "free range" our chickens, and why we need to reclaim pasture (grass) for grazing animals (horses, cows, sheep), and why we use goats to browse weeds and shrubs in reclaiming said pasture. Let me say that I'm not a Permaculture expert, but I do intend to put up a video soon on how we are incorporating animals in the design of our homestead and lifestyle, and why. Stay tuned.

There will be not shortage of homestead projects I'm sure. One that comes to mind is addressing the chimneys that draw large amounts of heat from the house in winter, specifically I'm talking about bathroom vents. I wrote about this problem in a blog post, Sustainable Heat - Year Two of Our Journey; "The house leaks a lot of energy too, through such things as windows, which are large and numerous, and many single pane, <all windows have since been replaced> bathroom ventilation, and the microwave and dryer exhausts. The bathroom vents and microwave and dryer exhausts are basically chimneys, without dampers." That was three years ago, not everything can be at the top of list.

We received this gift from Kate, a Pure Maple Syrup customer, some very nice silicon kitchen utensils and three really kitchen towels, together with a recipe for no-bake Maple Walnut Energy Balls.

How cool is that! Many thanks to Kate, for simply being Kate. Some people are amazingly generous; there may yet be hope for the human race!

In closing... I suppose most folks are watching football today, and recovering from yesterday! Geri and I gave up at about 10:30 pm, but guess what, the New Year made it's appearance anyway. For some reason I've had internet connectivity and computer issues today, so it was a 5+ hour slog getting this Newsletter out the door! Fortunately most daily chores were done before I started, and don't require the internet or a computer, with only goat care on the schedule yet this afternoon.

We wish all the best for you in 2021 and beyond, with warm regards,
John & Geri