The life of erstwhile city slickers, now telecommuters in a remote log cabin raising chickens, ducks, rabbits, and bees, making beer and wine, and raising vegetables and berries.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Meditation While Weeding with the Chickens
Many harried people I know seem to answer requests and invitations with a breathless, “I can't; I have too much to do.” But have you ever noticed that the most productive people you know are often both busier and calmer than the rest of us? I think this is because they are often visionary – they can picture a project completed – and, in an organized, deliberate manner, they get things done.
By contrast, the first group may get overwhelmed by the immensity of an endeavor. I often fit in this group. We don't know where to start so we don't, or we start and then give up, leaving behind the detritus of several abandoned hobbies and projects. The other population is more dogged. They aren't deterred by the immensity of an effort. So they start. They slog on through, like untwisting and unknotting a ball of twine that others might toss aside in frustration.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Alaska Float Plane Follies
We finally bought a small, ancient float/ski plane to help us get to and from our off-road home. What a difference this has made to my sense of isolation and worry about emergency medical care. We aren't at the “honey, we're out of milk” stage, but we can much more easily and spontaneously fly half hour to a nearby town when we are out of basics or to a lovely lake for a picnic or to one of the fun festivals around Alaska.
Our excellent carpenter leaves our dock |
Getting in and out of the plane itself, though, is not so easy. The Piper PA-20 has two doors, but the one on the port side is behind the front seats, for cargo access. The pilot and passenger enter through the door on the starboard side. Since my husband prefers to fly from the port seat (a plane has two pairs of steering wheels, rudder pedals, etc), he enters first. Once he is ready to go, I untie the float ropes from the dock cleats, step onto the float with one leg while pushing us away from the dock with the other. Then, I climb as quickly as I can up into my seat, since he doesn't start the propeller until I am inside and meanwhile, we are drifting with the wind.
At some locations, and virtually all summer at our lake because of wind direction, the access door is on the side AWAY from the dock. To get in, we have to walk across a tight wire stretched between the fronts of the two floats, grabbing onto the cowling and nose cone (but not the propeller) for balance. Once on the other side, we walk along the float, swing under the two angled wing struts and THEN climb up into the plane. I have to do this AFTER I have kicked the plane away from the dock, while it is floating toward wherever, and as my husband is invariably yelling, “Hurry up! The wind is pushing us the wrong direction!”
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Recommended Books About Alaska
UPDATED WITH ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS
Whether you are planning to visit Alaska or are an armchair traveler, the following are books that I commend to your attention, in no particular order. Selections below include poetry, fiction, cartoons, and non-fiction (natural world, true crime, autobiographies and history). I will add to this blog over time.
Whether you are planning to visit Alaska or are an armchair traveler, the following are books that I commend to your attention, in no particular order. Selections below include poetry, fiction, cartoons, and non-fiction (natural world, true crime, autobiographies and history). I will add to this blog over time.
FICTION
Poetry: Robert Service
Sample
titles: books: Songs
of a Sourdough (1907) with “The
Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The
Cremation of Sam McGee” and The
Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses.
Service is
such a well known poet in Alaska that schools are named after him, but the fact
is that he lived in Canada (Dawson City, Whitehorse, Vancouver), never Alaska. Even so, Alaskan school children used to
(maybe they still do, some places) have to memorize one of his ballads to
deliver to the class or on, paper, to the teacher. I highly recommend one of his slim books of
verse to anyone interested in immersing himself or herself in the sights,
sounds, and smells of the Gold Rush era.
His poems, with a driving rhythm that cries out to be read aloud (even
to yourself) capture the loneliness and risks braved by men and women confronted
by conniving men and women, as well as by weather, animals, topography, greed
and hubris. Each poem is a well told
story with plot twists and emotional recoil – shifting between humor and pathos.
Service was the most commercially successful poet of his age, derided by “high-brow”
writers for writing doggerel and verse, rather than poetry. That was fine by him. And by me.
Touching
fiction: Eowyn Ivey:
Sample title: The
Snow Child
Ivey’s first
novel is one that has attracted attention and translations faster than you can
say “October snowfall.” I have
recommended it to many of my friends because this is one of the few books about
Alaska that that describe the arctic winter, not as a danger to be overcome
(like Jack London’s tales), but as stunningly beautiful – a privilege to
behold. Her depiction of a yellow birch
leaf flowing below the clear, icy surface of a creek is one such image early in
the novel, followed by many others. Her
marvelous sense of place grounds a story that is also graced by a compelling
plot populated by believable characters (married homesteaders in the 1920s and
their nearest neighbors) who transition through experiences, over time. This book describes some of the challenges
and joys I have discovered in my little log cabin in the middle of nowhere in
ways that I hope my friends can appreciate through this author’s skill.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Five Questions Any Money Seeking Entrepreneur MUST Be Able to Answer Briefly and Compellingly
Every day, we talk with entrepreneurs who wish to grow or start a business, with the help of other people's money (whether the source is investors, banks, factoring firms, or grants). If you are among them, you HAVE to be able to answer the following five questions, briefly, clearly, and compellingly or you will not get past a first phone call with a legitimate source of funds and each subsequent call to someone else will be a waste of everyone's time. Too often, the entrepreneurs who call us are absolutely stymied by these questions. Don't be like them!
The Questions:
- How do you (or how will you)
make money?
- How much do you wish to raise
(or borrow)?
- What will you do with the
investment (or loan amount)?
- How will you pay it back (by
date) (or how and when will the investor earn a return on
investment)?
- What experience do you and
your management team have in this industry and with prior investors'
money (or loans)?
Why These Questions are Important:
Each question helps your potential lender or investor assess risk and potential reward. If you hem and haw on any of them, you are doomed, because it means that you don't appreciate the risk you are asking that person to take with money he/she has that you lack. A non-answer to any one of these is akin to asking someone to dive into a dark pool without being able to answer the obvious first question, “how deep is it?”
Components of Compelling Answers
- The answer to question 1 (How
do you make money?) is stronger with any of the following
components:
(a) Multiple revenue streams are better than “one trick ponies” because the variety allows the company to stay afloat even if some products or services fail or take longer to succeed or cost more to develop/deliver than anticipated;
(b) The revenue projections are not dependent on unlikely scenarios (like huge market share grabs right away or fuel prices lower than they are today or a a shorter sales cycle than is normal for your industry);
(c) Products and services that are correlated to a variety of economic assumptions are likely to weather the highs and lows of economic cycles better than those that depend only on a high or low. For example, a company might have some offerings attractive in periods of inflation AND recession or when client companies or target populations are growing AND maintaining, aging, and retracting.
(d) Demonstrate profitability, even if in a small market or by another company.
- Questions 2, 3, and 4 are
related, even if they are asked separately, so construct your
answers with each one in mind. This is because the amount you wish
to raise should be directly related to how you plan to use it and
that use should enable you to pay back your lender or investor on
time and at a profit. For example, if your reason for raising money
is “to rent larger office space and pay me a salary,” or “to
research the market potential” such answers do not translate into
repayment of the loan or investment and therefore do not encourage
much confidence. These are faith based answers, like “just trust
me.” Why? A compelling answer is one that directly leads to a
believable profit. Good answers might sound like this: “We wish
to raise $xx in order to increase our manufacturing speed to meet
current demand that exceeds our capacity” or “We wish to raise
$xx to buy a competitor we believe to be undervalued and that offers
a complementary fit with our firm in terms of customer base,
geography, and product lines.” Or “this business model has been
profitably test marketed (where) and we are now ready to launch it
on a larger scale, with $xx for experienced industry sales personnel
in the most lucrative markets.”
- Your answer to Question 5
indicates your ability to understand and respond to the the risks in
the business you propose to run with someone else's money. Managers
with a track record of relevant experience are obviously more
attractive than those without. Managers who have borrowed money or
taken investors' money and returned it, on time, at a profit to the
lender or investor are equally appealing. If you have not done the
exact thing before to great financial gain (because otherwise you
wouldn't need to borrow money, would you?) you can still construct a
compelling answer. For example, have a board of advisers experienced
in this industry, an excellent credit rating, or prior lines of
credit that were paid back on time after being used well. Have a
list of pertinent referrals from professionals in your current and
prior industries. If you are an expert in the pertinent field, who
knows it? Have you published papers, delivered speeches? If not,
write some and put them on your website or send out press releases.
Neither costs much. Become an expert in your field. Research other
public and private companies in this sector, join relevant
professional associations, subscribe to pertinent journals.
There is nothing more embarrassing than talking to an entrepreneur who knows less about his/her industry than we do, especially when we don't consider ourselves expert, but just educated business people. Compelling answers could include variants of: “I have x years of experience in this aspect of the industry, and have assembled a management team and advisory board that excels in the other areas we need to anticipate and respond to the market potential.” Or “I am a serial entrepreneur who has run xxx number of companies in other industries and sold them at a profit (or returned investors' money) in most cases and learned hard and lasting lessons when I didn't. I have succeeded by a set of priorities that has guided me in each of the prior companies and will do so in this one, too. Those priorities are xyz.” Or “I have several patented game changing innovations that will enable our targeted client companies to deliver results faster, cheaper and better than their competitors.”
Conclusion
If you can't answer these questions well, don't pick up the phone to ask for money. Put your time, instead, into learning more about your industry or surrounding yourself with others who know it better than you do. They can help you not only answer these questions, but build a profitable company. Who knows. You may never need to borrow a dime to make a dollar.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Of Mosquitoes and Moose: Part 2: Mosquitoes
Alaska
is famous for animals big and small, and perhaps the most noteworthy
large and tiny are moose and mosquitoes. June is the time we see a
lot of both here at the cabin. We kill swarms of the latter but enjoy
watching the former. Here follow some anecdotes about them this
year. This article is about mosquitoes; the prior one is about
our neighboring moose.
Mosquitoes
in Alaska are something of a marvel to me. How can something with no
exoskeleton survive winters at 30 below zero? REI offers nothing
that competes with the winter resilience of these survivors.
This
spring, our lake didn't even thaw until May 30. (We kayaked through
ice floes that day, feeling like Ernest Shackleton). Still, the
newest generation of mosquitoes emerged, en masse, like something out
of the Book of Revelations, only two weeks later, and were the worst
I had experienced in the past five summers. They were fast and
aggressive, biting me through my gardening gloves and pants and hair,
flying freely into and within the cabin, and even penetrating the
mosquito netting under which we sleep. My husband slept wearing a
head net, a cap, long sleeved T shirt and pants – under the full
bed mosquito net. I awoke with welts on my scalp under my hair.
Bed under mosquito netting; lights powered by solar/wind |
We had
Florida guests for a weekend during this period and the husband, by
his own admission, emerged from the guest cabin looking like the
“Elephant Man” - he was so swollen from insect bites (although he
admitted that he didn't appreciate why we had a mosquito net over the
bed (“in Alaska?”)
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