my new car

I have some wheels for the weekend. I was expecting some little sedan - as much as it seems outrageous that anything but jeeps and hummers can work over here, people take whatever vehicle they have over everything. But apparently a little car means a nice big Toyota Land Cruiser, just not the safari edition. But it's perfect and blue, full off road capability but manageable size. Basically it will fit 250kg of pork in the back. And I'll go about my rounds, dropping off pork here and there, wherever really.

I wish I had this car full time, but it's just for the weekend.. it would make my life a whole lot easier. I'm going to spend this coming week really developing our marketing situation, push our current buyers to get a little better price, and find a suitable supplier who can help fill our gaps when our buyers want more than we have. Hopefully I can concentrate on these activities and leave the farm to our farm manager. I think I can, we're almost there, he's a great worker.

The biggest problem with that is we have some very big question marks still, hiring workers, reducing our costs, figuring out why our pigs aren't growing as fast as they should be. But we'll get there, I feel it's a mix of keeping the long term in sight, planning for it through the medium term, and getting the details right in the short term. Missing any of those time frames can be disastrous.

One example of that - a couple weeks ago we decided we wanted to buy bran in bulk instead of maize - saves money up front, and adds simplicity down the line in not having to mill and market the flour ourselves. We had a price under 300 shillings/kg two weeks ago, and last week it was 350. This week we bought for 500. We waited because we weren't sure if we could store bran for more than a month, we were doing an experiment. But we realized, even if we couldn't store the bran, we could of made a hefty profit just buying and selling. So then I moved today and bought 10 tons, two weeks too late, but each day we waited was a loss. In two months the price will be 1000 shillings/kg.

So there's a ton in the works, but the first thing I have to do is watch some pigs be slaughtered and sell some pork. So here's to my new mobility and my new car.