I was sitting at an open air restaurant not far from the beach, listening to a guitarist playing and watching the palm trees gently sway. There, the lyrics from this old Willie Nelson song came to me as a great introduction to this first column from the beach! Why am I at a beach so far from home at the end of January? Well, the obvious answer is to escape the brutal cold that has a grip on most of the country, but the real answer is that this is part of the New Direction for me and WoodsEdge! By now you probably know my son has elected to make farming his full-time profession, and to follow a heritage his father and grandfather set out before him by farming in New Jersey! Brent, along with help from a great staff, is very capable of running the farm! So after 30 plus years of farming, my living on the beach for several months each year is my answer to this very perplexing question… How do you solve the issue of BURN OUT when you love what you do?

It is a theme I hear repeated so often by other veteran alpaca and llama breeders that I thought it worth sharing some of my trials and tribulations with it! After wrestling with the question for years and trying several different approaches to avoiding it, what I’ve learned is to deal head on with burn out.

PROBLEM: IGNORING THE
EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF BURN OUT!

Do not ignore your early warning feelings of burn out! They can go away temporarily, but absolutely will resurface, and in my experience, will resurface with a vengeance! Burn out feelings left unresolved lead to less productivity, resentment of all the time you spend caring for your animals and farm (and let’s face it, it does take time!), or falling behind on other important details of making your farm and breeding program a success!

SOLUTION: IDENTIFY YOUR BIGGEST
BURN OUT ISSUES AND WORK TO CORRECT!

A friend just emailed me and said “ I just can’t do the 4 to 5 hours hard physical work required for manure management of our herd of 80 for the 3 day weekends that my farm manager is off. It’s minus 15 wind chill with minus 2 on the thermometer! I’m too old for this kind of stuff!” Her solution was to get extra and younger helpers for those weekends to do the manure management! High school kids looking for some extra cash are great for this type of chore! Be sure to give them a pair of socks and mittens made from your animals to help them stay warm!

PROBLEM: OPERATING IN SURVIVAL MODE DUE TO BURN OUT!

Let’s face it, a successful farming operation requires many skill sets. Few people will be great at the entire soup to nuts list of what you need to do to succeed, but how many of us still try to do it all? In many mom and pop operations, the approach is to divide the duty roster and each take half. But one or each of the partners may have several items on their list which they really are not good at, and burn out begins! Once you’ve ignored the early warning signs of burn out, you start to stress and I will almost guarantee you that you go into robot-like survival mode, moving through the chores you need to do without energy, inspiration or enthusiasm. Once you get into that mode it’s harder to see how to make the changes that would make your life easier, and your farm more successful!

MY DAD’S SOLUTION:WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER!

As Works Manager for a large tractor manufacturer, Dad was constantly trying to teach me how to be more efficient in our farming operation! We were short on cash and I thought that translated into having to do as much as possible by ourselves. I would often say too him, “No one else knows how to do what I do!” He asked me to make believe I had a broken leg and could not get out of the pick-up truck to do anything, so I had to park the truck alongside the worker and give detailed instructions. Once I started reporting back to him that I had indeed trained some workers to do what I was doing, he took the next step. Now I had to imagine I was behind a brick wall, and I could not see the workers, so I not only had to train them without the visual ability to access their work, I had to put measurable parameters in to see that the work was done right! I remember well the first time I was able to see this not only worked, but made my life easier and my product better. Dad said, “ Now you’re working smarter, not harder!”

PROBLEM:
YOUR BURN OUT HAS NO OBVIOUS SOLUTIONS!

Sometimes you can get so overwhelmed with all you have to do, you are past toasty burn out before you even realize it. The feeling of being overwhelmed can be like drowning and not being able to breath. This requires immediate attention!

SOLUTION: BREATHE!

Get your head above water by doing whatever else you love to do—go to the beach, play golf, shop, meditate, exercise. It doesn’t matter what you do, just give yourself an hour, a day, or perhaps a week away. As one friend says, “ Take a mental health day!” You’ll be amazed at your renewed energetic and enthusiastic perspective! Many people leave successful careers to become breeders to escape corporate burn out! Many successful mid-life people will face burn out in one profession or another. What I’ve learned is that change is almost always therapeutic, but you don’t have to throw out the animals with the burn out, if you know what I mean, to rediscover your passion! Do you have questions you’d like me address in this column in upcoming issues? Email me at wwfalpaca@aol.com or wwfllama@aol.com, and I’ll try to address them in our Summer 2007 issue—where I’ll be writing from the Golden Coast of New Jersey!

©2007 WoodsEdge Wools Farm LLC