Mainly this has been organizing time and getting the girls places on schedule.  Doing all the gap filling, with Debbie doing some, too.  Teacher meetings and various obligations.  Mobile broadband and a flexible schedule are my savior here.  Even then, I ended up taking about 25% of my time over three weeks as PTO (paid time off), which is the abbreviation for “vacation”.  Things are finally humming a bit more, weathering the shifts around us, and I am able to put my nose to other grindstones.

As we move in to the fall at the urban farm, we’re finding ourselves taking the hard 2-year look at what we’ve done, what we planned to do, and where we think we can do.  It’s pretty clear that farming 50′x50′ (15mx15m) can only make a handful of cash, perhaps 20% of the mortgage if we really work the angles.  Downtown restaurants, even in times of flush cash and customers, can’t support a micro-intensive urban farm that charges 4x what other local organic providers do.  It comes down to the amount earnable per square foot, and how much that square foot costs us.

So we’re looking for other ideas and trying to turn our bruised-apple experience in to some applesauce.  The value of house sales dropping like a rock around here hasn’t helped; even traditionally expensive Santa Cruz is down in the market.  It makes the whole business-side of the equation hard to evaluate.

In the end, whatever we can do to foster community and create sustainability in our lives here is a good thing.  Lessons learned along the way are digested, composted, and turned in to something new.

Years ago, I was in an airport in Texas watching a young brother and sister play with a doll.  “Are you sassing yore Momma?” the boy asked the doll.  “If yore sassing yore Momma, I’m gonna whup you!”  Hmm … wonder where that came from?

This week we went through a delayed child-to-school mourning when my daughters decided to try out “regular” school, what I call “day school”.  Actually, we went through this break-the-family-apart problem when our oldest was off in “real” Kindergarten.  We healed it over the years, and it hit my wife again this week when the girls were gone.  (They are back, and that is an ongoing situation I’ll write about later.)

The typical reaction is, they’ll get over it, you’ll get over it, it’s natural, don’t worry, it’ll all be fine soon.  During this week, my wife has been reading the Facebook statuses of a friend who’s daughter started Kindergarten this week.  This friend is profoundly sad and trying to justify/live through the feeling.  When all of society is pushing you in a direction, providing the oppressive force, the reaction is to turn against ourselves.  And to turn against those who dare to defy the oppression.  Perhaps this is an evolved response that helps glue society together?  Whatever it is from, it sucks.

One day when I was driving my oldest to Kindergarten, she said to me, “Dad, I know why we send kids to school.”  “Why is that honey?” I asked.  “So they can get used to being away from their family.”

It was in that moment, whether I knew it then or not, that I realized what was happening.  She was absolutely right.  The whole structure of prematurely ripping the family in to “at school” and “at work” is designed to benefit the society as a whole at the expense of the family.  And are we even sure this is the best way to get the benefit for society?  Scientific evidence says, “Nope, we aren’t sure.”

For most of history, kids were kept close to home until they reached a more natural place of separation.  Even leaving to be an apprentice at age 12 is much more natural than spending all day in school at age 5.  At age 12, most kids are physically and emotionally ready for that bigger world where they control their own destiny.

This week I started reading another Dad’s blog, ‘Steely Dad’, who has a great post about the reaction he has received in deciding to homeschool his children.  My first thought was, “These women are furthering the oppression without realizing they are doing it.”

The more I think on it, the more I reckon that the circle of oppression is an evolved response that helps hold tribes together.  A single or group of leaders cannot stay in control of a larger group without the consensus and active help of that larger group, including censuring and oppressing others in the group for the (perceived) group benefit.  Tribes that couldn’t appropriately turn on/reject individuals for the benefit of the tribe would soon die out, self-selecting their genes in to oblivion.

But we aren’t hunting wooly mammoths or surviving an ice age (yet), so many evolved responses need to be checked.  I could list forever evolved responses that are no longer appropriate, and hopefully we’ll eventually evolve beyond them.  One way is to call out oppression when it occurs, instead of joining fellow oppressed in putting down those we most need to support, in the hour they need it the most.

Free homeschool software: Probably the best conjunction of words that a homeschooling parent has heard since they found out that their child is going to summer camp. Why shouldn’t it be? Getting more for less is as American as homeschooling itself.

I’ve commented on several of these articles to talk about the greater freedom of FLOSS, which also happens to be no-cost.  This article is my canonical writing on the subject for future reference.

There is another kind of ‘free’, which is the free in freedom.  There is a software that embodies the best aspects of free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-no-cost.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is built by communities of participants and contributors.  This is the software that is at the heart of countless electronic devices (cellphones, wireless, etc.), what makes google.com hum, and what makes Firefox a better web browser.  It is built using a similar collaborative model to that used by Wikipedia:

http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software

FOSS is specifically built and licensed to permit you to redistribute it at no cost.  It also allows you to modify it at will, so as to give those modifications to other people.  Because many, many more people can see and affect the software, problems (bugs) are discovered and solved more quickly than with proprietary, closed-source software.

This is a good starting place for finding a few, key programs:

http://k12opensource.org/software.html

Several great programs that also run on Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX operating systems are:

Photo/graphics (cf. Photoshop) – http://www.gimp.org

Office/productivity – http://openoffice.org

Audio editing – http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Web browsing and extensions – http://mozilla.com/firefox and https://addons.mozilla.org/

Kid favorite drawing – http://tuxpaint.org

You can also look in to switching to a completely free and open source operating system, such as Linux.  You can download a “live” CD, which allows you to boot your computer to run a living instance of Linux that only exists until you restart — it doesn’t install the OS until you ask it to.

http://get.fedoraproject.org

… or Linux running the new Sugar kids environment (as used in the OLPC XO):

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick

Another option is to run a live OS from a USB device:

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

So many, many options; many thousands of software packages for every walk of life.  All free as in freedom and at no-cost.

1. Your goal is to prepare your child for a rich and abundant life in the real world.
2. Your goal is to let your individual child blossom in her way, in her time, knowing a firm grounding in her family and roots prepares her to find her best path at each step of life.

If you follow the first guideline, then you make preschool decisions that affect college choices, are working hard to make money that supports a rich and abundant life, and want your children to attend the best schools with the best programs.  You may not have spent as much of a quantity of time with your children, you focus on quality, and figure that their rich and abundant life that they’ll lead forever is the best thing you can do for them.

Or something like that.

If you follow the second guideline, you treat your children like a slow cooked meal.  Each ingredient of their lives is cultivated from the ground, locally and appropriately.  You follow the schooling they want, letting them set their own pace and break away slowly from the family constellation at a pace that suits each child.  You may work less or for less money or make some other compromise that puts the most amount of time in the hands of your family, aware that the future years are going to be unknown but most likely, they’ll be little stars moving in their orbits by then.

The first guideline is most like the guideline that our society follows.  That is, “The norm and the expectation.”  Some people follow it by clear choice, others because they haven’t thought of any other way.  Following the second guideline is more rare in the US culture, although perhaps a little less so than even a decade ago.

I was contemplating this as I looked at the International Baccalaureate site. I’m clearly in the second guideline camp, but I felt mixed emotions looking at the little baccalaureates from around the world.  How happy they look!  I be they feel really a part of something! What bright, shiny futures they’ll have!

This emotion has to do a bit of battle with the part of me that knows these children are forming a new constellation with new people precisely because they were forced from their first constellation, their family circle, at an early age.  Forced from the breast, from the family bed to the crib, from the crib to their own bedroom, from their bedroom to the nanny, nanny takes them to preschool, preschool starts a bond with same age people that is shattered in college, and after that … well, the real world starts.  A real world that is in fact nothing like those first 18 years, except where they repeat family choices with their own future families.

It’s honestly hard not to feel I’m failing in part with my children by not teaching them everything now that they’ll eventually need.  Even as I watch their peers in other lifestyles learn so much more at such an earlier age than I ever did.  If it weren’t for the pioneering experience of other homeschoolers to bolster me when the cold chill goes down my spine in the night, I don’t know how I’d make it through to the morning.

Under the neighbor’s apricot and nectarine trees is a cool, shady spot.  The chicks daytime box was there for a few days.  This is a refrigerator box recut and folded to create an open topped box 24 in./71 cm tall, with chicken wire stretched over the top and two boards providing shade.  The chicks used this outside, with an open water and feed, for about the first week.  This is where the girl crew found the chicks, and it became a sweet spot to just hang out with the chicks.  They crawled on heads, stood in pairs on shoulders, rode around on fingers, and even sat on a few branches.

At that point, we’d had the chicks for two weeks and two days, so they are around five weeks old.  Their size is a good handful, and in fact is about the same area as my elongated fist.  When we get the farm pictures gallery up later, I’ll post some of the pictures from this party.

Here is “Oh California”:

Here is “A Gust of Fall Wind”:

We found the last place w baby chicks of and 4 girls are on the go. Mo Blog Later.

… which was written on the go, while I was on a last house errand after we strapped my two-year-old neighbor in the back with my six-year-old and her eight-year-old friend.  In the way back of the Volvo wagon was my ten-year-old, in the backward facing jump seat.  Four girls and me in search of the last feed and seed store with baby chicks.

Apparently a subtly growing trend of city folk getting a few egg layers for the backyard has turned into a “chick rush” this year.  We were all set to go at the beginning of April, in fact, we were gearing up for a bike ride to the feed store to choose our chicks, when my wise wife thought to call the store to assure the chicks had indeed arrived.

“They’ve sold out?” she said.  “In two hours?!?”

We called a few near-by feed stores, and the story was the same.  There had been a run on the chicks, with everyone selling out in record time, except for one store that was far away (car trip required).  We confirmed that a near-by store would have twenty varieties of baby chicks on Thursday of this week, 17 April.  We planned to head up there about 9 to 9:30 in the morning.  When we couldn’t make that time window, we decided to skip that morning and check the next morning to see what was left.  We called Friday morning and they had sold out in the first hour of Thursday, with a line of people outside of the store since 7:30, half an hour before the feed store opened. *smacks head*

Determined to not let this stop us, and also to keep our neighbor from rightly telling us we should have gone with the boring old layers from the few weeks before, my wife diligently called all the feed stores, chatting with a few proprietors.  Store after store had the same story as the first one.  A big, county-wide run on baby chicks.  Everyone had at least a two week wait until they thought they could get more, and even some of them had heard from hatcheries that they were out and back-ordered.  (This urban poultry thing is beginning to feel like a zeitgeist.)

Finally, one feed store, literally at the furthest end of the county, had three varieties left and enough to satisfy us.  Myself and the four-girl team began pulling ourselves together for the journey.

The first challenge came when we realized we would need to put one of the girls in the jump seat in the back, and everyone wanted a turn.  That’s fine, but we had three girls wanting and only two legs to the trip.  The girls kept coming at the problem by trying to negotiate who should give-up a ride in favor of the other two girls.  Well, to be fair, this was my two daughters, the sisters, doing that negotiation.  Their friend, it turns out, wasn’t really happy with the options; she wanted to keep things fair and equal.  I helped them see how.  We figured that we had a sixty mile round trip, so I set the trip meter and at the 20 mile mark (or thereabouts) we stopped so two girls could switch.  The one who was in the back at that point also climbed in the back for the return trip.  At the 10 mile mark back from the feed store, we swapped the third girl in to the rear for the last 20 miles.  Sadly, this was my seven-next-Saturday daughter who got lonely in the way back and wished she were in the middle with the bigger girls.  Tamara-who-is-two was blissful about the whole thing, happy to be along on a big girl adventure.

At the feed store, “Aromas Feed & Ranch Supply”, we discovered that in the intervening hours, one entire variety had been purchased.  We ran into a woman we know from here in Santa Cruz, she was picking up three of that variety.  I promptly forgot that variety’s name, since I wasn’t getting any.  We then got to choose out our mini-flock, picking thirteen total from amongst the buff Orpingtons and Araucanas.  Ironically, this one feed store, which happens to be a hundred meters over the line in to Monterey County, had these chicks for the last couple of weeks.  At two weeks old already, they are double the size of newly hatched chicks, and flapping and flying around.  The girls don’t realized they missed the super-fuzzy, super-small stage.  We’ll likely have to get more in a few years, so they’ll enjoy that stage then.

Last night we hooked up the heat lamp over the box, loaded in food and water, and set all this up in our neighbor’s house.  Both families are sharing the flock across the two properties, and they don’t have a live-in cat the way we do.

The whole adventure illustrates one of the small parts of homeschooling that I love.  We were able to pick up and go in the middle of the week for this adventure.  In the process, I could squeeze in a math puzzle (how to split the jump seat ride amongst three), geology (always lots of that to observe around here), and sociology and science (farm management, livestock, chicken lifecycle.)  The friend, Isabel, who came along was unexpected, but present for the same reason.  Her Moms had an NVC event at Cabrillo College, and rather than be bored, Isabel wanted to play with someone.  They called us to see if we were available, and an hour+ later Isabel was joining us on the chick adventure.  Later in the afternoon, we dropped the chicks back at home, and I took all three of the big girls up to the campus where they all attend a City Schools homeschool program (AFE) for rehearsals of their California history play.

Each day telecommuting presents challenges for all the people involved. Some challenges are common to working region-to-region with other people, collaborating between office work centers, regardless of where you are physically located. Functionally, that is what I am doing. It’s not much different from working in an office and doing 100% of my work with people I do not share an office with. But still … there is something different about telecommuting from home. It is different than if I were at a client’s site, at a business center, datacenter, a shared work space, or even a cafe.

It is those differences I reckon are worth talking about. I’ve worked in all those conditions, and have done so regularly enough. Working with a global reach from your actual home is very different than the other situations. It has very little to do with stereotypes. (Although I do like my fuzzy slippers, I’d probably wear those in an office anyway.)

When I start this post, I am taking a mental break from work, with a stop in the kitchen to cook up some lunch. Drag the laptop along, never know when you need it. While in there, I get my lunch of beans and tortilla heating, and take the moment to bottle up the rest of the beans (three liters of fresh homemade black beans.)

Looking at the time, I realize it is a good chance to start my family’s lunch so it is ready when they come home in a few minutes from classes at our community homeschool. In the fridge is a sizeable salmon tail, which I throw on the counter for a seasoning bath. A wander in the kitchen garden later, with some stops for chopping, and the salmon is covered in lemon thyme, thyme, oregano, a pinch of rosemary, garlic, salt, and white pepper. Carrots and onions are cooking in a Thai inspired sauce (white pepper, fish sauce, garlic, and ginger … admittedly I sauteed the ginger and garlic in a Sichuan style because I like the body better.)

While all this is happening, how is my mental break going? As it happens, I need a break not from work but instead from the distractions of the keyboard. I have a relationship management situation to contemplate; you know, thinking about how to work something out with people I collaborate with. Pondering a consensus. Mulling and chewing. Perfect thing to do with my brain while my hands and heart cook, something I can do nearly asleep or in any number of mental or emotional states. While this is all happening, a good plan arrives in my head; a solution that should please everyone. I know I’m happy with it.

For good measure, while lunch is cooking, I start making yogurt, which means bringing two liters of whole milk to a boil, letting it sit for five minutes, then dropping the pan in a water path that acts as a heat sink. It could cool down within a half hour, but I’ll probably let it sit in the water bath for a few more hours before I add the culture, pour the mix into a clean jar, and throw it into the yogurt maker-cum-crockpot.

What is happening here is probably not that different from what happens in other work situations. I take a physical break from my active workspace to ponder. While out there I am interrupted by things not related to day-to-day work role, but integral to where I work. Making coffee, changing toner, helping carry boxes in from someone’s car, you may have done some of these things. For me, the beans, soup, and yogurt I make today feeds my family for several days, saving all of us time. The advantage is getting a chance to advance my personal agenda woven around my professional agenda.

This is all the daily challenge of balancing personal and family priorities, being taught simultaneously as learning it. Here are my kids, playing with string instead of serving the greater good. But they stop soon enough, maybe just in time, to do their chores with a tear or a smile.

Finishing this post out in the back yard, I have to pause because my hands are being requested. Saskia wants to use my hands to see if I can do a string trick. But these hands will be right back, as always.

We returned to the 21st century on Wednesday 28 December, driving back with both girls and their good friend Mikaela. We stayed overnight on Monday at a homeschoolmate’s brother-in-law’s house in Sacramento. Thanks, Dylan! With you and your three, we made 21 souls in the house that night; 22 if you count the dog, and some there certainly would have.

Got up extra early that day and while all slept, I posted one Dev Fu entry (Develop in the cloud – what Red Hat and Amazon team-up means for developers) and readied another (Developer version of Fedora 8), then helped the house get up, into costume, and out the door.

We found the crew waiting for the wagon, and before we knew it they were off through the streets of Sacramento. Actually, I dropped off my daughters and zipped to Sutter’s Fort, all the while listening in on a Fedora Project Board meeting. We quickly stowed our camping and other gear, to have it all hidden before the pioneers arrived.

The day was long and wonderful and tiring (bad boots!) We did get a dose of real Fort life, working and relaxing, writing in journals, cooking dinner in the authentic kitchen and over the fire, music around the campfire, and people sacked out all throughout the fort wherever a bed roll looked good to lay. Kids stayed up for a while to lead night watches with broomstick rifles. Next day we scrambled to clean up, make a good impression, and be out the Fort gate’s by 9 am.

I could write on and on, and I may come back and post some more when I see other pictures I want to highlight. All agreed it was a unique, enriching, and fun experience.

• http://www.krampf.com/ Robert Krampf’s really cool science videos
• Warriors of the .Net a/k/a The Packet Movie
• Pack of pics from Matt Stuart
• … and maybe Robert Benchley’s “How to Sleep” for a good night giggle