Although I embrace the faiths of all people, I am not a particularly religious person however, today I got a visit from a guardian angel of sorts. This morning I headed out with my girls to check the mail and grab some much needed groceries to restock the fridge after my 48 hours of obsessively fine tuning my crowdfunding pitch on Indiegogo and after about an hour I checked my phone and had a text message from Adam saying: Your chicken coop is on fire!
I had a cart full of groceries which I immediately steered to the side of the aisle and ditched where it stood. I hustled back to my truck and the girls and I went back to survey the damage. To my profound relief, none of the chickens were harmed and the fire had been caught before it got too out of hand by a friend of my father in law who had come to visit and check out our plans for the farm. Adam has another two weeks of bed rest due to a buldging disk in his back and was in our home taking a shower and didn't hear a knock at the door. He was alerted to the fire when he got out of the shower and his dad was frantically calling him on the phone. He immediately ran outside in a towel and slippers to see what was happening.
I came home about 15 minutes later and began checking on the birds. The building is salvageable but there was one casualty in the fire, the youngest of my four quail hatchlings, all of which I was going to release into the greenhouse today, passed on from smoke inhalation as they were in the coop with a light for the last two weeks.
If we were to hypothesize the cause of the blaze, I believe it was my flashy polish crested rooster who had recently taken to perching on the beam which supported a single indoor lamp. The lamp was firmly fastened and doubly reinforced but, alas, apparently not well enough. I will have to rethink coop heating in the future but I now believe that maybe I was just over babying the birds, and really, our winters are quite mild and they probably don't need the extra heat.
So, this evening, I am full of gratitude for the kind fellow who today was my guardian angel, and saved my coop and chickens and probably a whole lot more from the disaster that could have been. And on that note, I pass along the balance of my good fortune to you and sincerely hope you are all able to catch a little break in the future, when you need it most, as I did today.
The Zen of Rejection
I had originally conceptualised the Nicole's Farm start-up as materialising out out a 2 acre test garden for Small Plot Intensive (SPIN) farming on my family's property in Halfmoon Bay on the Sunshine Coast British Columbia. From the test garden I would grow the project, ten acres a year into a friendly little organisation that would address food sovereignty issues in a few communities in my province that I was familiar with and held dear.
Naively, I thought financing would materialise out of the merits of the 56 page business plan I had developed or perhaps the owner equity I had to contribute in the form of farm equipment and land but that was not the case. With each rejection came the adage, come back to us in a year when you have proved your revenue projections. It became almost comical. How were all these tech start ups, replete of risk based on intangibles getting funded, mentored, followed while I, addressing an evident challenge to global society with a pro-active, socially progressive, sustainable agriculture model getting nought but postponement?
This is post was not created as a opportunity for me to whine. It is an opportunity for me to re-affirm my intentions. This project/business/model will get off the ground and it will be huge. The Nicole's Farm model will be a game changer in the localized sustainable agriculture arena. The next year will witness fearless, relentless persistence on my part. Starting first with a 30 day crowdfunding blitz to expedite the launch and accelerate project growth.
Check out the other tabs on this page to get a broader idea of the project and keep looking back here for updates as things really begin to take off.
Naively, I thought financing would materialise out of the merits of the 56 page business plan I had developed or perhaps the owner equity I had to contribute in the form of farm equipment and land but that was not the case. With each rejection came the adage, come back to us in a year when you have proved your revenue projections. It became almost comical. How were all these tech start ups, replete of risk based on intangibles getting funded, mentored, followed while I, addressing an evident challenge to global society with a pro-active, socially progressive, sustainable agriculture model getting nought but postponement?
This is post was not created as a opportunity for me to whine. It is an opportunity for me to re-affirm my intentions. This project/business/model will get off the ground and it will be huge. The Nicole's Farm model will be a game changer in the localized sustainable agriculture arena. The next year will witness fearless, relentless persistence on my part. Starting first with a 30 day crowdfunding blitz to expedite the launch and accelerate project growth.
Check out the other tabs on this page to get a broader idea of the project and keep looking back here for updates as things really begin to take off.
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