drteknikal's blog

My postings have been brief, cryptic, and sporadic for some time now. I have been in the process of repurposing my life, twice, and this blog as well.

Two years ago, I was ending my career as a network manager for a downtown DC law firm, and this blog was a low-impact substitute for my ancient "What's Weird On The Web?" page. When I quit, my constant immersion in the technology news stream ended, or at least subsided substantially. I'm spending less time on line, and I no longer felt the need to hunt down weird items to link to and comment on. More so, this blog is drifting toward a kind of personal diary, but that too, I hope, is temporary.

The long term goals are to remain self-sufficient, to stand up several hobbies as profitable businesses, and to try and deal with as little bullshit as necessary.

The first "next big thing" was a gardening business with a friend as a partner. It took four months for that to collapse, as my partner demonstrated he had no interest in, nor tolerance for, business. The thing is that by then, I'd been working toward that goal for well over a year, and had fully adapted my original ideas to fit within my friend's. With his departure, I decided I would be foolish to proceed as planned in his absence, but it took me quite a while to step back, revisit my original ideas, and make some decisions on how to proceed.

Instead of a fresh produce business, I'm going to go back to looking at seasonal production of packaged products. I'm continuing to scale up hot pepper and tomato gardening, intended to produce hot sauces and dried tomatoes for sale. I have tested recipes, almost a decade of experience, and wholesale distribution contacts.

I've revised the layout of the garden area, and hope to get the greenhouses in this fall, and finish it all next year except for the raised beds. I've tilled the big field and sown a pasture mix. The field will get overseeded a couple of times, or tilled under if the weeds remain uncontrollable. The northern upper field has been largely cleared, and boundaries for the hedge maze have been surveyed. It will take a decade, but if fully realized, this should be quite the wonderment. I've also begun clearing the southern upper field, and clearing the brush is revealing a lot more real estate than originally visible.

By the end of this year, I want to be getting ready for bees next spring.

At this point, I'm trying to leave any residual sniping at my former employers behind, and comment on the various agricultural and intellectual issues and concepts that interest me. You may see comments on brewing, beekeeping, ceramics and pottery, alternative energy, hedge mazes, and fruit trees, among other subjects. There may be occasional tractor stories.

I've taken no steps to publicize or promote this blog. If you are reading, let me know.