PJ Jonas – Page 75 – Teaching Families to Work Hard Together

Linear Appraisal

We participated in the American Dairy Goat Association’s Linear Appraisal program this month. An independent appraiser came out and appraised all of our goats. She looked and measured individual attributes such as their height and rump width. They received values for individual parts of their bodies such as their shoulders or rear legs. Then they were…

September 2, 2015

Happy 11th Birthday Hewitt!

I can’t believe that my baby brother just turned ELEVEN. While we usually have breakfast birthday cake, occasionally we are too busy to make it. Sometimes the birthday person insists that they want breakfast birthday cake, and we’ll do it, but most of the time the birthday kid will let us substitute birthday donuts instead.…

August 25, 2015

Farm Children

Since we live on a farm where the children run through fields, woods, work with goats and chickens, (and of course play hard) they tend to be hard on clothes and shoes. Especially the boys. After getting them new shoes, it seems like no time at all, and they come to me like this: I…

August 21, 2015

Ask a Jonas – Hewitt’s favorite goat

We get asked lots of questions when we’re doing farm tours, selling soap at craft fairs, or simply running errands. Since most of those answers are heard only by the person who asked, we decided to share some of the common questions here on the blog. And of course you can ask a question of your own! Jacquei asks: Hewitt,…

August 5, 2015

Why Is It So Painful to Get Rid of Clutter?

A few days ago, I helped Indigo and Jade to declutter their bedroom. Usually we do this pretty regularly, but with the new building going up at the farm, I haven’t gotten to it in a while. So it was a pretty painful experience for the girls. I gave them my “usual speech” about the…

August 3, 2015

Fail Forward Friday – Buying in Bulk

Failure is a part of life. I personally think it’s an important part because every failure can teach us something if we’re willing to learn from that failure. I’m planning on Fridays to share with you something I’ve failed at and the lessons I have learned from those failures. Because I have such a large…

July 31, 2015

The Power of Small Change

I’m forever driving my family and my employees crazy because I’m constantly changing how we do things both at Goat Milk Stuff and just for the family. Sometimes these changes are really big – “I know, let’s build a new building and start selling goat milk food products like caramel candy and cheese.” And sometimes…

July 30, 2015

Starting the Day Right

I’ve always said that I hate getting up early, but I love being up early. There are so many benefits to being up early – I’m more productive, I’m happier, and I get a better start to the day. But I have never been what you would call a “morning person”. Getting up early has always…

July 29, 2015

7 Reasons We Involve Our Children in the Finances

I recently finished reading Sam Walton’s autobiography, Made in America.* I admit, I’m not a huge Walmart fan, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the book. It was very interesting learning about how hard Sam Walton worked to grow Walmart and how (like us) he involved his family in the business.…

July 28, 2015

My New Office

We’ve made a switch here on the farm as far as offices are concerned. Jim took over my office at the soaproom and my office is now located in the new kitchen building. When we designed the new building, we dedicated a part of the furnace/utility closet to a mini office. Right now, since nobody is…

July 27, 2015

Fail Forward Friday – Cold Fudge and Butter

I’m starting a new series on my blog – I’m calling it “Fail Forward Friday”. I have always been a believer that there is no such thing as failure if you learn from it. I’ve always encouraged the children (and myself) to “go for it” and to “at least try”. After all – what’s the…

July 24, 2015

A Goat Of A Different Color

There are lots of different goat breeds out there. We’ve had many (but not all) of them over the first several years of owning goats. I knew I didn’t want to maintain separate breeds (mostly because of requiring different breeds of bucks). One of the reasons we decided to have a herd of Alpine Dairy…

July 23, 2015

Smile More At The People in Your Life

I’m currently reading the book Why We Buy – The Science of Shopping* by Paco Underhill. As a business owner, I’m always trying to make things better for my customers. Since I really don’t have a lot of insight into the “retail world” – except for my own personal experience as a shopper (and as…

July 22, 2015

Do You Take Advantage of Opportunities?

I love the fact that because of Goat Milk Stuff, we’ve been able to take the family on many adventures to many cities. We’ve been on television in St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Green Bay, and New York City. Our latest trip brought us to Kansas City. We really enjoy the chance to be…

July 21, 2015

Three Reasons I Stopped Wearing a Watch

A couple of weeks ago, somebody asked me, “Why don’t you wear a watch?” This person seemed surprised by the fact that I (a very busy woman with lots to do all the time) did not have this “essential” piece of equipment. That question was quickly followed by, “Oh, do you use your cell phone?”…

July 20, 2015