• Home
  • About
  • How We Raise Our Pigs
  • Ordering a Whole or Half
  • 25lb Boxes/Retail Price List
  • The Odyssey Farm Journal
  Odyssey Farm, LLC.

The Odyssey Farm Journal

OBE—Overcome By Events

10/19/2016

0 Comments

 
     Sometimes the gap between what I think I’m going to accomplish and what I can actually accomplish gets too wide to span.

     The military euphemism for someone overwhelmed with more than they can effectively handle is Overcome By Events. I often heard it as a slight from more senior officers about junior officers: “Yeah, he was OBE,” the field grades would say with that knowing, wolfish grin.

     OBE is exactly what you want to do to your enemy—to throw so much at him that he can’t react to all of it, leaving himself vulnerable somewhere.

     But OBE happens without an opponent. I don’t have any opponents here—just life’s circumstance: Hazel fell and broke her arm last month. There went that Friday. The fuel pump went out in Sarah’s car the next week. The water pump started going out on the RAV the week after that. (I accept these larger repairs since we drive vehicles with well over 100,000 miles on them, but I’d prefer the breakdowns with a little more space in between them). It’s been raining all summer and now fall, so I’m moving pigs more than I had planned so I can keep them out of the mud. Rain has set me back more times than I can count. A seventy-eight foot tall Bur Oak fell across my planned fence path in the woods. Other standing oaks prevent me from going around it easily so I’ve been chainsawing for the past two days. Unhandy.

     It’s ok for a plan to OBE—circumstance sometimes outpace plans. You just don’t want to be OBE yourself. To avoid mental OBE at these times, I drop into a “critical functions” work mode. I think of it as only two parts, but there’s an attitude that you need to have even to start, so let’s make it three parts.

     Step one: Accept that these things happen. I can’t control the weather or a lot of other circumstances. I’m not OBE, my plans are. Stercus Accidit, the ancient Romans said.

     Step two: Decide what you can blow off for a while. Here’s just the top of my list: Putting unused tools and small engines on Craigslist, organizing the tool room in the barn, digging potatoes (because it’s more like “potato mining” when it’s this wet), fixing a couple sliding stall doors, storing the tomato towers, and a whole collection of non-critical small repairs. There’s a nice little weight off the shoulders when we realize that a lot of what we think we “have” to do is actually elective. I like my work world to be neat and organized. I’m more efficient and happier that way, but I can’t get to all of that right now. I just temporarily lowered my expectations instead. Ah, that’s better.

     Step three:  Focus on the high-payoff tasks. We still need to eat and the kids still need to get to school. Beyond that, the rest of my work for the next two months comes down to feeding and selling hogs. Once they find homes in freezers across Southern Wisconsin, I can take a break and get back to organizing things around here.

     Something else will come up along the way. It always does. I’ll deal with whatever pops up. Plans will changes, but I won’t be OBE.


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Ryan Erisman

    Former Marine Infantry Officer. Iraq Vet. Interested in Regenerative Agriculture at any scale.

    Archives

    February 2023
    February 2022
    March 2020
    November 2018
    April 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All
    Making Things
    Raising Pigs
    Recipes
    Thinking

    RSS Feed

Odyssey Farm, LLC
5586 County Rd N
       Sun Prairie, WI 53590

 Dane County 2022 Climate Champion

A Veteran Owned Business


608.616.9786
         ryan@odyssey.farm

Copyright © 2016
  • Home
  • About
  • How We Raise Our Pigs
  • Ordering a Whole or Half
  • 25lb Boxes/Retail Price List
  • The Odyssey Farm Journal