Leon S on Leon’s Substack

Yeah my biggest limitation right now is labour. I don't want to be a boss of someone unless I can pay them enough to "give a shit" about our place and what I'm trying to achieve here (which was heavily inspired by you). I would like to pay them a wage that they decide upon, we agree on how much work they should do for that amount. I don't want be yet another landowner here that profits through the use of poorly paid labour and then complains about the workers doing such a poor job. So cut and carry is sort of out of the question at the moment, as I still need to make enough time for my afternoon naps, etc. So only one of the original sheep, Edna, is left, and she seems pretty bulletproof (a lot I imagine comes down to good breeding which often involves more $$$ than I'm prepared to risk now.) Her and the cow, Sunflower, are a happy couple and are free grazing all over the property. Obviously self-medicating on plants to keep parasitic worms in check, and all the poop is being scratched up by free roaming chickens. So small biting fly problems on her, but no fly problems for us. The local that sold me the cow last year came to see her a few weeks ago and he was gobsmacked at how big and healthy she looked. All the other local cows are skin and bone because there's no grass at this time of year (still hoping in vain one day for a local to ask me why, but who's going to listen to a foreigner?). So the free-roaming is working great, they have damaged a few young trees, the cow loves jackfruit and has nibbled a few other young trees. I can fence off new trees; fence the ruminants "out" instead of "in" which saves me so much time. So it's going good, but I would like to experiment with other animals and I'll have to one day work out the economics of doing that with a worker. Selling to market here really is shit, farmers get such a poor deal. Hope you don't mind I gave you a review though I've yet to read it!