Jason

Jason
Innovate your life!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

New Baby Schedule and a Preview of my Upcoming Picture Book!

Wow.  Life has suddenly changed for us in an exciting way!  As we’ve already stated on our site and on Facebook, the babies have begun to arrive.  John and I went from being in the barn daily a few hours throughout the winter, to now somewhere between 8-9 hours a day.  You may be thinking, “Well, your farmers and that’s a normal work schedule.”  That would be true, yet all of the new hours are from only eight days of births, which resulted in over 55 goat kids! 
This is just the tip of the iceberg, too.  See there are still over eighty more mothers to kid yet and each of them have an AVERAGE of two.  In other words, LOTS of fluffy, cute faced, long droopy eared (some perky) baby goats are on their way. 
And regarding our hours, John and I are currently out there, in the Beekman Barn, eight a day now with just 50 babies. With another 300% still on their way… let’s just say we’ll be putting in a little “over time”. 
Last year I was not as involved in the birthing and kidding process.  I grew up on a farm and have been living here at the Beekman for quite awhile now, but being this involved is a new experience for me.  VERY exciting and fun, I have to say. 
And what a "job"/ business to be involved in!  I mean, not to state the obvious, but these babies are sooooooo cuuuuuute!!!!  I think of them like my treasured "customers" since I’m the one who predominantly bottle feeds them.  They are such a pleasure to work with!  lol.  And boss man John makes for a great “partner” in the biz.  :)
Now, I’ve started looking at our time issue (or lack thereof) as a creative challenge.  It’s a problem that needs a resolution.  We have to constantly streamline the efficiency of our new system of working together, so I'm thinking of new “inventions” to help,  That way we can feed all the new babies in the same window of time that we’ve been working this past week.  It’s possible, I’m certain of it.
On a separate note, since I am not YET in the barn 24/7,  I do still have a little down time to eat, sleep and work on my story that I’ve been developing.  I wanted to let you know that the puppet show DVD may be postponed till later in the year, due to the severe lack of time right now.  However, the story is just about complete so I am taking it’s concept and turning it more immediately into a picture book.  It will be available as a set – a book and a stuffed plush stuffed animal based on the character.  I'm writing and illustrating it too so I have below some to show you.  It'll just give you an idea as to the look of the book, when it's complete. 
Enjoy!





Hope you like the style of it.  I estimated that there will be over a hundred illustrations when complete.  It's the first book I've ever created so it's dear to my heart and I'm having a blast working on it.  I'll give you more updates as it moves along.  

Also, we'll post more photos of the babies through the next few months as they arrive.

Thanks for reading today! 

5 comments:

  1. the illustrations are great. Glad you're enjoying the new babies. Can't wait to see the new story.

    Have fun!

    Teri

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  2. Great to hear that those baby goats are keeping you and John busy, saw that the goat cam was down because of filming! Jason, the book looks amazing so far! What program are you doing the illustrations with?

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  3. Thanks!
    I'm actually using a "Photoshop-like" program that I came acrossed called Gimp. It's amazingly like Photoshop but - this is the best part - it's free! Not pirated free, just freeware. It's nice. I don't miss Photoshop at all! I love it.

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  4. I was wondering about the software, also. Thought you might have been using Illustrator or something like it. Glad to see Photoshop has different variations.

    Teri

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  5. Hey Teri.
    I haven't used Illustrator in years but Gimp has many similar tools. It's cool. Thanks!

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