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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

With all the red herrings showing up in posts these days, I would think they 
would at least come with a recipe.  Maybe ‘Red Herring with Platitude Sauce’. 
 Or at very least, Gene, don’t you think you could include your 
recommendation for which craft beer goes best with Red Herring?



> >To realize the value of one year:
>       >Ask a student who has failed a final exam.



Nice.  Cute. But that’s not what we are talking about.  You know the old saw 
that as soon as any manual labor comes to the fore, someone always says, "I 
dunno, I make $XXX /hr.  My time’s worth more than that.  Why, I could spent 
$XX 
/hr doing it this other cash intensive way and I’d come out ahead, right?  
Right?"





Let’s take the case in point of buying metal T-posts or cutting trees to make 
fence posts.



First how much is your time worth?  If you do, for example, contract work for 
$60/hr and you decline ten hours of work to make and install fence posts, 
then you could say that your time is worth $600 and you can very well buy the 
easily installed T-posts with a fraction of that money earned in the 
difference 
in time between  installing metal posts and cutting and installing wooden 
posts.  



This doesn’t apply if you postpone the contract work or do the fencing around 
your work schedule, it only applies if you would actually be turning down 
work and the money in order to do the farmstead work.



How often does that happen?  I’m thinking along the lines of close to never.  
And yet  the reason for taking the cash intensive quick route over a longer 
more manual route is almost always couched in terms as if the person were 
actually giving up paid work and money to do it.



There’s another aspect to it.  Let’s say you can cut the wooden posts for 
close to no cash but take seven hours to cut and install them, or you can pay 
$50 for metal posts and do the work in two hours.  Isn’t your time worth more 
than the $10/hr you would be spending to redeem it?



Well, I look at a stand of locusts that have grown so tall in the past seven 
years (locust grows very fast) that they are now shading a part of the 
pasture 
and the grass doesn’t grow there so well now.  Do I charge my spreadsheet for 
the value of the increase in grass and hay when the trees are gone?  Also, 
the entire length of the locust trees aren’t suitable for fence posts.  The 
crooks, crotches, and knots are set aside for firewood.  The gangly long 
parts 
make bean poles, and the end branches make a pea trellis.  In the ‘what is my 
time worth’, do I charge this time against the value of firewood and poles.  
It’s winter and the horse needs exercise, if he hauls the posts to the site, 
I’ve 
saved time and/or money keeping the horse in shape, or maybe training the 
donkey to tack, half the value of a draft animal is its training.  Etc. etc. 
etc.



On an integrated farmstead just try to put your finger on the ‘value of your 
time’.  Any dollar figure on it is an illusion and a mental trap that one 
easily falls into.

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