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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] The value of time
  • Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 12:05:55 EST

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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