So, it's Saturday and I've decided to sit down and work on my blog. It happens to be a beautiful spring day and that puts me in the mood to get a little work done. Well, that and Joey happens to be feeling poorly, so I don't have anyone to play World of Tanks with. All things considered I figured my time would be best spent working on this :)
As I usually do I'll go through the local news around here first. And first off it's finally really getting to be Spring around here and I thank the Lord for it. The cold and dark of the Winter make me lazy and shiftless and that's something I never need to be. Now that the weather is getting pleasant once again I should get to feeling back up to working some more regular hours. It's already got the kids outside enjoying it. In fact, I took a few photos:
I have an addendum to add here: It's Monday and the transmission on the van just went nuts. So, I would appreciate prayers about it.
So, in work related news: The Worlds of Magic Alpha has officially been launched. So, far we've only let in a handful of people (mainly our volunteer translators), but we hope to expand it next week. Now that the game is basically playable, I realize I've got to tweak a few of our numbers. Of course, alpha testing is meant to help you find things just like that, so all things considered “we're good”. This is a big milestone and we're hoping to be in beta testing by this Summer. That does mean that the final release date is probably going to be pushed back again, but it's better to do it right than “on time”.
I also have an addendum to my work news: We've opened negotiations with a publisher. Your prayers would be appreciated here as well.
That's really it for this week's news. It's been really quiet, which has been really nice. The boys are going to have to start doing some yard work next week. Already the lawn needs mowed.
Oh, on an unrelated topic I meant to tell you guys about the next project I hope to start working on soon. The fact is that once Worlds of Magic gets into beta testing I'm basically just going to be organizing feedback and overseeing changes. Once that's the case I should have a little time. I plan to use some of it to start developing my own RPG rule set. Why? There are number of reasons. The main one is that I need a solid RPG rule set for a few of my next games, but there's not one I like that has a reasonable license. So, I plan to build up a community to create a publicly licensed rule set. Then I'll be able to use it for my games and other people will be able to use it for theirs. There's a lot to it, but I'm not going to go into it now. The point is that I've already got an eye on my next project and it won't be long before I'm looking for people to work on it with me :)
Now I'll move on to the chicken part of my post. Those of you with no interest feel free to skip this part, lol.
OK, so last week we setup an imaginary chicken processing plant and starting selling local chicken all over Dominica. Up to this point we've helped Dominicans keep some of their money, but we haven't really helped them “make” any. We should be able to get to that point in this post :)
First off, we'll expand our little business and start supplying local eggs all over the island as well. In a real way the locals are already doing this, but we want to take it to the next level. We want to collect eggs at least every few days, sort them, assure they're fresh, package them, and then sell them. This is going to be a little harder to market locally because anybody can crack a local egg, not everyone wants to butcher a local chicken, lol. However, we want to build an infrastructure because we're about to launch our export business.
You see, local chicken in Dominica is completely “free range”. The chickens feed on local fruits and insects, not processed feeds packed with supplementary protein, preservatives, processed vitamins, etc. This effects not only the chickens' flesh, but also their eggs. The Dominicans are eating what would be considered gourmet chicken in the US. That's something we want to take advantage of.
Once we have our supply chain established and are packaging our products we can begin to market and sell them in the US (and elsewhere). We just run with the publicity the island is already pumping out there and make Nature Island brand chicken and egg products. We tout the fact that our products are all natural and that they're not nearly as “processed” as similar products sold in the US. The market is already there. People in the US are aware that a lot of the food they eat isn't necessarily good for them and many are willing to pay a little more to get “real food”. As a result we'll be able to sell Dominican chicken at a higher price than US chicken. After all, that's only fair because it really is a better product.
Now, as we ship out more and more chicken we may want to supplement local production with our own larger scale farms. The chickens we raise on these farms will be for local consumption, however. We want to save the non-farm chickens for export because that's where they're the most valuable.
Of course, we don't want to farm raise chickens like many places do. We don't want to pump them full of hormones and feed them on super processed nutrients. No, we want to keep things as “natural” as possible. We want to produce our own chicken feed locally. (In time we can expand that to include cattle and pig feeds as well.) We also want the “farm format” to fill another of Dominica's needs. Chicken waste is an excellent fertilizer base. We can use it to produce high quality fertilizer locally. As a lot of Dominica's current exports are fruits, being able to get local fertilizer could improve the entire island's economy.
This is another self feeding loop. The more fertilizer the locals have, the better crops they'll be able to grow, the more feed they can produce, the more animals they can farm, the more waste they'll have to make fertilizer with. And this is one of those natural “circle of life” kind of loops. It's an “everybody wins” situation.
By this point we've brought more infrastructure to the island. We now have a food brand we're promoting, facilities to produce fertilizer, a meat packaging facility, and a company producing local all-natural animal feed. You can do a lot with that. (In point of fact, Dominica may have a local feed company. I'm not sure at this point. This is why a business plan is so important.)
We've begun to help Dominica pull itself up by its own bootstraps (as we say). As I said a few posts ago, wealth starts with necessities and then goes on from there. Up to this point we've focused on food and we may stick with that subject for another post or so, but in time we're going to move on. There's a lot Dominicans can do. Raising food is just one of those things. :)
Either way, that's enough for now. So, Goodnight from South Carolina!