Showing results for Personal - Brian Harry's Blog

Mar 9, 2018
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All good things…

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

After more than 23 years at Microsoft, I’ve decided it’s time for me to take a break. Starting March 12th 2018, I’ll be taking a leave of absence for a year. Deciding to do this has been one of the most gut-wrenching decisions of my life. As someone who has largely defined myself by the work I’ve done, it’s incredibly hard to imagine life without g...

Personal
Feb 7, 2018
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Goats up high

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

Let me start with a little background.  Every year, we have new goats born on the farm - generally in March/April.  Last year, we had about 10 or so.  They live in the field with their moms until breeding season - ~October.  During breeding season, we have to remove the young goats from the adult herd so they aren't accidentally bred - they are too...

Personal
Jun 8, 2017
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Let’s make some hay!

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

Spring is hay season and it puts a significant strain on my managing the balance between work and farm.  For the past several weeks, I've been stealing away every spare minute I can to cut, rake, bale and haul hay.  I've hayed about 75 acres and that yields one heck of a lot of hay.  I'm almost done - just a few dozen more rolls to move from the fi...

Personal
May 3, 2017
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Two bulls meet

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

You may have noticed I wasn't very responsive during much of April.  That's because I took an extended "Farmcation" for about 3 weeks.  I just returned to work on Monday and should be a bit more responsive now. I won't bore you with all the details but I wanted to share one thing. Cows are cool animals in many ways.  Sometimes they frustrate the cr...

Personal
Mar 30, 2017
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Cows can be so silly

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

Last week, we had some visitors from Redmond visiting us in North Carolina.  I invited a few of them out to my house for dinner - they were interested in seeing this farm that I talk about from time to time. After we got to my house I herded everyone into my car to drive up to the barn.  As we got to the top of the hill, I could tell something wasn...

Personal
Sep 28, 2016
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One more farm story for this week

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

Sorry for the back to back farm stories but I was relating the Fire! story to someone the other day and remembered another story I hadn't shared. As a cattle farmer, I go through a lot of hay - about 300,000 lbs per winter.  Spring and late Summer are the seasons for cutting, baling and storing hay.  In the past I've had to buy a lot of hay because...

Personal
Sep 26, 2016
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Fire!

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

When you have a farm like I do, with a lot of pastures, a lot of fence lines and a lot of trees, you inevitably spend a lot of time clearing dead trees, fallen limbs, etc. from your fences and fields.  It's a never ending job.  Sometimes I collect the wood for firewood (I heat my house with that in the winter).  Sometimes I just throw it back in th...

Personal
Jul 29, 2016
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Where in the world is Brian?

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

I apologize for being away for so long.  It's been a weird summer.  I was out of the office for almost a month and have spent the last week furiously trying to catch up.  So I've been absent from my blog for a while now.  I'll fill you in on some of the details. Italy This year is my parent's 50th anniversary.  My brother and I (well actually our w...

Personal
Dec 23, 2015
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Is your stomach bigger than your eyes?

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

For the past several months, friends have been bugging me to write another farm post – it’s been quite a while.  The problem is that I haven’t been able to think of anything terribly interesting.  Most farm work does make for a good blog post – chores, feeding, cutting hay, repairing fences, …  Just not great content for an interesting post. Wel...

Personal
Aug 19, 2014
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ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Brian Harry
Brian Harry

Well, today was my turn to take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  This morning I was tagged by both Adam Cogan and Scott Guthrie.  Tempting as it is though, I’m not doing it twice   I don’t know if it’s typical, but Adam challenged me to complete the task within 24 hours.  I spent today thinking about how I would get home early enough, how I would orc...

Personal