Building Unity Farm Sanctuary - Fifth Week of April 2017

Several folks have contacted me, wondering why the pace of my blog posting has slowed a bit in April.    Don’t worry - all is well on the farm and sanctuary, it’s just spring planting, maintenance, and trail building time.    The snow has melted, the weather is mild and the plants/animals need more attention that ever.

Here’s what we’ve been up to over the past two weeks.   The adjacent landowner to Unity Farm and Sanctuary is the Sherborn Rural Land Foundation and they’ve asked for our help maintaining their protected land.   I’ve expanded our trail system to cover 60 acres with over 3 miles of paths as pictured below.    We now have  18 trails and 8 bridges that traverse through ecosystems ranging from dry oak to wildflower meadow to fern grottos.   Each bridge weighs about 500 pounds, so hauling all that lumber into the forest means that I walk about 15 miles per weekend day.

The new paths (in the black square box below)) enable us to connect to the Bay Circuit trail  (in red below)- a 200 mile  path from Newburyport, MA in the north to Duxbury, MA in the south.    It’s fair to say that Unity Farm and Sanctuary paths enable 100 mile walks in each direction!

Part of maintaining wild forests is removing a century of garbage that others have thoughtlessly dumped there.    I removed over a ton of debris from the farm forests and a ton of debris from the sanctuary property.    I removed a similar amount of old furniture, plastic and metal from the Rural Land Foundation property.     I definitely got my exercise hauling everything from the forest to a golf cart parked on a nearby road.

Part of the Rural Land Foundation property is a 5 acre meadow.  We gently raked the land and spread native wildflower seeds over the area.   We’ll have significant rain this week, so hopefully the new sprouts will get a healthy start.   Kathy will likely add new bee hives to the meadow this Summer.

All of the animals continue to thrive and they are enjoying the warmth of spring.   The pigs want their daily massages and demand our attention.   Here’s what rolling in the hay with pigs looks like.

We’re continuing our work on paddocks, fences, and run ins.   By Summer I’ll post pictures of the finished result - interconnected space for horses, donkeys, pigs, goats, cows, llama/alpacas, poultry and other animals that need sanctuary space.  We’ve lived at the farm for 5 years as of today.    Who would have guessed 5 years ago that we would have so many vibrant activities around us every week.

The Dark Side of E-commerce

As I mentioned in a recent post, Amazon has focused on the convenience of the customer instead of the convenience of their business.   Yesterday’s New York Times highlighted the trend for the hotel industry to do the same.

In my post, I lamented that some industries including old school industrial companies and healthcare have not widely adopted customer focused technologies.    To their credit, Marvin Windows followed up with me and promised to accelerate their automation efforts.    I was impressed.

However, all is not completely rosy in the transformation from brick and mortar to e-commerce.

In an effort to reduce costs and presumably increase the value of an Amazon Prime membership, Amazon has moved away from traditional delivery carriers - UPS, Fedex, USPS etc. deploying  its own delivery service.   The Amazon cargo vans seem to be scheduled such that there is no consistent driver who knows the neighborhood, the people, and  property specific delivery details.

Many of these drivers have no experience delivering to rural areas.      Many are terrified by the chickens, guinea fowl,  and ducks wandering around Unity Farm.   I can tell you that  poultry are not a threat to delivery people. Maybe they’ve been watching too much Monty Python.

The drivers have decided that throwing packages out the window and speeding away is the best way to avoid contact with the animals.   We’ve had packages thrown at the barn, tossed into bushes, submerged into puddles, dropped out of windows, and left in the middle of the driveway.      I can only guess they used this as a training video.

We’ve had so much damage that we’ve had to make a decision
1.   Stop ordering from Amazon entirely
2.   Open a post office box and hope that Amazon will deliver items there unharmed
3.   Change our shipping address to the Unity Farm Sanctuary where horses and goats live in paddocks and the most threatening free range animal is a squirrel.

We’ve decided on #3, giving up on Amazon’s ability to deliver to a rural setting because it has built an army of inexperienced delivery people.

The recent United Airlines passenger dragging scandal illustrates what happens when corporations emphasize growth and profitability over long term customer relationship management.     Maybe as a society we have become desensitized to the gradual degradation of relationships with those who provide us services and we’re unwilling to pay for higher quality experiences.   As we continue to accept poorer and poorer service, we’re likely to see income disparities increase with inexperienced service people paid less and the companies they work for earning more.  Is it any wonder that the middle class continues to shrink?

I would be willing to pay a bit more to have a consistent delivery person who understands my neighborhood.   E-commerce is great but only when the last mile is representative of the rest of a superlative supply chain operation.   At present, I would call Amazon’s move to direct delivery a failed experiment as it relates to our needs, and I will have to work around it.

Building Unity Farm Sanctuary - First Week of April 2017

In North America, Easter and Thanksgiving are traditionally associated with eating ham and turkey.     You can imagine that a vegan sanctuary is very popular with creatures who want want to avoid being eaten.

This week, we had the great turkey chautauqua .   Every wild turkey in the local forests assembled at Unity Farm Sanctuary for an afternoon of companionship, dancing and gentle conversation.    To put this photo in context, it’s taken from the sanctuary loft - about a football field away from the turkeys.  There are 17 turkeys in just this view.  Yes, the Tom turkey in the middle of the photograph was about as big as a buffalo.  Several guineas joined the party. Amazing

Local press covered the sanctuary activities this week and including some great pictures of the sanctuary animals.

I’ve built many things for Unity Farm and Sanctuary, but never considered building an ark until this week.    The snow has melted at the same time we’ve had 10 inches of rain.   The ducks and geese are swimming in the pig paddocks.  In the female alpaca paddock, water is over a foot deep.   The trails are a sea of mud.   It’s definitely a challenging time to be a farmer.

All the animals are smart enough to seek shelter from the rain and wind.   Even Palmer the turkey has begun to roost with the chickens so he stays warm and dry.

Whenever possible, the humans are attending to indoor tasks.   For example, suppose you want to cook the perfect Unity Farm eggs for Easter.  (vegetarian, not vegan).  Here’s a video about how to do it (note the Unity Farm packaging!)  

We finished the rewiring of the dining room  this week, correcting the sins of the past that occurred when old wiring and new wiring were grafted together in the 1990s.    Now, everything works perfectly.

We finished the spring planting of lettuce, carrots, peas, chard, beets, spinach and basil.   Our organic certification renewal is next month and we’re continuing our pesticide/herbicide free farming methods.

Finally, we began the planning for the trails that will connect the sanctuary with the rural land trust next door.   Their 30 acres and our 30 acres will combine to create an wonderful public walking resource.   I’ll definitely get my exercise this summer building another few miles of trails and bridges.    When we’re done, there will be public entrances on Green Street, Unity Lane and Zion Lane in Sherborn.

A Cautionary Tale for Healthcare

During my CIO career, I’ve worked on a few Harvard Business School case studies and I’ve had the “joy” of presenting my failures to Harvard Business school students for over a decade.

I enjoy telling stories and inevitably the cases I teach are about turning lemons into lemonade.

In this post, I’d like to tell a story about a recent experience with Marvin Windows and lessons learned that apply to healthcare.   I know that sounds odd, but hear me out.

At Unity Farm and Sanctuary I’m the proud owner of about 100 Marvin windows from the 1990’s.   All are still functional but incorporate nylon parts that eventually dissolve in sunlight.   I needed to replace the nylon pins that hold the screens in place.

I did what anyone would do.   I searched the internet for Marvin Top Rail Screen Pin, expecting to find the parts available on Amazon or a Marvin website.   No such luck.   Plenty of “plunger pins” but no top rail pins.  I did find an unindexed PDF of a Marvin catalog .   On page 43, I found "Top Rail Screen Pin M120 11867852”.   I had a part number so ordering it should be easy, right?

I went to the Marvin website looking for a part lookup function, an ordering function, or a customer service app.   No such luck.  I did find a corporate 1-800 number on the Contact Us page.

After calling that number I was redirected to  the web page of a distributor, since Marvin Windows will not sell anything to anyone directly.

Two days after emailing the distributor, I received an email back from a very kind and helpful person explaining that I had checked the wrong box on the distributor’s webpage - the part number I was asking about is from the Marvin product line and I had checked the Marvin Integrity product line.

I explained the part number is the part number and I have no idea what product lines Marvin offers.

She noted that the part was available but the distributor sells nothing to no one directly.    I will have to find a local retailer and begin the entire process again.    She was incredibly service oriented and when I asked, she agreed to find a retailer for me and tell them what part number to order.

Two days later, I received an email from a retailer 50 miles away noting that they could order the parts for me.   I asked the cost and they said .25 each.    Given that the process of getting a window part from Marvin is highly convoluted, I ordered 50 - a lifetime supply for the grand sum $12.50.   I asked when the parts would arrive.    The answer is unknowable since the retailer contacts the distributor who contacts the manufacturer and none of the above have customer accessible supply chain tracking or logistics information systems.

Two weeks later I emailed again and was told the parts would arrive 50 miles away in another week.

A week passed and I received a call from an incredibly service oriented person at the retailer who told me my parts had arrived (they weigh one ounce and fit in a standard letter sized envelope).   I asked if she could mail them to me and she responded that Marvin retailers cannot mail anything to anyone.    They tried it once a few years ago and since they don’t know how much postage it costs to mail a one ounce letter, the package would likely be returned undeliverable after a few weeks.   Best not to risk using shipping services and instead, drive 1.5 hours to pick them up, sometime 8a-5p Monday through Friday.

Of course, I have a day job so that would mean taking time off work.    I arranged to do conference calls during the 1.5 hour drive.    I received my one ounce of parts for $12.50 one month after my search began.   They fit my window screens perfectly.  Victory!

One the same day I picked up the screen parts, I needed a very obscure electrical wall plate to cover an old electrical box with a deactivated switch.    I needed half decora/half blank.   I could not imagine such a part was ever made.    30 seconds after searching Amazon, I found it, clicked once and 12 hours later found it on my doorstep without lifting a finger (or paying shipping).

The purpose of telling you this story is that Marvin Windows senior leadership (and the Board) must be using  Cobol-based mainframes to manage the company when they're not taking calls on their flip phones.   It’s clear they’ve been asleep since 1985.    When it comes time to replace the windows in my buildings,  I would never consider Marvin Windows products, since it clear they care more about preserving an ancient business model and less about their customers modern expectations and experiences.    Such companies will wither and be replaced by an “Uber equivalent” for windows.

But wait, I’m living in the glass house of healthcare and throwing stones.   Just how easy is it to make an appointment with your doctor, seek real time telemedicine/telehealth advice, or get access to a “care traffic control” logistics application that shows your progress against a care plan?  In 2017, healthcare is still largely following the Marvin Windows approach of phone, fax, email, smoke signals and morse code.

The lesson learned is that in the near future, healthcare organizations that offer an Amazon approach will displace this which do not.   That’s why BIDMC has focused on 5 pillars to guide IT projects in 2016 and 2017 - social networking communication tools, mobile enablement, care management analytics and cloud services.   Every month we’re launching new functionality that gets us closer to the Amazon experience with such apps as BIDMC@Home (internet of things/telemedicine), OpenNotes, and Alexa ambient listening services.   In two weeks, our entire dataset will be moved to the Amazon data lake with appropriate privacy agreements and security protections so we can take advantage of cloud hosted machine learning and image recognition services.     By 2018, we’ll be much less Marvin Windows and much more Amazon.

I do not know the window business and maybe there is something about it that supports old business models while the rest of the world  innovates.   However, I do know healthcare, and we need to embrace the same kind of consumer echnology focus as every other industry.   If we don’t, our bricks and mortar buildings will go the way of Sears, JC Penney, and Macy’s  .