work load, no any new progress on "new year resolutions", start getting results from farm data analytics, chicken math hitting hard
In February I had only one business trip for ISO 42001 training, which was "in house," meaning at the client site but for a very experienced compliance team for ISO certification… for a new ISO related to AI, and with AI at hand to know anything you want to.
Considering that they paid money and wanted to hear me in person, it was an opportunity for me to show that teaching in person still has its own benefits compared to online webinars, online training, and… YouTube lectures from such geniuses like the IBM training (which I did myself — 6 months of structured training with 5 certificates for AI and security, and I highly recommend it!)
IBM YouTube videos (short lectures)
Coursera IBM 6 months Professional Gen AI Engineering course I did that along 5 others 😂
So my personal challenge was to prepare and deliver the training in a way that no one would be checking their phones or leaving early. And I did exactly that! People were staying during lunch time and after 5 pm, kept asking questions, and were really engaged. The feedback I got after the training from the facilitator was that they had never seen their team so charged and motivated to start implementing the new ISO. I couldn't be more happy with how it went and the feedback I received!
If you ordering training with me, expect your team be motivated and inspired to learn more and to implement, not just get dry set of information needed.
I was hoping that February would be the month when I would catch up on my full-time manager job responsibilities and finish all my admin tasks, having those 3 weeks without audits. And I was so happy that I could do at least something, plus hiring new auditors and doing training for them.
...But at the end of the month I got the news that I fell off my audit-days KPIs 😂 that weren’t decreased as I was expecting, considering I had at least two full-time jobs on top of auditing but… they stayed the same, sooo I had to accept more audits in the next 3 months to keep up with my quarterly KPIs.
I cannot tell you how shocked I was by those news, trying to recover after December and January workload and realizing that it wasn’t counted, and I had to do even more work in the next two months.
On the farm it was almost all good news!
The gas tank hadn’t been refilled yet - that was a bummer! but we finally had optic internet installed, we bought a second new! generator, the snow was gone, all sick chickens got well, and we didn’t lose any others. Khaki Campbells ducklings we got from a hatchery in January, are growing and here I am not even suspecting that one of them fully blind - because they are so smart that can do mapping of the new house/ enclosure in literally 2-3 days after moving.
The only challenges were with grown-up chicks and ducklings who still had to have extra heat and stay in the garage, with a lot of cleaning required (but at least no frozen water at night and not even one quarantined chicken there!). We managed to catch up on seasoned firewood, and I automated temperature and humidity feedback and installed cameras to control water and feed levels. The chickens started laying in the second week of February when we got a whole 4 eggs, and we were over the moon about that!!! Trying to treat chickens with vitamins individually, cook hot meals every day, and feed them greens and berries, and no eggs whatsoever! You are just happy that they are getting better!
I created the portfolio for each chicken, chick and duck with full health history and the personal tag. I did that 2 months ago for cats and goats.
With me traveling only one week and having at least 3 weekends at home, and with all energy disasters fixed, we were able to finish the major part of building the new coop and house for all farm animals that I designed based on medieval farm layered-defense mapping, where the most vulnerable animals stay in the central circles and the biggest, those that can defend themselves and have good night vision, stay on the outer circle. It was faaaar away from being finished, and at times I thought that we would never be able to finish it with our workload and very limited free time and good weather on weekends. I lost and found my Blacky brave duck defender, who apparently killed the fox that ambushed ducks and saved other ducks, but got bitten and got lost at the neighbor land. Luckily he had all vaccination up to time and strong health which with the proper treatment got him to the fast recovery.
Because of chicken sickness for the whole 3 months and the fox attack on ducks, I researched the matter and decided to get Egyptian Fayoumi chickens, which are resistant to almost all diseases and give others some level of communal immunity and protection. And I ordered… 15 Egyptian Fayoumi hens and 2 African geese (all baby chicks), which would be coming in March–April so they could protect the flock from diseases and predators. This way the barn cats could just enjoy their life and not fight foxes (almost all our neighbors had a fox sneaking into the coop and making a full massacre, killing all chickens!), and Fayoumis are supposed to have better instincts and night vision. ...But this will be my problem for another month.
I also did a very stupid thing in February! I was totally under the influence of chicken math and bought, without an extra thought, 6 sexed (hens only) Starlight chickens — green eggers. You can see how my hatching and farm animal calendar looked in February. I was very much hypnotized by the idea of having rainbow (Easter) eggs, and by the end of 2025 I can say that because of that we never had leftover eggs — our eggs are almost always sold out way ahead. So maybe not a very stupid thing after all.
Just want to warn everyone who doesn't know yet - "chicken math" is VERY dangerous thing! What is that? It's when you have 1 or 2 chickens, and you think:
-Well... What difference would it make if I would have 3 more?
You blink your eyes and suddenly you have 25! You blink second time and you have 50 chicks. True story 😂
February also was the month of shocking news. Not like in 2022 when the war started, and not like in 2024 when Navalny had been killed, but my personal shock was pretty much the same level when I heard that my favorite Russian blogger, who taught me how to be a blogger for the last 5 years, went to Russia and got arrested. Which now means that she probably will never be free. In the best-case scenario, she will be under house arrest, not allowed to use the internet at all (which means killing her professionally and removing her from the business), and put under fake fines and taxes because that country has no money for continuing war and corruption at the same time, but there are still bloggers who live abroad… This is the trend now in the biggest but not very smart country in the world.
I was in the middle of her blogging course and was so in shock watching those news in live mode practically.
The workload was heavy with administrative and managing tasks, and I was going through management approval training which was running early in the morning, so I didn’t do anything from my "new year resolution" — not decreasing workload, not working at night, and not saying no to overworking — all of those were fully present in February with not very positive or bright perspectives for March as well.
We spent a record amount of electricity that month because of chicks and not being able to use the gas stove or gas house heating, but life got easier than in January. And I thought I DID learn my lessons to do not get chicks in the cold winter months (wait for the next chapter 😆)
I continued to write daily in the 5-year journal and wrote weekly and monthly reflections. The interesting part I realize now, re-reading those, is that the cameras installed at the coop and for all farm animals and chicks gave me the most information about their health and behavior, even more than courses. All animals behave VERY differently in human presence, so watching them on cameras and recording all important data, your thoughts, and observations gives you massive progress in understanding how to improve processes and design their environment. For example, we put nice cozy curtains on nests as internet forum suggested and chickens loved it! But the downside was and I realized it only looking at my notes - that more and more chickens became broody and started losing weight and stopped laying eggs. So we removed curtains and had a very tough time to break the brooding cycle for chickens who weren't even supposed to be broody!
I didn’t read any books this month. But I read a lot of crazy Russian news worried about that blogger, and I finished her blogging course which I suspected would be the last one from her (her name is Alexandra Mitroshina if you want to search for the news).
I also didn’t visit any conferences, missed the two I most wanted to attend because of the workload, and was very disappointed about that too. No progress in book writing or blogging (at least not as much as I had planned)... very disappointing month from that perspective.
