National Sequoia Park - In office and remote audits - Farm winterization - Busiest month of the year
Did you see my audits for August? Wall-to-wall, double-booked, no weekends? Well… this is my October as well 😂
With the only difference that October started with an on-site audit — travel to California. Most of the audits I lead have simultaneous audits on other sites, led by site auditors whom I still have to coordinate. This means I have to keep in mind 3–4 other audits happening at the same time, because it’s me who will be writing the final report for all 3–5 ISO standards. Sometimes I hear from auditors: “I know what you’re talking about! I did one ISO audit last year for one small company and it was incredibly hard.” I smile politely and always want to ask: are you absolutely sure it’s the same thing? But I never do.
We went together for the weekend (my son and my husband) to see Sequoia National Park, and it was… impressive!
I couldn’t grasp the age of those trees, and the Avatar movie doesn’t seem that fantastic anymore here. This is as real as it gets. But I’m jumping ahead. During the first week of October, I needed to test everything for security and autonomy of processes. Ducks and chickens were supposed to lay eggs in new temporary nests with roll-off features, where eggs roll into a hidden area so they don’t see them. We have 56 chickens and 5 ducks. Not all chickens are laying, and not every day, but it’s still a lot of eggs, and ducks lay very regularly. As you can see, the first try was not very successful 🤣 They didn’t understand why they had to use nests if you can just drop it wherever.
Jumping ahead — it worked perfectly well! They followed the manufacturer’s instructions amazingly well, with no broken or eaten eggs.
I also had to check all cameras: coverage, motion detection, solar panels, and charging levels. I didn’t like the fence height in some areas of the goats’ pasture, so I installed a barbed-wire extension on top. Just to understand the level of my engineering genius 🤣🤣🤣 — when I need to do something and it’s incredibly heavy, spiky, and inconvenient, I will design and build transport infrastructure and vehicles to move that thing 🤣 I am the genius of jig fixtures. In my childhood, I used that knowledge and talent mainly for mischief; now it has more practical applications. I couldn’t lift the barbed-wire stack, not even to mention unraveling it, because it sticks spike to spike and suddenly unwraps into your face! So I built a device with a handle, where the barbed wire rotates freely in the middle, and the stand is built to sit under the wheelbarrow and can be fixed there for easy moving.
My biggest worry is always about the two house cats. They are spoiled princesses who always fight each other. Plus, they have separate diets, and I moved them to feeders that open by RFID on the collar. We also installed cameras at home to see if feeders, waterers, and everything else are working. Usually, we have cameras only outside where all animals are, but not at home. We tested all automated feeders and waterers. I checked again all instructions for first responders outside, and I checked information for our neighbors in case something goes wrong and we need their help.
That web-site storage space limit me in posting photo and video, but fortunately, I have the instagram for that - you can find A LOT of videos and photos in highlights stories "LA trip" in my IG
And finally, off we go to the airport. All those four days of human absence at home and on the farm, I was checking cameras, feeder sensors and data, waterer data, temperature and humidity sensors, and CO₂ sensors 3–4 times more than usual 🤣 Yes, I am a helicopter mother.
We arrived in LA and drove straight to Moro Rock and to Sequoia National Park, and it was absolutely incredible!! I cannot describe it — this place is a must-see. We climbed Moro Rock, took pictures, and I was hit by high-altitude endorphins right away.
We had a big surprise waiting for us at night. We wanted to stay overnight at dispersed camping, with national park camping as a backup, but because of the government shutdown and no rangers working, both campgrounds and many others were closed, and the rest were overbooked. We finally found only one dispersed camping spot. The guys set up a tent and sleeping bags outside, but considering the weather (30°F at night), I said: no, thank you — and slept in the car with the engine running all night. (Hybrid cars apparently turn off after idling for two hours, which was pretty annoying — waking up freezing and having to start it again.) At 5 a.m., before sunrise, we drove to Moro Rock again and met the sunrise there. It was one of those moments worth remembering.
After that, we drove to the airport (6 hours!), stopping for breakfast, coffee, and a couple of museums and art galleries. The next day I went to work, and the guys flew home early in the morning and arrived only late at night around 12 a.m.
They checked all animals only on day five, in daylight, and showed me the number of eggs. Amazingly, the five-day absence went without even a small incident, and no human involvement was needed. We don’t have solo animals, so they didn’t feel lonely. Only the house cats were angry and felt vengeful about our absence, but that’s normal and usually what happens.
When I came back from the business trip, we did the annual health checkup (I do it on my own, including vaccinations and hoof trimming). We also had to do the another bumblefoot surgery on a chicken, which ran for 2.5 hours and involved three people, two incisions, and many stitches. Recovery went really fast and well (for all three patients over the last six months). They had to be isolated for a month for recovery and semi-isolated for egg withdrawal. Now we can only tell which one underwent surgery by the zip ties.
Vaccination and health checks are the most challenging for cats, especially barn cats. It’s a Houdini challenge for me every time. I cannot imagine how people trap them, put them in carriers, and how vets handle them while risking their lives 🙄🤦🏻♀️ It’s also a huge stress for semi-feral cats, so I would rather do all of that at home.
Keep in mind that all of this happened while I was working every day with no breaks, and with many follow-up projects and audits I needed to finish from the previous month, including multisite reports I recently received from other auditors. Because of that, my on-site audit week was a bit stressful, with working at the hotel after one audit and before another. Still, I managed to attend one networking event organized by my friend, with black caviar as part of incredible catering! I also went for a facial (I do that once per 5-10 years — very regularly 😂), and it was a very good experience.
I don’t like stressing for two hours in traffic before a flight, so I always prefer to stay the night before and the night after at an airport hotel. A rooftop bar and plane spotting were a really nice addition this time. I came home just in time for another audit to start, and after travel to California and a three-hour time difference, the next week I had audits in the UK, Australia, and Germany. By the end of the week, you lose touch with reality, forgetting where you actually live and in which time zone.
Despite all that, I visited two great networking events, both organized by RVA Tech. One was the Annual Gala in the incredible Richmond historic train station, and the other — my favorite for the last five years — Women in Tech at the Science Museum. During the conference, I kept working, finding a quiet corner with Wi-Fi, and the absolutely incredible staff of the Science Museum, without any asking, brought me a comfortable chair to my quiet corner near an electrical outlet. I appreciated it so much!! You really made my day, guys!
I also went to an amazing pottery workshop at my absolute favorite place, Crane and Clover Retreat, and made three pumpkins for Halloween. I did it with dear friends, so it was the nicest experience ever. I decided to do this with all my friends — it’s the best present. You can’t buy anything better than that for the price. It’s a memory and one of the most amazing experiences of time spent together.
I finished the roof on the gosling house — don’t know why, as they enjoy rain, snow, ice, and never go inside. Let’s say I did it for myself 😂
In the last two weeks of October, there was a high alert for avian flu, with registered cases in the closest county to us and in our county. So I wrote down and implemented biosecurity protocols 😂 I am serious. Based on the risk evaluation, the only paths for avian flu to reach our birds would be via car tires, roadkill, vultures, or shoes entering the coop. This is assuming we don’t let them free-range, which we didn’t until the first heavy rain and the migration period ended. We also cleaned the coop more often, changed shoes to clean ones, had cleaning rigs everywhere, and ozonated the coop very often.
We had one incident related to quails, and the fifth quail rooster had to go to soup. Now we have four quail hens. For some reason, he kept beating the hens until there were full-blown bloody skulls, blood everywhere, and two seriously injured hens stopped laying. I isolated him for three weeks, brought him back, and he continued.
Just want to say, fellow farmers — there is no place in your flock for roosters like that. My coping mechanism is collecting memes, and I have a huge collection. One I cannot find — maybe it was just a comment in the quail community worth being a meme. Someone asked if quails can peacefully live with silkies or other bantams, and the answer was: “No, quails can barely peacefully live with quails!” And that is very true 😂 Even though silkies themselves don’t always have kind characters, especially hens.
Overall, October was really busy. I just showed again to you and to myself that sadly I didn’t do or achieve anything I planned for 2025 for my own goals 🤣🤣🤣 But I keep telling myself that I put a good future setup in place for 2026, and that audit schedule is what I promised to honor for that year, I earning way more money for way less work now and it’s count for something, right? Trying to convince myself, but let’s wait for taxes result.
Because that feeling that you stack at the same place with your goals again, it's even MORE important to recognize the way and even small achievements and experience you had through the year. And maybe... just MAYBE... you will see after that your year review that your goals weren't your true goals but were someone else expectations...
After writing this review, going through all photos and screenshots month by month I clearly see that I did everything I could to get to the life I want. My schedule is usually built six months ahead, and it’s already full until May next year, with a surprisingly free January — but only because I booked a two-week vacation when I was a permanent employee, and that time wasn’t available for booking until the last week, which makes me very happy. I also don’t have that stressful overwhelming constant anxiety with something I had to do for two my other permanent roles and always being late. So it’s definitely was big relief which I felt immediately in August.
