I'll be juggling my farm startup business with my online dealflow interests over the next couple of days. What that means is that I am in the middle of planting approx. 80 trees and shrubs - apple trees, pear trees, and high bush blueberry bushes. I drove 225 km from Truro, Nova Scotia to Mabou, Cape Breton this morning to do the planting.

I have a row of 18 Honeycrisp apple trees planted and hope to get 40 apple trees planted today (varieties include Honeycrisp - 2yr, Cortland- 1 yr, Sunrise - 1 yr, and Cox Pippen 1 -yr. It is 5:00 and my planting deadline is 8:30 tonight. Rain tomorrow so I'll be planting in a mild rain tomorrow with warm temps (9-14 degrees Celcius). The rain will provide the required watering for the newly planted 1 and 2 year old apple trees, 1 yr old pear trees, and 20 blueberry bushes.

Getting the tractor geared up for tree planting.

Inspected the 300-400 vines I planted last year. They appear to be doing ok and I'm looking forward to see how they grow this year. There are significant varietal diffferences - different grape varieties have difffering degrees of vigor in my soil. I'm curious to see if the most vigorous variety could start producing this year - 1 year after planting. Usually takes 3 years, and probably will, but a grape vine can put on 6 to 9 feet of growth in a season if it is in good soil, sun, and ambient conditions. Supposed to pinch the grapes of this year to let the roots get more of the joy juice, but on some of my vigorous plants I might see what they will do without pinching.

2 yr old unpruned vines in early spring

There is some evidence of snow damage on my vines. Had a heavy layer of snow at the bottom of my field and the melting action broke vine guide poles (bamboo) and the vines themselves in some cases. Only the vines on the hill towards a forested corner of the field were subject to this damage perhaps because of the vortex winds that develop in this unique wind/snow environement. During the fall, winter and early spring there are heavy winds on this maritime ridgetop grasslands farm. During later sping, summer, and autumn the winds are generally pleasant but occasionally the winds will kick in again (sou'westers winds during summer). Based upon winterime experiences I thought I could run a wind turbine here and I could generate alot of power, however, I discovered that over later spring to autumn period the winds are quite pleasant.

View of farmstead from orchard

As I do my manual labor, I am reflecting upon the role of Bayesian Inference for angel investors and entrepreneurs. According to lean startup theory a startup is defined by the level of uncertaintly in its operations. So if operational uncertainty is the defining aspect of what a startup is, then how do we go about representing, understanding, and managing that uncertaintly? Does Bayesian Inference offer a formal foundation for lean startup theory?

Back to planting.