Projects Week: The McCain Family Goat Farm
James caused quite a stir with his Snow Eater. Bree came up with the name for James’ huge snow-eating truck and everyone agreed it was the best of names. They quit presenting for the day and celebrated at Mt. Zen Cafe. Randy had no interest in buying the rights to his invention, but he and Sierra were perfectly willing to help him register the patents and negotiate a deal. In the end, they thought it would be better for James to sell his patents to a large machinery company like John Deere. The excitement of such a success held them through until day three of Projects Week.
Sierra was the final presenter and Randy watched her haul that closed box to the Thunder Brothers Ranch for the third day in a row. She hadn’t touched the box since she sealed it up two days ago. Whatever she had been cooking in the kitchen MUST be spoiled by now. He anxiously waited for her to start.
“When I was a child, my parents ran a goat farm in the heart of San Francisco. Almost a year ago, when Elvis gave me Mary, I suddenly found myself running a goat farm again.” A cold sweat ran down Randy’s back. Had Sierra butchered Mary (and how many of the other goats) since he last looked in the decrepit barn? Those horrible smells from the kitchen, were they goat treats?
“In the 70’s, my parents made goats’ milk soap and lotion. I’m reviving the old family business with my own line of soaps and lotion.” She opened the box and removed bottles and bars of soap. “These are testers and you can try them all out.” She handed them out. “Pass them around and try each of the fragrances.”
Randy sighed with relief. Goats’ milk soap and lotion! That was perfect. PERFECT!
“I had to drastically change the formulas since my parents made their lotion when I was a kid. Tastes have changed over the last thirty years and people want their lotion to have a strong scent or no scent at all. The scented lotions were easy to create, but I have still yet to be able to create an unscented variety that doesn’t smell like goat udder.” James and John laughed and squirted out the lotions on their hands, smelling them. Bree looked at all the scents available and chose the lavender. She squirted a large pea of lotion on her hands. Sierra cautioned her, “Oh, Bree. That’ll be WAY too much! This lotion is highly concentrated, so you only need a little bit. You’re going to be a little greasy if you use that much.”
Bree smiled and rubbed the full dose of lotion into her hands and arms. “I think you underestimate just how dry my skin gets here… never had this trouble back home… smells good.” The entire kitchen lit up with various lotion scents: lavender, honey, cocoa butter and fresh grass. The scents filled Randy’s nose with pleasure and he sat back enjoying Sierra’s project. Bree was trying all the different scents now on various parts of her body. Kevin even squished some of the white goo out, rubbing it with his fingers and smelling it.
“I can make a bottle of lotion for two dollars, one dollar of that is the bottle itself. I can make a bar of soap for five cents. I will be selling them at Mt. Zen Cafe and at three of the four resorts. They will pay me five dollars and one dollar for the lotion and soap and be selling them for ten and three dollars respectively. I have the summer to get my stock in place for the next big tourist season and I already have orders for $5000 worth of merchandise.” The kitchen whistled at her figures. “I have already monetized my project, I just need to concentrate on fulfillment. Any questions?”
Bree was the first to raise her hand, “Can I keep this one?” She held up the bottle of fresh grass lotion. “I’ve never smelled anything like this… doesn’t smell like fresh grass, really, but it’s the best I’ve ever smelled. You should create a perfume that smells like this.” Sierra laughed. “Yeah, you can keep that one. Any other questions?” The kitchen was quiet and she gathered the rest of her props and put them back in the box.
Randy sighed happily. It was finally his turn to present. Sierra sat down and he patted her thigh before taking his laptop to the front of the kitchen.
He brought up YouTube and put the video on full screen. He pushed play and the video showed a baby goat jumping on a bed. Before he could speak, Sierra called out, “Is that MY bed?!” Kevin clamped his hand over his mouth and pointed at Sierra, but the happy glow from Randy’s eyes burst.
“Presenting, The McCain Family Goat Farm, featuring the cutest baby goats you’ve ever seen!” The kid kept jumping on the bed until finally falling off. It was the same kid that Sierra had nursed back to health, keeping it hidden in the suicide room. “This video has been seen over 200,000 times by people all over the world. It links back,” Randy clicked on a different tab in his browser, “to the website for The McCain Family Goat Farm.”
Randy had lovingly created an entire website highlighting all of Sierra’s work over the last few months. There were photos of the barn that is falling down, plans for the new barn that Sierra had ordered and even another video of a couple of the baby goats bouncing around in the snow and on the rocks. “I created this website two weeks ago and we already are receiving thousands of visitors a day. Most of the traffic,” Randy pulled up Google Analytics, “comes from Cute Overload and I Can Haz Cheeseburger. When I wrote that we were building a new barn, we actually had people trying to donate money for it.”
Randy smiled and pointed at Sierra. “Now that we have products to sell, we can actually monetize this website and reach a bigger audience than you ever thought.” Randy was glowing with joy. He had no idea that Sierra was going to create her own line of products, but now that he had seen her project, his website was perfect for her. PERFECT.
“Any questions?”
Bree raised her hand. “Did you two do your projects together?” Randy smiled, “No, I didn’t know anything about Sierra’s project, except that it smelled REALLY bad.” Randy’s face crinkled with the memory. Kevin smirked and smacked Bree on the shoulder. “Glad I moved here then.” Randy looked at James and John, both of whom looked as if they had swallowed some of Sierra’s soap. “James, do you have a question?”
The scar on his lip quivered. Randy could tell that he wanted to say something. “What is it, James?” The large, blond farmer ran his hand over his head. The short, cropped hair snapped back behind his fingers like a stiff brush. The two brothers spoke in unison, “That’s it?” Randy smiled to himself and looked at Kevin. “Didn’t you tell them that our projects could be silly little things?” Everyone at the table nodded their heads. James replied, “But I built the Snow Eater, outta metal and stuff. This,” he pointed at Randy’s computer, “this, is just a video of some goats.”
Kevin shook his head. “Listen James, he’s getting thousands of hits a day and his site is only, what…” Randy nodded. “I started it two weeks ago.” Kevin continued, “I don’t know if you know this, but that’s AMAZING! Even with the web karma that Random has, getting that much traffic in two weeks is impressive.”
Bree continued, “Plus, Random always does stupid projects. Last year, he did a website that made your website screech at you.” Kevin nodded and laughed. “GhostzURL.” Randy, Bree and Kevin nodded and laughed together. Sierra shook her head. “I HATE that thing. It’s NOT funny. A lot of people use the Internet for serious business…” Randy turned toward James and John, “I wouldn’t really call my projects stupid,” he glanced over at Bree, “but I don’t really go all out. I just try to do something fun. Baby goats jumping on my bed is funny and it makes people happy. That’s why I created…” Randy stopped talking and he couldn’t continue. That was why he had created Zerbitz, but he had sold that moment of fun in his life to a company that didn’t even care about it. He swallowed and tried to smile again, but the air in the kitchen smelled heavily of lavender and he needed to sit down.
A special thank you to NTDWA (Wind Dancer Ranch)and JeremyChad for sharing their videos of baby animals:
A special thank you to Andy Baio for creating ZombieURL: