You think this is all I walk? Small Farm, Big Data Hi all. Mark here.

When in the first week of March my telephone (above) told me that I had walked just 20 miles in February, my first response was anger at the intrusion. How dare my telephone spy on me? In what deluded state did I mistakenly sign up for this so-called service, I wondered? My second impulse, however, was to argue with the app, and prove I was better than that. No, Google Maps Timeline, you recorded only 20 miles, but that doesn’t mean you measured all my movement. You are often sitting on my desk while I am moving about. You are not in my bathrobe pocket when I’m riding my stationary bike. You're sometimes plugged in while I’m out doing chores. I’m not as sedentary as you tell me I am.My desire for approval, yet resentment at being judged to begin with, may encapsulate my response to the world at large. But my relationship with modern technology is particularly conflicted. I can see in theory how it enables all sorts of connection and understanding we never had before, and at the same time how it invades, intrudes, and tyrannizes us.Take the Farms2Tables app through which our farm now sells so much of its produce. By aggregating data as to what’s fresh daily from lots of farms and making it immediately available to lots of restaurants and institutional buyers, it enables a meeting of buyers and seller in the virtual universe, without having to move the produce to some central market. The buyer can order a small quantity, the seller need only ship that small quantity instead of shipping it all and having it sit, wilting, in a marketplace stall waiting for potential buyers to come around. The efficiency of moving only what is ordered enables the collection of a small order one day and, after transfer to another truck overnight, delivery to a buyer 50 to 100 miles away the next day. Fabulous in concept and, thanks largely to the efforts of operator Patricia Wind, executed with exactitude, it truly delivers on its promise of using data to enable small farms to provide the freshest of produce to the big market.Yet it tyrannizes too. We must check the app for orders frequently. In order to respond effectively we need to keep our frozen meat inventory constantly updated, and must constantly inspect the vegetable garden in season to list what we have as it becomes ready to pick. And we can't always just assume by a superficial glance that we know what we can supply. If we get an order in the morning for beets, we have to go out and pick them right away, to be sure we have enough good ones, un-nibbled by voles, to fill the order. The app requires that we spring to attention immediately when an order is placed because if we don't accept the order by noon, it is deemed declined. The tyranny of technology.Among many advantages I anticipated with Troy and Victoria taking over after Peter’s death was their high comfort level with modern technology, a byproduct of their youth and fine educations. I figured if anyone could figure out a way to take advantage of the good in this technology without suffering the negatives, they could.In many ways, my expectations have been borne out. They are real data hounds. They have created not only a highly refined freezer inventory and a “spreadsheep” to keep track of our sheep herd, but have been data and research driven in every aspect of their work. They research the nutritional mix in the sheep's diet and the many roads to hoof health. They even keep tabs on how many loads of combined sheep poop and hay they take out of the barn when mucking it.Their strategy has already borne fruit. They've figured out who the productive ewes are through their lambing patterns over time, and whose less healthy birth lines should not be encouraged. They will be making our breeding more selective. They've figured out ways to economize on hoof treatments. They've saved several vulnerable newborns, including most recently the lamb Sophie, who is being