Spring To Do List For Homesteaders

As winter comes to a close, homesteaders and farmers brace for the spring race. The sunshine lasts a little longer each day. Livestock is giving birth. Chicks are in the stores. Plants are ready to be put in the ground. All of this means that homesteaders have a spring to do list that is a mile long. But instead of being overwhelmed by it, we are going to eat an elephant one bite at a time.

The Spring To Do List

The goal of our spring to do list is prepping for summer, but also deal with all the things that come with spring itself. The reality is that we are just not going to be able to get to some things done once the garden is in full swing. That means that we have to get as much of this list marketed off. But what should YOUR list look like? Below is how we break down our spring to do list into categories.

• Garden
• Livestock
• Poultry
• Clean/ Organize

Everyone’s to do list for spring is different because every homestead is different. Some people focus on firewood during spring, others their garden is their only focus. But everyone can agree, spring is a busy time for any homestead.

Spring To Do List: Garden

For us, putting in the garden is the highest priority every year. The first summer we were on our property we couldn’t get a garden in. We just had so many other things going on that it just wasn’t feasible. Last year, we got our garden in, but even with the woven ground cover, there was a ton of weeds. Which is scary because what would it have looked like without it?

We are expanding our gardens this year to include a kitchen garden. The original garden was great and produced a surprising amount of food, but it just wasn’t was I expected. The tomatoes we had just didn’t wow us with big tomatoes or even a decent harvest. BUT we did grow tomatoes which is always awesome. This spring we will be installing our kitchen garden and turning the original garden into our “bulk” garden.

The biggest project for spring in the gardens (after installing the kitchen garden) is to get the pigs and chickens in the gardens and let them root, till, and poop in the gardens. We are hoping that will boost our harvests and keep down the weeds.

We are also going to be starting all of our own seedlings this year. Which is going to be intense and we will probably run out of room in the basement, but that’s ok. We built a greenhouse to hold all the seeds. To put that into prospective, we plan on starting at least 100 tomato plants. Yes, 100. That may seem like a lot, but we eat tomato sauce in some form at least once a week. Then there’s ketchup, BBQ sauce, sloppy joes, etc. We need a ton of tomatoes.

If you haven’t already, I suggest getting your seeds now. You can order online or you can stop by pretty much any big box store and get your seeds from them. Personally, I order my seeds from Territorial Seed Company and Baker Creek. I have also ordered from other sites but I prefer these two.

Spring To Do List: Livestock

Kidding season for the goats is pretty intense. Mainly because I am a nervous wreck. These girls are my favorite and I don’t want anything to happen to them. Plus, getting to see new favorite creatures born is amazing. But to prepare for it takes some effort. On my list is making sure that their birthing kits are ready and I have everything I need.

If anyone is interested, we filmed our most recent kidding. Be warned, it’s a goat giving birth so it’s pretty graphic. Bella gave us two beautiful babies; Mavrick and Goose. We will be retaining both of them and I’m so excited!

Spring To Do List: Poultry

Chickens, ducks and turkeys get their own category because we are placing a HUGE order this spring. We are talking 60 laying hens, 100 meat chickens and 15 turkeys. Why?

****Spoiler alert**** There are cons to raising chickens…. Just so you know.

We have had a lot of issues free ranging the chickens. The chickens will wonder off or we can’t find their eggs. It’s been one thing after the other. My previous flock of 60 chickens and 25 ducks is now down to 16 chickens and 9 ducks. Though we did butcher 6 meat ducks. So I have to get the various brooders ready to go for them.

I’m going to do a blog post on why free ranging the chickens didn’t work for us and what we plan to do different this time. But the reality is that true free ranging has cost us a TON of money. Between the initial costs of buying the chicks and then having to rebuy plus the lost income of selling eggs and chicks? It’s sickening how much money was spent or lost. So we are working on some strategies to stop the bleed.

Because we are raising some chicken for friends and family, we are going to be raising 100 Freedom Rangers. We realized with our last batch of crosses that we just weren’t feeding them enough which led to them not gaining enough weight. That led to us having to wait to butcher them, making the meat tougher. This time we plan on moving them to a different area that is full of bugs, grass, and other yummy treats as well as feeding them all the feed they want.

The goal is to get all of this done before summer really kicks in but we will see what happens.

Finally, We Clean and Organize

This is another long spring to do list for our homestead. We have slowly but surely been working on getting the property cleaned up and things moved around. It’s been a long process. We usually wait until fall/ winter to start working on the outside because the weeds and grass will hide a lot of the debris. When all the grasses die back, we can find these things and get them in the pile for trash.

Come spring, it’s the final push to get the unusable stuff off the property. Also on our spring to do list is gutting the basement to allow us to get our food storage room built and the rest of the animal storage done. It’s a tall order.

Also, I am a terrible cleaner. I have ADD and I go through crazy, spastic cleaning urges and everything MUST BE CLEAN. And then I squirrel out or get too busy and the house cleaning falls apart. Every late winter/ early spring, I try to get as much of the house cleaned and organized. I know as soon as summer hits, I’m going to be in the garden.

These are just some of the things we are doing this spring on the homestead. I would love to hear about what you are doing!

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