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Is Homesteading Hard

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I should probably wait to write this, maybe when I’m not quite so raw. But the cold hard reality is that homesteading is hard. Out of all the things I have done in my life, I think homesteading is the hardest. I have had multiple miscarriages. Sent my husband off to war twice and raise two babies while he was gone. I have stood over bleeding and mangled bodies and said, “I’ve got you.” I’ve had a mom hand me her infant and say, “Save her.” Is homesteading hard? It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

is homesteading hard
*****Be sure to read till the end*****

Why Is Homesteading Hard?

The constant life and death decisions will wear you down. The constant checking on feed, hay, and medication levels. Hauling sick animals into the house or into the vet. Checking finances to make sure you can cover the feed, vet or light bill. Worrying about the garden producing not only your food but your animals. Prepping firewood and praying you’ve got enough. Constant research to find another way to possibly save money or a life. Frustration when a product doesn’t work. It’s enough to drive you insane. Homesteading is hard.

Tractor Supply

Life and Death Decisions

When you live a “normal” life, maybe you really only worry about your dogs or cats, maybe an “exotic”. But when you homestead (even small scale), you have to be constantly aware of your house pets and livestock, their safety and wellbeing, their health, laboring or egg/ hatching rates and so much more. You have to worry about predators.

You order chicks and realize that one just isn’t doing well, and you have to make the decision to cull. A duck breaks a leg? Is it worth the pain they will go through to see if you can set it, splint it and keep them confined? Actively warming a goat kid till the wee hours of the morning. Only to have them die a couple days later, anyways.

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Running Out Of Feed

Sometimes you run out of feed, and can’t get more. The supply chain shortages are a thing and usually the small farmer is who suffers. You’ve got to get creative with how you are going to feed your chickens, ducks, pigs and goats with no access to feed. Sometimes it’s taking 5gal buckets to work and asking coworkers to fill it with their food scraps, just to feed your pigs or chickens. Or begging neighbors for a couple bales of hay.

The reality of caring for so many animals on the homestead is overwhelming sometimes.

Sick Animals

Sometimes, your living room turns into an infirmary. Sometimes, your really nice SUV turns into a litter box because you’ve got to haul the pigs to the vet. Then despite all of your very best efforts, your animal dies anyways.

It’s pulling goats because momma is too tired to push, only to realize the kid is stuck and you can’t get it out. Praying to forces you don’t even believe in to save this baby.

It’s a cemetery on your property because you just couldn’t save them.

Financial Impact

Sometimes life and death decisions are made because of finances and that feels worse. When you have to cull an animal, especially a favorite, because you don’t have the money for medicine or a vet visit. Other times, it’s feeding the pigs out of your pantry or fridge because you don’t have anything else.

Other times, it’s using your emergency fund to cover hay because you ran out.

Tractor Supply

Working Your Gardens

Whether you are praying for rain, or praying for rain to stop, your life revolves around your gardens in spring and summer. Since you’ve decided to grow as much fodder for your livestock as possible, you are stressing over it’s growth. You are simply hoping to reduce the strain on your wallet.

You are constantly checking for pests and weeds. Thinking about next years garden and what you will do differently. Pouring over notes, blog posts, and more trying to get a leg up.

Firewood

When you make the decision to heat solely with your wood stove, you spend hours, days and weeks building that firewood stack. One cord down, seven more to go. Only to realize mid winter, seven wasn’t enough either. So you’re back out there, cutting down trees or finding your stacks you had put back for the next year.

It’s hauling huge rounds of wood up hills. It’s the pure manual labor that feels back breaking, but isn’t.

Is Homesteading Hard?

Yes, but it is worth it. Every single time and every single way, it is worth it. The good outweighs the bad, every single time.

The pure joy of harvesting peppers, dehydrating them, grinding them, and then using them in your dinner? It’s a feeling of pure satisfaction.

Seeing that firewood stack go from empty at the beginning of spring and full at the end of summer? Knowing that you are going to be warm and snuggly? It’s hard to describe the feeling of accomplishment.

Tractor Supply

It’s cleaning eggs, putting them in a jar to waterglass, and putting them on shelves in your basement, knowing you will have eggs this winter.

Watching your garden bloom and grow. Eating beans fresh from the garden. Canning your tomatoes. Knowing that when you are buttoning up everything for the winter, you have succeeded in your goal of providing for your family and livestock.

It’s watching that goat kid thrive after a traumatic birth. Knowing that you would do it again and again, just to see that baby come out alive and hear those first cries. And crying when you bury her sisters and listening to that momma goat cry for her other babies.

It’s waking up before the sun breaks the horizon to milk the goats. Softly talking to your most skittish goat and thanking her for her milk. Watching the sunrise with her as her kid jumps and plays with the other kids. Listening for her call her kid and the kid call back.

Planning a bigger better garden because you learned from your mistakes last year or the year before.

Is homesteading hard? Yes, but you should absolutely do it. There is no better feeling in the world than watching all of your hard work pay off. No amount of money or promotions, or follows, likes and shares compares to feeling of being self reliant, self sufficient, and earning through blood, sweat and tears the bounty.

Because when you homestead, it’s real. And in a world full of slight of hand, disinformation, division, and mistrust, your homestead is a living breathing thing that YOU created.

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How To Set Up A Garden Journal

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Much like everything else that is homestead related, there is no one size fits all approach to a garden journal. I wish there was because it would make it easier to just have someone tell you what to do and it work 100% of the time. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The next best thing that we can do is try different things until something works. Today, I’m going to show you how I set up a garden journal and give you the high points of how to start yours.

garden journal

What Is A Garden Journal

A garden journal is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a journal that details your gardens throughout the years. Yes, years. In the first year, you may notice a high infestation of Japanese beetles. In your journal you would make note of the beetles, an estimate of how many beetles, when you first noticed them, what plants they were attracted to, any treatments you did to get rid of them, etc. The next year as you look through your journal, you remember that you had a problem last year, and you can be proactive this year.

How To Set Up A Garden Journal

Everyone will have a different set up based on what they are growing, where they live, and so on. But here are some starting points. If you aren’t sure where to start, you can purchase my garden journal printable in our general store.

The Binder

I think that the best thing you could do is to purchase a binder for your garden journal. I use this binder because I like that it doesn’t take up a lot of space on my desk. Plus, when I am down in the basement working on seeds or out in the garden, it’s not this huge bulky thing. I also like using a binder because I can move pages around from year to year.

I used to have a bullet journal and while I loved it, it was hard to find what I was looking for since it was chronologically done. Not a bad thing, but if I couldn’t remember when I did something, it was lost. Being able to look back and see that last year I planted 100 tomato seeds and only 80 germinated tells me a lot about the seeds, soil, watering, etc if I have that information available.

The Dividers

I have a TON of dividers in my garden journal, but again, I want simple and easy to find. I use these mini dividers to match my mini binder. For your dividers, you need to think about the things that you want to track. Do you want to track how many seedlings you bought? Or are you planting your own seeds? Do you want to keep track of your soil tests? What about expenses? These are all things that you need to think about so that you can keep track accordingly.

I like to know what seeds I started and when. Then I want to know my soil tests, pests and what seeds I saved. When our orchard stops getting attacked by goats, I would like to know when I pruned, harvested, and more.

Loose Paper

I use loose leaf sheets to take notes, brainstorm, etc. I get the college rule and blank to make sure that if I want to design a garden bed, I can design it on a blank sheet and write on the lined sheets. I store all the excess paper in the back of the binder. I also use sheet protectors on the important pages.

For example: If I go into the basement and I am working on transplants, I don’t want the pages to get dirty. Or if I have designed a garden bed, I want to be able to take that page out of the binder and take it with me to the bed. By having a sheet protector on it, I don’t have to worry as much about it getting destroyed.

Using Your Garden Journal

After getting your journal set up, you should start filling it out with the information you have. In your soil test section, you should fill out previous years soil test results. Be sure to separate years with a line or something so that you don’t get confused. If you don’t have that information anymore? Or this is your first garden? No worries, do the best you can.

When you start your seedlings, be sure to write where you purchased your seeds from. This will help you decide if that was a good buy. If you buy seeds, make sure to put where you bought them from. In your Pest section, make sure to keep track of what pests came when and how you treated for them. This will help you because next year, you can say, “In 2022, the Japanese beetles came in April and only hit the apple trees.” In 2023, you can make sure to have beetle traps or other treatments already in place.

Tractor Supply

I am the type that will write down everything because I will forget it. We had a great pepper harvest last year, but I know it could have been better if I had known only water them every 4-6 days. Because of my garden journal, I know not to water the peppers as often.

Another cool thing about my garden journal is that I have a harvest/ preservation section. This section tells me how much food I need to harvest and preserve from my gardens. I know that we eat a TON of green beans. Like, I can 100 quart jars of green beans and it’s usually gone by April. That tells me that I need to harvest at least 200# of green beans. Because I know these things, I know I need to plant a minimum of 200 pole bean plants. Same with corn and peas.

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Lastly, in my garden journal, I have a list of monthly chores that I need to do. This helps me stay on track with the needs of my garden. Because our goal is to reduce our grocery bill by 75% in 5 years and our feed bill by 80% in 2 years, I need all the help I can get. It not only tracks the weeding, watering and planting, but it also tells me when exactly when to do those things. In April I have final till of the garden, lay final layer of compost, plant after April 15th, weed weekly until seedlings are established, and so on. That way there is no guess work about what I need to do.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can find my garden journal printable in our general store here. There are a ton of different planners on the internet but none of them fit the style that I was going for, so I created my own.

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How To Create A Homestead Vision Board

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As we are coming up to the end of the year, I started taking down the 2022 vision board. I was able to reflect on all the things we did this year and it was incredible how many goals we hit and surpassed. It was also pretty eye opening how much stuff we just didn’t get around to. In this post I wanted to talk about how to set up a homestead vision board, how to prioritize your goals for your homestead and lastly how to prioritize WHICH goals for your homestead.

Homestead vision board

Setting Up Your Homestead Vision Board

First thing is first, you need a board. I use a cork board like this one but you can use a poster board or whatever you have on hand. I like using the cork board because it doesn’t erase like a white board and it doesn’t put holes in my walls.

Next, you need to figure out your goals for the year. I’ve talked pretty in depth about the importance of infrastructure, our infrastructure goals, as well as how to set up homesteading goals in the links created. One of the ways that Jared and I set up goals is for each one of us to have 3 goals that we must hit for the year. Then we have another 5 “would be nice if” goals. The would be nice goals are simply ones that are important enough to write down but if we don’t hit them, the world won’t end.

Homestead Vision Board

Since that piece of paper above has all of our goals on it, I will sit down and type up each goal individually, print them out and put them on my board. The original list will get pinned beneath the board so that I can cross that off as we get things done. Sometimes I just write them down on their own pieces of paper and put them on the board. It really depends on how crafty I feel when I put together my board.

Once we have those goals printed out and pinned to the board, I will find pictures of the items we want like the tractor, UTV/ATV, dream kitchens, etc and print those out. I will also have little sticky notes attached on the board to find the lists associated with each project. So for the outdoor kitchen, there would be a sticky note that said “see infrastructure list for more info”. This helps so that when we are ready to tackle a project, we know where to look.

Layout For Your Homestead Vision Board

There is no one size fits all approach to your vision board. It’s yours to do however you want. But I do have some suggestions. If you look at the list above you will see J Top 3 and L Top 3. Those are the most important and must do of all of the goals. Those need to be highlighted so they are completed first. So I will usually make those bigger and with a different font than the would be nice if goals. I will also print those out on different colored paper to make sure they stand out.

Laying out your board is another way that you can prioritize your goals on the vision board. You can put the most important goals in the middle, or even do a flowchart style layout. But select a space that is just for those goals. In years past I have put the most important goals in the middle and on bright card stock. Then I would put the less important goals around it or on the edges to show, on regular paper, to show that these weren’t as important.

Another important part of laying out your homestead vision board is decorate it. Now, I’m not talking about getting out the glitter. But the purpose of a vision board is to clearly lay out the vision you have for the year. But if it is boring, are you going to want to look at it every day? If it isn’t eye catching, are you going to remember that you have a goal of setting up your chicken coop and run? So make sure to decorate it in a way that is eye catching for each goal without being either overwhelming and hidden.

How To Prioritize Your Homestead Goals

I wanted to add in ways to set up your goals for your homestead. Since every homestead is different, I can’t tell you what how exactly to prioritize your goals. Plus, you may have different goals or priorities than your significant other. That’s okay. But in an effort of accountability, BOTH of you need to write down your goals for the year and put them on your vision board.

There are also two kinds of goal setters. Those that reach for the stars and are okay with landing on the moon. Then the rest of us who set realistic goals and want to surpass them. Either one is fine as long as you are getting it done. Jared’s goal of infrastructure is pretty lofty considering the infrastructure list is 8 typed pages. But that’s what he wants, so ok. One of my goals is to start the process of replacing our off farm income with on farm income.

Most Important Goals First

While this may seem obvious, you need to remember to write down the most important things you want to accomplish first. This is going to help you when you get distracted by something equally as important. For example, we do not have a working HVAC system. Also it’s not on my list of priorities to fix or replace it. But if I don’t stay on track with my goals, and it is mid August and 110* with 99% humidity? You can bet your last dollar I will want to repair that unit to get some relief.

Finish Line Goals

Every year I set Finish Line Goals or FGL’s. These are goals that are easy to hit and mark off the list. Things like: cleaning the bathroom, stacking firewood, cleaning off the front porch, or organizing one space in 10 minutes. These goals are crucial for getting motivated to tackle those big goals. They also help you slow down when you are getting overwhelmed and need something small to give you a break.

Grace Is Key

You are probably not going to hit every single goal. Life is going to happen and every plan you had may go out the window with job loss, sickness or injury. But if you give yourself grace, kindness and understanding? You will find that while you didn’t hit the mac daddy goal of replacing your off farm income with farmer’s market sales, it’s okay.

I hope this helps you figure out how to set up your homestead vision board as well as work on setting goals for your homestead. For us, it’s important to know what we are doing, when and why. This keeps all of us on track so that we don’t end up working on something that we don’t need to.

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How To Deal With Cabin Fever

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The days are short, the nights are cold, and you are probably bored out of your skull. If you are like many new homesteaders, myself included, you are chomping at the bit for spring and summer. There is no big garden harvests and sunlight is at a premium. But there are a ton of ways to deal with cabin fever as we wait for spring and summer.

Deal with cabin fever

What Is Cabin Fever

My definition of cabin fever is simply being stuck at home too long. For someone more outgoing, it’s probably spending a day or two at home unable to leave. For those of us at prefer to be home, it’s usually the boredom that comes with winter. There’s not a whole lot to do in the winter because winter is a time of rest.

If you think about the seasons, spring is the season of new beginnings. Livestock is laboring. Plants are starting to sprout. We are ALMOST ready to put the gardens in. Summer is the season of rush, rush, RUSH. There’s gardens to plant, fertilize, harvest, and preserve. Animals are getting fat for butchering. Fall is the mad dash to get everything finished up. Livestock is being butchered. Gardens are in their final stages before buttoning them up for winter. Kitchens are completely taken over by canning supplies, produce, and complete insanity. Firewood is being stacked for the cold months ahead.

But winter? That is the time to sit back and reflect. It’s the time to sit in front of the fire and enjoy time with your family. It’s the time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

It’s also the time where I am ready to go insane. I am a very type A person and I don’t do well with idle time. I always want to be doing something. So I decided to share the things I do to deal with cabin fever in hope that you can take advantage of them and not go insane.

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How To Prevent Or Deal With Cabin Fever

Plan

I am a planner. I love to sit down, organize my thoughts and goals. I like to use Bullet Journals to keep me on track with what I’m doing. Since they are fully customizable, they are the only planner that I use. That way when spring comes around, I can just start doing. This is also the time that I start looking back at my garden journal to see what did well, what didn’t and so on. Also, I will start looking at various seed companies like Territorial Seed Company and Eden Brother’s to see what seeds they have, and when to order. I will also make lists of things that need to be done, things that worked or didn’t, and all the other type A planning that goes with a homestead.

Interior Projects

Since winter is the best time to do in home projects, I start looking at our infrastructure list and see what I can work on. Usually it has something to do with filling cracks in the paneling and painting, though this year it’s probably going to be flooring. Another project that we will be working on is organizing the basement… again…. yay…. I’m not super excited about that one.

Livestock

At this point in the year, I usually have several goats that are pregnant. So I hang out with them and make sure they are doing ok. This really helps to deal with cabin fever simply because they are amazing and are very expensive therapy. I also check on their hay levels and our feed stores and start tracking how much hay they have used, and start planning on what they will need for next year. I will also keep an eye on their bedding and pine shaving stores to see how much we are going through.

Organize

I try really hard to keep everything organized throughout the year but let’s be real, the only downtime I have is winter and spring so I usually organize the house and declutter sometime in December and again in March. I call it my winter and spring cleaning. This is also when I put up or bring out the flannel sheets, heavier blankets/ curtains, etc. Another thing I do is organize my deep freezers so that I know how much meat we have, used, and how much more we need for the following year. Lastly, I go through my canning jars and supplies to start looking at what was eaten, how much and how many jars I have left.

Canning

Lastly, I can to help pass the time. Usually I will get about 50# of beans and peas and can them so that I don’t have to mess with them later. Since dried peas and beans are shelf stable on their own, I don’t have to worry about them in the height of canning season (July through September). I will also can soup left overs so that I have extras on hand. I will also work on breaking down any bulk purchases of flour, sugar, mesa and rice.

Whatever you do to deal with cabin fever, just remember it’s temporary. The spring and summer rush will come and you will be praying for the boredom of winter. Be sure to leave a comment below about how you deal with cabin fever!

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5 Ways To Save Money On Livestock Feed

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Whether you homestead on a large scale or small, livestock feed is expensive. To be fair, raising livestock in general is expensive. But with the holidays on us, plus supply chain issues and inflation, saving money is becoming more and more important. So here are the 5 ways we save money on livestock feed.

How To Save Money On Livestock Feed

  1. Just Add Water
  2. Grow it
  3. Microgreens or Sprouts- Another great way to stretch feed
  4. Buy in bulk
  5. Reduce animal numbers.

You could also make your own, but that is an entire post all on it’s own so make sure you subscribe below to be updated on that post!

Let’s talk about each one of these a little more in depth.

Before we get too far into this, I have a great course on the basics of goat care. I call it Goat Crash Course: Goat 101. In this course, I explain things like types of shelter, types of feeds and hays, basic assessments and so much more! Check it out!

Just Add Water

Soaking feed is number one for a reason. It is hands down the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to stretch your feed. All you need is a 5 gallon bucket with a tight lid for each different feed you plan to soak. For example: I soak/ ferment pig, chicken and goat feed, plus alfalfa and beet pulp, which I do together. So I have 4 buckets.

What’s the difference between soaking and fermenting? Time. If you leave your feed for too long in a bucket it should ferment. And if you leave it too long past that, it will mold. We soak our pig feed and the alfalfa/beet pulp overnight. The chickens and goats get fermented feed that we start 2-3 days prior and then add more as we go.

PS: if you ferment your pig feed for too long, or if there is corn in the feed, you will have drunk pigs…. Don’t ask how I know.

Grow It

Right now growing isn’t as easy because it’s winter. But growing crops for your animals is hands down the cheapest way to reduce feed costs. In fact, I would dare say that if you have enough property, or not a lot of animals, you could feasibly never buy a bag of feed. Between grasses for grazing, pasture rotation, and then expanding your garden to grow corn, barley, buckwheat, winter squashes, and more, you could never buy a bag of feed. This could save you thousands of dollars a year for just a few seed packets. You can get almost all of your seeds from Territorial Seed Company or Eden Brothers.

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What kind of fodder crops should you grow for your animals? That really depends on what animals you have and what they can eat. But corn is a great plant that is easy-ish to grow, store and feed out. Another good plant is pumpkins, and our animals love it. Winter squashes are another really great veggie that does well despite most attempts to kill it. It’s very easy to store and will last a long time in proper conditions. Another good option is putting your animals in your gardens after harvest. They can get all the left over yummies in there and clear your garden at the same time.

Microgreens/ Sprouts

This one can get very in depth and long winded. But to give you the highlights: take a tray, add soil, add microgreen seeds (densely packed), and then soak. With proper lighting and care you can grow fodder for your chickens and even pigs and goats. The 104 Homestead has a great post on sprouting barley. The Homesteading RD also has a great post on the different microgreens and the process of growing them. Just make sure that your animals can eat the greens. Rainbow Heirloom Seed Co. has some great seeds on Amazon.

What kind and how much to feed? Honestly, we are just starting out with our microgreens and there just isn’t that much information out there on feeding microgreens to livestock. But I will say this, we are growing greens that they can eat the plant or seed of. So if goats can eat broccoli we will feed them half a tray of broccoli microgreens and see what happens. I’ll post more when we know more or find more research of it.

Buy In Bulk

Buying bulk depends completely on two things; your ability to load/unload and your ability to store. When I talk about buying in bulk, I’m talking about half ton totes like these. We have neither so buying in bulk isn’t really a good option for us per se. But we do get a discount on how many pounds of feed we buy at a time. At our feed store if we buy a total of 500# of feed, we get a discount on all of the feed. It doesn’t matter if it’s pig, chicken and goat. I can move and store 10 50# bags of feed, I cannot do that with a ton of pig, a ton of chicken and a ton of goat feed.

What do you need to load/unload and store? Dolly’s to start if you are planning to store in 55gal drums. But if you are buying those big 1 ton totes? You’ll need pallets, pallet jack, and probably a tractor to get it off the delivery truck. There are places that you can go and fill 55 gallon drums but you have to find them first.

Another caveat to this is to shop around. While I absolutely adore Tractor Supply, I cannot afford $25-30 for a 50# bag of chicken feed. Not when I can get a better quality for half the price at my feed store. So ask other homesteaders/farmers in your area where they go for feed.

The other thing that buying in bulk helps with is reducing the amount of feed bags laying around your garage….. Not that I have that problem.

Reduce Your Animal Numbers

No one wants to talk about this, and for good reason. I don’t want to cull, sell or give away any of my animals. But the reality is that we can’t keep around animals simply because they are cute. If an animal doesn’t have a purpose, they don’t stay on the farm. The best way to save money on feed is to not have so many animals to feed. It’s just the cold hard truth. If you are trying to reduce your spending, buying feed from the feed store isn’t going to reduce your spending.

If you are having trouble choosing who needs to go, ask your self this: who is the oldest? Who is the meanest? Who is the fattest? Who is the hardest to handle? This should start to help you narrow it down a bit. Again, while not ideal and it breaks my heart, I know who is on the chopping block if we ever get to that point.

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Welcoming American Guinea Hogs To The Homestead

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About a month ago, we welcomed Bacon and Delilah to the homestead. We had talked about wanting to get pigs when we started the homestead, but I never really put a lot of thought into it. After a ton of research and a swift kick in the pants while at The Homesteaders of America Conference? We picked up two American Guinea Hogs.

American Guinea Hogs

Why We Chose The American Guinea Hog 

When we started looking at adding pigs to the homestead, there were quite a few concerns that I had about pigs. I was told that they are mean, bite, root, escape and eat a ton of food. The trade off was that if you could keep them contained and fed for six months, you would have a pig at market weight. Well, I’ve got some problems with that.

Mean/ Biting

While I don’t normally mind animals that are…. difficult, I do have a problem when they are large animals that are potentially deadly. I’m not saying that pigs are deadly. But I am saying that aggressive animals have no place on our homestead…. except Blu….and Bella.

After doing a ton of research we were really leaning towards the Berkshires, Duroc and Kune Kune. These breeds have great personalities and are rarely aggressive. Plus they are heritage breeds which is really important to me.

Rooting

Another issue with pigs is the damage they can cause to the soil. Our soil is extremely compacted with red clay under it all. But the top? It’s all sand. We want SOME rooting to help break the soil barriers so that more organic material gets mixed up in the soil. But we don’t want them to root so much that the soil biome is ruined. Or worse, stay in one area so long that they compact it with wallowing. Also, I was wanting a pig that would graze more than root. But since I don’t have pasture or grass yet, I need them to root.

This is getting to be a tall order for pig breeds.

Escaping

When looking at various breeds and watching many videos, we learned that pigs are incredibly smart. They are also more than willing to use their brute strength to break down fences. The only one that wasn’t going to constantly try and break free was the Kune Kune. But the Kune takes a long time to reach market weight, like 14+ months. This is getting harder and harder to pick a breed.

Feed Bill

The faster you want your pig to reach market weight, the more they are going to eat. The problem is, I don’t want to buy any more feed than I have to. The Duroc will reach market weight in five months, but to do that, we would have to give it grower feed, which is expensive. I talked about the real cost of raising livestock here. I’ve already got a $600/mo feed bill. Let’s not add to that.

I really wanted a grazing pig that would eat table scraps and left overs but ultimately would eat grass if we didn’t have scraps to give them.

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Enter The American Guinea Hogs

The American Guinea Hogs are amazing pigs and up until about 75 years ago, it was a staple animal on almost every single farm in the US. But with the rise of super markets and city living, they fell out of favor. In fact, up till recently, there were only about 100 on in the country.

American Guinea Hogs are grazing pigs that will get bigger than the Kune and do it faster. But AGHs are a small heritage breed of pig. That means that it’s not going to be one of the monsters that will yield hundreds of pounds of pork. But that’s okay. Because they are smaller, it makes raising and butchering a lot easier.

Bacon is extremely friendly, needing to have all the snuggles and scratches. If I come outside, he is at the gate grunting at me to come snuggle and scratch. Delilah is a little stand-offish but she is coming around. The good part about that is that they come when they are called. There have been a few rainy days here and the solar chargers have run out of juice. If they slip the fence, it’s not a big deal. I simply call them and they come running, no food needed.

Another great thing about the AGH is that I have bought two bags of feed in the six weeks they have been here. Between the table scraps and fermentation, they haven’t even eaten a whole bag yet!

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American Guinea Hogs Care

So what do you need to care for American Guinea Hogs? Not much if you already have livestock. We have been soaking and fermenting everyone’s feed, so we needed a few 5 gallon buckets. We already had feed buckets to bring them feed so no added expense there. We also bought a couple of Premier 1 fences with a solar charger. I mentioned above that our other charger ran out of juice, I suggest highly getting the one linked above. It doesn’t run out of juice! We just bought ours and it’s been amazing.

You do need to make sure you have some sort of a shelter. Right now, they are in our old kidding shed and that is working out very well. If they out grow it, we will look for something else but for right now, it’s good. They can handle lower temperatures as long as they are dry and have deep bedding.

Our AGHs are doing great and I absolutely love them. Butchering day is going to be brutal but at least I know they had the best life possible.

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How To Keep Livestock Warm In Winter

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As I write this post, it is 11/7/22 and it is 83* outside. While we live in a pretty mild winter climate here in Georgia, we do have some pretty cool/ cold weather. We’re not talking about -50 temperatures here. But we, and our animals, are not used to severe winter weather. No matter where you live, when it comes to taking care of livestock in the winter, there are a lot of things that you can do to help keep livestock warm in winter.

Livestock Warm In Winter

Before we get too far into this, I have a great course on the basics of goat care. I call it Goat Crash Course: Goat 101. In this course, I explain things like types of shelter, types of feeds and hays, basic assessments and so much more! Check it out!

Keeping Livestock Warm

There are a lot of different variables to consider before you just dump a load of pine shavings into their shelter and call it a day. You need to consider your climate, animals, and resources before you just start throwing options out there to see what sticks. If you live in an area that rains a lot but doesn’t get too cold, you may not need to worry so much about deep litter bedding and may need to focus more on where the shelter is located. If you live in a snow drift, maybe having a good barn or deep litter is the right way for you.

I’m going to go through all the considerations that you should consider before you pick a method. At the bottom of this post, I’ll go through all the different methods you can use to help keep your livestock warm in winter.

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Climate

Depending on where you live will ultimately depend on how much you have to do to keep them warm. If you live in the far north, you may need deep bedding, water bucket warmers, and draft free shelters. In the south, you can get away with a three sided shelter and hammer to break ice.

We live in the Northeast Georgia Mountains, basically the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Our summers are hot and humid, but our winters are pretty mild. Occasionally, we get snow but more often than not we get ice storms. Our winters tend to be very wet, too. That being said, we don’t REALLY need to operate with a deep litter method but we do anyways.

Animals

Something that you need to consider is that the vast majority of animals do not require all the things we think they do when it comes to keeping them warm. They have great winter coats that will keep them nice and toasty warm. I talked in depth about body condition of goats in this post, but I want to further that. If your animal has good body condition, a healthy coat, and good food? They don’t need coats, blankets, or other methods to keep them warm in the winter.

In fact, most livestock don’t really need other heating until the temperatures are steadily below 40*. Of course this assumes that they have good body condition, aren’t sick, etc. The key here is shelter and body condition.

Resources

The resources you may need; barns/shelters, heated waterers, pine shavings, etc are really all going to depend on what methods you decide work for you and your animals. Because not one size will fit all when it comes to your herd.

Methods To Keep Livestock Warm

Before you go dump resources, let’s talk about some situations and options.

You live in Illinois. Your average winter is 36in of snow fall and 27*. If you have one goat, one pig and a couple of chickens. You are probably going to want to consider a barn and the deep litter method. But if you’ve got 5 pigs and a couple of chickens, you could feasibly just have a good layer of straw or pine shavings and a 3 sided shelter.

You live in Maine. Your average snow fall is about 20ish inches and temperature is roughly 3*. But you live on the coast and it’s windy. You probably need a barn if you only have a few animals. If you have multiple of the same species, you could get away with only having a three sided structure.

Why? Well, when you have multiple of the same species, they will cuddle together to stay warm. If you only have a few of each kind, they may not snuggle up and that can cause their body temperatures to drop.

Finally, you live in Georgia. Your average snow fall is 1in a year (if your lucky) and temperature is 40*. But it’s Georgia so you may end up in a freak hurricane, tornado and snow storm in the same week. You’ve got one of a couple different types of animals. You could get away with a dog igloo and some straw. Literally. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 animals. Get more dog igloos. It’ll be cheaper.

Things You Can Do To Keep Them Warm

Deep Litter– This is probably my favorite during the winter but most hated chore in the spring. With a deep litter method, you pretty much dump a new bag of pine shavings or straw on top of the old bedding. Some people will spot clean the urine and feces, but we don’t. As the shavings, feces and urine break down (compost), it will create more heat for the goats. This method works well for us because we don’t have to worry as much if a goat gets “left out” by the other goats. Unfortunately, come spring, this is a monster chore.

Heaters– I’m not a fan of heaters in a barn because of the fire hazard. BUT sometimes they are necessary. Whether it’s small kids, piglets, or a really cold night, you do what you gotta do. I really like this one. The fire hazard is greatly reduced. Another option is to have all of your animals together in a barn. They can have their own separate areas but the more animals together, the more heat they will all produce.

Feed– This is a big one for ruminants, but all mammals create heat by digesting food. That being said, during the summer we don’t keep food in the barn. In the winter, they get a full bag of hay every night. If they eat it, they stay warm. If they spill it? They still stay warm with the bedding. Our animals have pretty much unlimited access to feed during winter. While that may seem counter productive, especially when feed may be hard to come by, it will help ensure they survive the winter.

Drafts/ Wind– If you are putting them in a three sided shelter, make sure that the wind can’t get in. Since most winter winds come from the north, make sure to face the opening to the south. But make sure to check your area and see which direction the wind comes from. For drafts, this is similar to the winds, but a little different. We want airflow in the barn but not so much that it creates cold spots that the animals have to heat up. The best way to do this is to have south opening “vents”. On our barn, we just cut the T1-11 so that top was open on the south side.

Reducing Moisture– Hypothermia is a thing. We learned in childhood that after a day of playing in the snow, we needed to come inside, take off our wet clothes and get warmed up. Well, it’s similar with livestock, except they can’t take off their clothes. We want to keep moisture reduced as much as possible. To do this, we make sure roofs don’t leak, rain can’t come in, and the ground is dry. The deep litter method can come in here because you can add bedding to the areas that are wet to help absorb them.

Maintaining Good Body Condition– I cannot stress this enough! If you are growing animals for meat, or you’ve got pregnant or lactating animals, you HAVE TO maintain good body condition. If your animal does not have good body condition going into winter, they will not be able to stay warm. We almost lost Champ this past winter due to poor body condition AND being pregnant. Everything she ate went to keeping herself warm and her babies alive. Thankfully, everyone pulled through (except two still born kids). This year we have been on top of their feed and body conditions and hopefully, this won’t be a problem. If you are raising meat animals, it’s the same thing, if they are not fed enough they will lose their conditioning and they will eat to stay warm vs eat to get to market weight.

Heading Into Winter

Winter is a time to sit back, relax and enjoy your bounty from the year. It’s also a time for planning for next year. There are chores to do, but as a whole winter is a resting season. If you can prepare now, before it’s too cold, you will find yourself and your animals will be able to rest as well.

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2023: Infrastructure And Self Reliance

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When Jared and I sat down to go over our infrastructure for 2023; the projects, plans, and goals, we really wanted to get us to a place were the projects were done. That way we could focus our finances in other areas. Now, we all know that projects on the homestead are never truly done. But if we can get some of these bigger projects out of the way? We will be well on our way to self reliance and that is huge.

What Does Self Reliance Look Like To Us

The best way to set up goals is to ask yourself some questions. Like WHY do you want to be self reliant? What does self reliance look like to you? How are you going to become self reliant? These questions will have answers, but more often than not, they lead to more questions. But to give you our starting off point, we see self reliance as a way to decrease spending, reduce off farm hours, and create a eco-system here on the farm.

The more we become self reliant, the less we will spend at the feed and grocery store. The less money we spend at the grocery and feed store, the quicker we can pay off the farm and any debt we have. The quicker we pay off our debts, the more we can reduce off farm hours. If we can create an eco-system where our garden and land feed our livestock, and we can harvest our garden and livestock. Then we will be back to reducing our need for the feed and grocery store.

This symbiotic relationship with our land and livestock are paramount in not only becoming self reliant, but being good stewards to our land and shepherds to our herds.

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Setting Up Our Infrastructure

As I’m sure you can tell, Self Reliance is the keyword for our lives for the next few years. It is the cornerstone of every single thing we are doing and planning. So we are starting the first year with infrastructure. I talked in depth about what infrastructure is in this blog post. But the point of that post was to get you to think about your own infrastructure and what that means for your homestead.

When it comes to our homestead, we are really trying to focus on self reliance. Keeping in mind that the 3 big dreams are spending less money, reducing off farm hours, and creating an eco-system are the most important things. We created our infrastructure list and plans around that.

The goal of 2023 is to set up the homestead with those three big dreams in mind. For example: we have made the hard decision that if we can’t sell our bucklings, they will become meat goats. We’ve also made the decision that we will no longer buy chickens because we like the way they look, or how many eggs they lay. All chickens will be a meat variety instead of dual purpose. The gardens are going to go be overhauled into a “bulk garden” and a “kitchen” garden. We are going to start working on water movement so that we are no longer laying hoses throughout the property to get water to animals and gardens.

Meat

Then there’s closing the holes in our food security. One of the things we decided was to focus on heritage breeds. While they take more time to mature, they are more efficient with what they eat. We recently purchased 2 American Guinea Hogs so that we can stop relying on other farms for our pork. We are also going to be purchasing several Bourbon Red turkeys to further reduce our dependance on the grocery store or other farms.

The caveat to these animals is that we are also only going to buy animals that can work as well. One of the things that we learned at the HOA conference in Virginia, was that the animals should work for you too. Pasture rotation is a thing we knew about, but when listening to the lectures, we learned about what pigs can do for revitalizing the soil.

Gardens

Our gardens are going to look very different then they did last year. We are going to bring the pigs and chickens into our side yard and allow them to root, scratch and poop on that area and will turn it into another garden. That garden will hold all of our squash, cucumber, melon, herbs, etc. Then we will turn our old garden into the “bulk” garden for corn, tomatoes, peppers and food for the animals.

We are making lists of what we buy at the grocery store and of that, what can we grow? One of the things we can grow to spend less money growing cumin. We use a TON of cumin and at $20 a container, that’s a lot of money every year. It’s the same thing with lettuces. We feed our bearded dragons mustard, turnip, collard greens. At $4 a bag, and we by 4 bags a month? That’s a huge savings if we grow those things ourselves. Not to mention, that the pigs will eat the excess turnips.

Animals

We already discussed the hogs, turkeys and chickens. But to go a little more in depth, every single animal on our homestead is going to have a purpose. And if they require additional feed that the farm can’t produce? That is something we need to look at or they aren’t going to stay long. This has led to some hard decisions when it comes to our personal animals.

We aren’t going to just get rid of them. But this thought process has shown us the amount of money spent on the dogs, cats, dragons and snakes for pleasure, hurts our bottom line of spending less. That means 1) no new animal will be brought to the homestead unless it serves a purpose and the farm can sustain it. And 2) has made us really look into how we can feed animals alternatively without affecting their health.

Another point with the animals is keeping around animals that are not producing. The animal lover in me struggles with the idea of just butchering an animal because it is no longer useful. But the homesteader in me says, but that’s their job. It’s very conflicting and confusing.

Permaculture And Self Reliance

This word has been rattling around my head for the better part of a month. One of the things we have been talking about pre-conference was that while we could afford our $600/mo feed bill, we didn’t want to. After the conference, we realized that we could grow most of the food our animals need without having to use as much feed. This lead us to the idea of permaculture.

The plan, and resulting infrastructure, is that we are going to use electric netting to rotate the pigs and chickens throughout the property. We’ve had a lot of predator problems with our chickens and we are hoping that by giving them a safe space, with electrified netting, this will keep the predators down. For the pigs, we are planning on giving them a large space to root and poop in hopes that they will break the soil and allow the good things to get into the soil. After they have worked the soil in that area, we will move them to the next area and let them continue through the property.

While I love my compost, and we will always have and use it, the idea of schlepping wheelbarrows up hill and all over the property is not my idea of a good time. BUT I can take bedding waste, wasted hay, and other compostables and just put it in where the chickens are. They can spread it around and the soil can break it down there.

Another part of permaculture is instead of ripping out gardens when they are done, we can put the pigs, chickens or goats in there and let them “rip out” the garden. This will reduce our work load, feed them, and put them to work. That seems like a win to me.

Bringing Self Reliance Into The House

While at the HOA conference, we were told that the house is not as important as the land. I, wholeheartedly, disagree. While the personal how’s and why’s of that is not important, what is important is that having a safe, secure, and comfortable home, is just as important as the land. And yes, part of it is vanity on my end. While I don’t want the best of the best and need designer things. I do need my home to be safe, secure, and comfortable.

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We have to update our electrical panel, breakers, and some wiring. We need to take down some trees that would absolutely demolish our home if they fell. Then there’s the fire safety aspect of putting in tile accents in front of the fire place. We have to paint the exterior of our home because cedar siding will be damaged if it is not taken care of property. Oh, and our back deck is about to fall of the house. So while yes, the land is important so is the house.

I understand what these other homesteaders were talking about in regards to making sure that the land is the priority. But at the same time, so is the home. I know that they don’t mean, “Don’t worry about the electrical panel! You need to put pasture rotation into effect first.” But at the same time, me being comfortable in my home is equally as important as the land. And to be honest, we can do both.

The Food Storage Room

One of the other ways we are going to work on our self reliance is to finish up our food storage room. While most will call this a pantry, it’s going to be much more than that. In this storage room, we will have all of our canned goods, garden harvests, coffees, etc. It will also have a dehumidifier and vents on a thermometer to help control the temperatures. It will be insulated and have a door to keep animals out. We will also be storing our crockpots, stock pots, and other larger kitchen appliances in there so that we can reduce the amount of space they take up in the kitchen.

So I will be working on making the house comfortable for my family, while Jared is out there cutting down trees and replacing the electrical panel. I may even help him paint the house.

What Is Your Self Reliance Infrastructure

At the end of the day, you have to do what is right for your family, your land and your animals. It’s not about them or me. It’s about you and what you are trying to accomplish with your life. I hope this post has opened your eyes to what you want to do with your homestead.

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Our Thoughts On The Homesteaders Of America 2022 Conference

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When we go on trips, we try to have a purpose behind the trip. When we went to Yellowstone, we wanted to have fun and see all the mountains and animals. But we also wanted to make it educational for all of us, get some photography to sell, and enjoy time with family. When we went to Virginia for the Homesteaders of America Conference, our purpose was purely educational and they knocked it out of the park.

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Homesteaders of America Conference: Day 1

Prior to leaving for the conference, we made sure to look at the schedule and see which classes/ lectures we wanted to take. We put those into our Google calendar so that we weren’t having to scramble to figure out where we wanted to be.

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Planting Fodder For Livestock

The first class we took was Shawn and Beth Dougherty about planting fodder crops for livestock. Let me tell you, this couple is extremely engaging. If you haven’t heard of them, check out their website at the link above. Their lecture, and their entire philosophy, is to reduce input onto the farm, increase soil fertility and become more self sustaining. They talked in depth about planting crops that preserve well and that animals can eat.

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This was fascinating. While I knew that we could plant food for animals, I hadn’t really thought much about it. In my head, I planted my garden for my family and the animals got any excess. I figured, animal food came in the form of grain from the feed store. Again, I knew that we could grow their food, but didn’t really think much beyond that. But with a $600/mo feed bill, I’m starting to see the draw to growing their food.

We walked away with more information on rotational grazing, increasing soil fertility and how to use livestock for more than just enjoyment.

Homestead Security Class

The second class was for homestead security, and to be honest, I tuned out most of it. This was a class for Jared. While I 100% believe in homestead security, it’s just not something I’m interested in. I didn’t take a single note. Not to mention that within about 10 minutes, I was bored out of my mind. I actually left the class and went to walk around to the different vendors. Jared really enjoyed the class, but I don’t know that he took any notes. Mainly because the class covered things that he/we were already doing.

Farm Set Up and Checklist

This was put on by Daniel Salatin and one I enjoyed almost as much as the Dougherty’s. Daniel talked about how to set up farms and how livestock should be the last thing brought to the homestead…. oops. But the biggest take away that we needed to work on getting water capture and stop relying on hoses and buckets to transport water.

Another thing that was interesting was pasture rotation. Now, we knew pasture rotation is extremely important. But one of the things that we struggled with was the idea of permanent fencing for that rotation. We want our animals to free range, this by itself will reduce worm load. But there are a ton of other reasons to rotate pasture. And at the top of that list is soil conservation and fertility.

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Homesteaders of America Conference: Day 2

We were extremely excited about day 2. There were a lot of good speakers lined up, but really it was the day we got to go home. I loved the conference and we will definitely go back, but I missed my goats…. and kids.

Sustainable Broiler Breeding

This class was enlightening because we had raised meat chickens already and weren’t a fan. We wanted to move away from buying broilers and move towards hatching our own. We didn’t necessarily want hybrids or other crosses like the Cornish X. The biggest reason was expense. If I have to buy chicks every year to feed my family, then what I am going to do when I can’t buy them?

Tom from McMurray Hatchery explained that while there are birds that are dual purpose, they are not really meat birds. For example, a Brahma is marketed as a meat bird, but it takes 1-2yrs for it to reach market weight. That’s a lot of feed for a big bird. Not to mention that once it hits market weight, the meat will probably be very tough.

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Tom’s suggestion for a sustainable bird was a New Hampshire Red. They grow quickly but not so quick that they suffer from the major health problems that a Cornish x will. He also suggested Rocks and Sussex due to their fast growth and good market weights at young ages.

Sustainable Homestead

Shawn and Beth had another class that we were excited to sit in on. This one was similar to their fodder crop class but focused more on how to grow your SOIL and reduce input to the farm. Their idea is to stop bringing input onto the farm and let the farm grow and nurture itself.

The big thing with a lot of these well known farmers like the Salatin’s, Dougherty’s, Rhodes’, etc is that you want to create an environment where the soil is protected, encouraged and treated like the most important thing on the farm.

The idea is that you want to use animals to do the work. You put goats/cows in a pasture and let them eat the grass, browse and other tall material. This will allow the plant to kill off roots which will leave carbon in the soil. Then you bring in the chickens. The chickens will peck through the manure, eating bugs and larvae, spread the manure and lay their own. They will eat the low lying grasses as well. After the chickens you bring in the pigs to eat any left over grains, manures, and break/till the soil.

When it’s done, the pasture has a chance to soak up all that carbon, nitrogen, etc. and have a chance to take off. It will improve the soil. New plants that couldn’t grow in impacted soil. But when these creatures come in, they are able to rework the soil and increase the fertility of it. Soil, sunlight and water are the keys to good farming.

Pastured Livestock

Daniel Salatin’s class on pastured livestock echoed the same things from his previous class on setting up a homestead, as well as Shawn and Beth’s class on setting up a sustainable homestead. But it was much more in depth on the HOW. He talked about the 4 R’s of pasture management: Rotation, Rest/Recovery, Removal, and Recon.

Rotation is pretty obvious. Rotate the animal onto new forage daily, or weekly depending on the animal.

Rest/ Recovery- allow the plants, soil, etc. to recover. When plants in the area have reached mature potential you can allow animals back onto the pasture.

Removal of nutrients- we want the soil to pull nutrients back into the ground. If that doesn’t happen, then the manure should be removed. Having multiple animals move through the same pasture but eat different things is paramount to creating not only good soil but healthy animals.

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Recon/ Observation- Did it work? Daniel said to take a picture of the same pasture during all 4 seasons and do it every year at those same times. Why? We want to see if we are improving the soil and plants in that area. If we are making it worse and it is not recovering, then we need to do something different.

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Catching Free Bees

This was my favorite class of all because I want honey bees so badly. Unfortunately, I am the only one that will take care of them because everyone else is terrified of bees. So until I am ready to take over that chore 100%, I am putting them off. Plus the cost is huge. You’ve got boxes, frames, paint, bees themselves? I’m not totally ready yet.

But listening to Kaylee talk about catching a swarm and how to do it, got me thinking. If we can set up our farm so that everything they need is here? Maybe we can do it?

We learned about how to catch bees and how to work with them, which will decrease your cost for getting bees by 100%.

Our Thoughts On The Conference

I think that anyone could learn something from this conference. It’s a great place to go and learn, to ask questions. Every single speaker that lectured also answered questions and were so passionate about it. We were able to talk with Shawn and Beth about free ranging our goats. They not only answered our questions but gave advise on how to do it effectively within our own “ecosystem” of animals and plants on the homestead.

We walked away with new products to try and books to read.

But most importantly, we walked away realizing that we are not alone. There are thousands of people out there just like us. Just trying to live in harmony with nature, to get back to the land. Raise our children and animals in a way that Mother Nature would approve. To get dirty, be wild, and have fun. These people are a wealth of knowledge and they are willing teachers.

If you have the opportunity to go to next year’s conference, I highly recommend going. Even if you don’t have a homestead yet. Even if you are just dreaming. It is absolutely worth it.

If you can’t get to the conference, here are some books that I highly recommend based off what I learned while I was there.

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Traveling When You Homestead

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As I sit here writing this, I am supposed to be packing, cleaning and getting ready to hit the road in two days. We are going out of town for the Homesteaders Of America Conference in Virginia this weekend. Instead of packing and getting last minute chores done, I sit here thinking about all the things I need to do, but I am obviously not doing. But all of this did get me thinking, brand new homesteaders are probably trying to figure out the logistics of traveling when you homestead.

When most people travel, they have to find someone to watch their dogs, cats, maybe a snake or lizard. Usually, it is not a big deal. But when you have gardens that need to be harvested, animals that need to be fed and watered, medications to be given, sometimes finding someone is extremely difficult.

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Traveling When You Homestead

I’m not going to lie, traveling when you homestead can be a logistical nightmare. It’s not as easy as it was pre homestead. But your days of traveling aren’t over, they just look a little different now. Some homesteaders rarely leave their property. Others will only travel a certain distance away. Still others will globe trot in the winter. There is no right or wrong answer to traveling.

Our Travels

Pre-homestead, we just needed to find someone that could either stay at the house with our four dogs, two cats and three bearded dragons or at least let dogs out to go to the bathroom and feed them. Heading out for a quick overnight or weekend trip was as simple as calling one of Jared’s buddies from the fire department to have them do a drive by the house and let the dogs out.

Post- homestead? There’s a lot more.

The first time we went out of town, we went to Yellowstone for a week. One of my friends from work was willing to stay the week and hang out with everyone. She had a crash course in goats and we prefilled their foods, medications and anything else we could to make her life easier. She did fantastic and I am extremely grateful for her.

The second trip is to Virginia for the conference. We were lucky that our neighbor is willing to help us out since he will be home all weekend. But how do you travel when you are knee deep in kidding season, or canning season?

Below is how I get prepared to leave the homestead for a few days.

Getting A Farm Sitter

The first thing to do is to line up your farm sitter for your trip. If you’ve got friends or family that is willing to help out, all the better. But if not, check with your local 4-H or FFA. There are a ton of kids that are well versed in farming and would love to make some money. You could also get in touch with your local feed store and see if they know of anyone that would be willing to come out and help.

There are a ton of people out there that are willing to help out if the pay is right. There is no set rate for this, either. Some people who only have a few chickens and need someone to harvest the garden is going to charge less than someone you load chores on.

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Have your farm sitter come out to the farm to go over everything with you. I leave a typed list of all the things that need to be done in order of animals. So goats have their own list, dogs, chickens, etc.

If you have a friend coming over and they know nothing about feeding animals, go ahead and pre-fill buckets or jars with feed, so all they have to do is dump and go.

Clean Up Before You Go

This isn’t just cleaning your house. It’s mucking out the stalls, barns and coops and laying fresh bedding. Move chicken tractors, electric netting, etc. so that they don’t have to mess with it. It’s fresh sheets on the bed if they are spending the night. Make sure that they do not have to do that stuff while your gone.

When we leave, we make sure that the only thing they have to do is feed and water animals, let out dogs, and collect eggs.

Harvesting The Garden

If you are in mid swing with canning and harvesting the garden, life just got a little harder. But it’s still not impossible. When we went to Yellowstone, we told my friend, you can keep anything the garden produces and any eggs the hens lay. But if it’s the middle of August and you are harvesting the garden every day, that’s a lot of produce to “lose”. Here are some quick tips:

Peppers can be frozen, tomatoes too.

Cucumbers and summer squash can go to the goats, chickens and pigs.

Watermelons can stay on the vine for a few days extra.

Look into other ways your produce can be saved until you get back and have your farm sitter do that.

Other Random Chores

Sometimes you have to leave and you have a goat in milk. Or sometimes you had an accidental breeding and now you are going on vacation when your favorite doe is going to kid. You’ve got eggs in the incubator or you’ve got chicks in the brooder. Maybe you have a last minute trip and need to butcher chickens. Or you have a sick animal that needs medications.

All of these things happen. A good farm sitter is invaluable. In theory, you should find someone that is comfortable doing all of those things. The reality is Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. That’s not to say that anyone is at fault, quite the opposite. If you can plan around your vacation, and prepare your farm sitter, everything will be fine.

Tractor Supply

In the situation of a goat in milk, see if your farm sitter is comfortable milking. If not, try drying her up before you leave. If that won’t work, think about putting her baby back with her while you’re gone. Another option is to see if you have a goat friend that would be willing to keep her while you’re gone.

Prepare

The best thing you can do when you are preparing for travel is to be as prepared as possible. Our vet has our credit card on file so that if anything happens, we are good to go. We have lists for the farm sitter. Our neighbors are willing to help out and have knowledge of animals but have actually met our animals.

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Having a good infrastructure in place is also key to making sure that you are good to go. Setting up your farm to be automated, like automatic waterers for the garden and animals, helps tremendously.

Enjoy

Lastly, enjoy your trip! Seriously, you have probably earned it. Especially in the fall/ winter when everything is buttoned up for the season and it’s time to relax and plan for spring.

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