January 6
This day definitely did not go as planned. I got off work over 3 hours late due to an emergency call just before shift change. Loosing that time at home threw off my whole schedule. Which lead me to thinking about just how planning works….and doesn’t work on the homestead. Planning is imperative. Without a plan, I find myself overwhelmed and “spinning my wheels”, so to speak. However, I can not allow myself to get so stuck to a plan that I am unable to be flexible and make adjustments to the plan on the fly. When you have animals, they don’t follow your schedule. The weather refuses to follow a plan. There are so many variables that are beyond your control when you are dealing with nature and animals on the homestead that you have to keep some flexibility to prevent projects from creating anxiety and overwhelm. I’m going to explain how we decide on a plan for significant projects and what we do when we have to adjust the plans that we have made.
I will preface all this with the fact that kids are constantly finding humor in my inherent need to create lists and make plans. But when you have a multi-generational homestead, and all the families have other activities and things to do that may not be a part of the homestead plan, it really helps to have an organized plan. Though this plan fluid, and make change several times as the project progresses, it helps to keep everyone on the same page and focused on the end goals. Just last night during dinner, I asked Jessa what she felt like the most important goal for 2021 should be. I asked JD the same question and followed up both their answers with my own. During the conversation, we came up with many goals. But we all seemed to agree the three different things mentioned, would be our three main goals for 2021. I won’t go into detail here, but just say that knowing the end goal is very important to planning the project. I learned about “backward design” when I was teaching Paramedicine at a local community college the past 3 years. We design our program with “backward design”. The process works well, and works for many things other than curriculum design. For the coming year, I am going to try using “backward design” to plan our projects. You all can follow along and see how it works out for us. The first step is decide on the end goal, which is what we accomplished last night while having dinner.
Now that we have decided on our three major goals for the coming year, we will next take each major goal, or project and break it down into the steps required to accomplish that goal. We won’t get into fine details…that will come later. For example, the project that is important to me is to get the garden area re-vamp completed. I will need to break that into steps. I will just do a “brain dump” of the major steps necessary to get that done. My steps might be some like: 1. Move red portable storage building, 2. Put up high tunnel greenhouse, 3. Build raised beds, 4. Move small green house. I will need then decide what order makes the most sense to accomplish these steps. For example, I know I can’t put up the high tunnel until we move the red portable storage building, because the area when the portable storage building sits is the spot that I want to put the high tunnel. Also it would not make sense to build all the raised beds before we move the small greenhouse, if we plan to put it in the center of the garden, because they would be in the way of moving it in. Even as I am typing this, I am considering that we may want to put the new garden in another location that would require less steps….and it has a water hydrant close by. I think my plan is about to change….and I’m ok with that.
Once you have each goal broken into steps, you are ready to break each step into tasks. In my example above, if I look at the step of moving the red portable storage building, I will need to consider what all needs to happen to move the building. Of course, it will depend on it’s destination, but since we have already discussed changing the purpose of that building into a place to store our freezers to free up space for more butchering/processing area in the Canning Kitchen (Jessa’s main goal for the year) I will have several tasks that will need to be done move the building: 1) move panels behind the canning kitchen, 2) level ground, 3) haul a load of gravel, 4) level gravel, 5) acquire blocks for leveling building, 6) plan transport method, 7) organize moving day.
Many times the most time consuming part of a project is the prep work. As you can see, most of the tasks involved don’t have anything to do with moving the building. When we determine when we want to move the building, we can then place the tasks on the family calendar, and accomplish them a few at a time without feeling rushed and pressured. The theory here is great, but we are a family of known procrastinators, so it will take some motivation and self-control to make this happen. I am excited to see if working with a planning process like this will help us reduce the overwhelm and anxiety of accomplishing our big goals in 2021. Keep checking in….I will honestly report on how things are going.
Thank you for sharing. We have to lunch or meet up sometime. I would like to share with you the changes I have accomplished here on my 80…with the goal of making it efficient and more manageable, clean and attractive, productive and ecologically respectful. That first year Dean passed I did almost nothing except what turned out to be one of the biggest changes, i.e., creating the series of ponds out of the swampy bottoms. (thanks to Chad’s dozing skills) With a pond with a dam we could finally access the facing hillside, adding pasture and lessening weeds. The drainage this provided improved the pastures more than I had hoped for, and we discovered there are springs all thru the lower area, so the ponds do not even lower in a drought, As you have probably seen, in the last two spring/summers I had 3 deep raised beds built, but first had to remove a huge dying (lightning struck) post oak, and an even larger sycamore that would eventually have destroyed a barn or the shop if it fell in a wind..(it was about 10 ft circumference and very tall) So the first summer with the beds started with very late planting. This last year it was ready. Now I have a large cold frame built over 8 ft of one bed, with recycled french doors. The doors came from my downside front entrance as the frame was badly rotting out and replacing the whole entrace with non-rotting wood and a single door with side lites was one of this year’s priorities. A year after I was on my own, my first big project on the house was remodeling the sunroom before winter. That was urgent and really helped my winter plants. I have replaced almost all the fencing as needed, exterior, then participated in a FSA program that helped me afford interior fencing for woods protection, and electric fencing that gave me 6-7 rotatable pastures. This spring will be a first to really make this work as it was completed last summer. We have rebuilt and repurposed the 100yr old small barn, finally rebuilt the 800 feet of 4 board fence along the drive that blew out (being old) the day the storms came thru that sunk the Branson duck boat. I finished painting the face side of all that fencing in early Dec. Yesterday my son dropped off another 5 gal. to finish the backsides when weather allows…(the front took 10 gal.).. I had the house cedar siding stained, (1st in 15 yrs), and then did the decks and railings (extensive) with sealter that fills the cracks of aging wood, as the whole area needed urgent attention. This August and fall I was finally able to turn attention to my indoors, installing a mini-split for AC and heat, and a propane Vermont Castings stove that has the visible fire beauty of a fireplace, and added a faux brick(tile) wall and mantle behind and above it, because I have Wanted a Mantle all my adult life!. I think it is beautiful, I have tried really hard to prioritize, work with the seasons, and manage as budget friendly as possible. I like to think Dean is smiling down at this. Now I need to sell some cows! They are doing really well., and I guess so am I. I am at a point where I can breathe easier. OH, I make lists, for me, for projects and who needs to help me (Henry, the part time fellow) or a son, I make inside the house lists, farm lists, Henry or the high school helper lists, and “other/misc…” Little by little I am sorting the shop – the carpentry business remains, tubs of electric, plumbing parts, always a pile of “ask Henry what this is” never throwing anything out until I ask. lol.and looking to make the workshop a place I can use as well as others in the future.