I don’t know who else might have homestead goals, but I figure there are a lot of tendencies toward “local” and “self-sufficient” here. You don’t have to have livestock or be moving off grid - maybe you just want to plant a blueberry bush, can some tomatoes, put up a clothesline, or make some decorations from stuff that grows in your yard.
now that I have some other things under control, I am trying to be more intentional, remember I do not have to do everything at once, and avoid “putting out fires” (by at least not starting them myself.)
my big goals for this year are:
KEEP RECORDS - I started this in February. So far, so good.
Vegetable garden:
finish planting spring/summer crops tomorrow
get as much of my food from it as possible, but remember that I don’t have to optimize the harvest - free chicken food is good too.
plant a few fall veggies
by December - clean off the fence line, remove sagging/rusted fence section, have everything inside the fence planted or under mulch/sheet compost
herb garden (this is new):
Decide what I want to plant in it next year (this year is a few perennials plus “tuck things in randomly”)
finish rock border
fruit garden:
mulch and maintain strawberries and raspberries (both planted this year), elderberry starts (last year) and blueberry bush.
learn to make more elderberry starts.
Chickens:
finish chickshaw before current crop of 43 chicks needs it! (My kids are actually building this - it is half done, chicks are three weeks old.)
prep winter quarters for new layer flock (will not keep all 43 - chickshaw sleeps 40, but will probably cut back to 36.)
Goats:
new pasture fencing for buck pen and new rotational pasture
sell bucklings
Breed all 4 Does (my herd was significantly reduced the last two years by old age - one year I had a lot of pretty doelings and I kept them all.)
buy two goats IF and ONLY IF I find just what I want.