2012 Homesteading Goals

With the new year comes the assessment of what we were able to accomplish last year, what we still want to do to make our homestead more complete and what, realistically, we think we can handle this year.

Look at how green everything is!

First, a recap of 2011:

1.      Finished the house and moved in!  That was a feat in and of itself.

2.      We planted our 1^st big garden and were able to squirrel away quite a bit of home canned/frozen
         goods for the winter.

3.      Chickens!  Hubz built the coop from scratch and we got our 1^st egg early December.

4.      Our sidewalks were formed and poured, with the help of my brother and brother-in-law.

5.      Installed our tv antenna.

6.      The majority of the yard got seeded.

7.      Started a compost pile.  ‘Pile’ is the best way to describe it.  It’s an ugly mess.

Now, the list of what we’d like to do is huge and involves new buildings, lots of fencing, an orchard, a berry patch and more funds than we’ll be able to spare this year.  After we took off our rose-colored glasses, these are our homesteading goals for 2012, in no particular order:

·         Finish seeding the yard.

·         Install an outdoor clothesline and put it to good use.

·         Build a 3-bin composter out of salvaged wooden pallets.

·         Increase the garden’s size and be more attentive to it.

·         Double our canning / preserving efforts and include crock pickles, sauerkraut and pesto.

·         Install split rail fence between us and our neighbor to the North – tack up hardware cloth or
           chicken wire along the bottom to keep chickens on our side of the fence and out of his mulch.

·         Once the above is accomplished, allow the chickens more time free ranging.

·         Raise 25-30 meat chickens.

·         Landscape around the front of the house and include some perennial herbs in the plan.

·         Construct a 3 sided wood shed to keep firewood under cover.

That's the list folks! We might be biting off more than we chew, but it at least gives us a starting point.  Hopefully by this time next year we will have had the time, the gumption, the energy and the funds to get a good bit of this done.  I hope you're able to reach your goals this year as well!


I'm linking up with the Homestead Barn Hop.