How We Write Homestead Goals

Last week, I wrote about why we set our homestead goals for the next year in October.  It's a great time of year for us to do so, and it helps me to stay on top of what needs done, when.  But I didn't really delve much into the hows and whys of setting goals for your homestead or what our goals for the upcoming year are.  So here are a few ideas to get you started on your goal-setting, whether you are "farming" a window box in a New York apartment window sill or 1,000 acres in North Dakota.

The first thing I do is daydream.  Seriously.  I ask myself, "If money, time, and talent were no limits, what would I want to do or to have or to accomplish?"  I jot down some of these pie-in-the-sky ideas as they come to me and let them marinate for a while.  I also look to other homesteaders for inspiration by cruising Pinterest and some of my favorite blogs.  You can get great ideas and a feel for what others are doing by simply searching "Homesteading Goals."  A few great reads on this subject can be found here from Montana Homesteader, here from Whistle Pig Hollow, and here from Imperfectly Happy Homesteading.

Keep in mind that these blogs are only for inspiration and brainstorming, not for comparison and despair!  They may be years ahead of you in their gardening, animal husbandry, or building projects.  They may also have resources that are out of your reach or not relevant to your interests.  The point is just to get the ideas flowing.

We definitely want to grow more rainbow carrots next year!

Next, take the time to think about what you did this year.  Did it work?  Great! Maybe you'd like to expand those projects to produce more next year.  We had a great time with our rainbow carrot crop last year and I want to give them more space in the garden this year.  Was something a dismal failure?  Maybe you need to research and revise your approach for next year.  Our squash was on that list.  I plan to research squash bug control before trying again.  Could something be done more efficiently?  How so?  Add all of these notes to your list.

The last phase is taking a look at all of these items on your list and prioritizing them, then breaking them down into manageable bits.  Maybe some of your pie-in-the-sky dreams included producing all of your own food.  That is a huge goal that may take years to approach.  But, you could set a goal of producing all your own eggs this year.  That would add "building chicken coop" and "raising chicks" to your goal list for the next year.  You might also be able to grow your own herbs.  That would add "build herb bed" and "start herb seeds" to the goal list.  Think about each larger goal and break it into doable steps that are realistic with your property, your time limitations, your finances, and your personal and family values.  Don't sabotage yourself by making goals so big that your year will end in frustration, but don't sell yourself short either!  Just because something may not be completed this year doesn't mean you can't get a start on it, and that is a goal of it's own!

Also, eat lots of muffins while you make your list.  Trust me.

Our Goals
Here are our 2016 Homestead Goals to give you a little inspiration.

• Plant more fruits (apple trees, bush cherries, raspberries, and blueberries)
• Expand garden by at least two raised beds
• Plantings or fence for privacy along front and west edge of property
• Landscape around house
• Buy solar lighting for indoor/outdoor use
• Plant medicinal plants integrated into landscaping
• Repaint chicken coop
• Search for more second-hand canning equipment
• Enclose back of carport for storage
• Add film to girls' bedroom windows to increase energy efficiency
• Create outdoor sitting area for family time
• Build connections and community with neighbors
• Figure out a somewhat elegant recycling storage solution
• Make 3-unit pallet compost bin
• Build a rocket stove
• Grow greens indoors all winter
• Try a chicken fodder system for the winter
• Buy gardening books specific to our USDA zone

 Feel free to share you homesteading goals in the comments!  I'm always looking for new inspiration!

The More Things Change...

We have recently felt very much like Reeds on the river, if it was a tumbling, tumultuous river.  Maybe with some water falls.  However, we have landed safe on familiar shores.  We are back in Illinois after some crazy adventures with tiny house living and enjoying life, but for right now, home is where we need to be.

That doesn't mean we are doing things differently, though.  We are still up to the same things, gardening, raising chickens and children, trying to keep things simple and elegant.  For now, I will just share some pictures of where we are at this moment.

Tiny gardeners helping with the raised beds.

You can see our chicken tractor in this one.

Those yellow flowers are our Jerusalem Artichokes.

I love a volunteer to help water.

There's not too much coming out of the garden at this time of the year.

And that's the tour!

New Additions

We have had some new additions to Unseemly Manor since I posted last.  The first has been our chickens.  They are funny, cute, busy, and useful.  They have been not only eating all the bugs they can scratch out of the yard, but also contributing to our compost that has been feeding my rosebushes.  We got four Red Comet chickens, and each picked a name.  Meet Henny Penny, Paprika, Steve, and Boo-boo Chicken!

Baby chick!

Helping build the chicken coop.

All done!

They're getting so big!   The chickens AND Pandi!

We are eagerly awaiting that first egg that should be coming in the next month or so.  It's really hard to describe what a good feeling it is for me to be taking charge of our food supply, even if it isn't a very big part.  With the chickens in their coop and the veggies in the garden, I feel like we have a connection to our place in the world and a connection to the little patch of Earth we are tending to.

The last new addition to the family is Appa.  He is our Great Pyrenees puppy.  He is fluffy and white and enormous and gentle.  We adopted him from the Humane Society.  He has been wonderful with the girls and the chickens.  If we can only tame the shedding, we will be a match made in heaven! 

"That was funny.  Tell it again, tiny human!"

We're coming up on the fullness of summer and are looking forward to the bounty around us.  It was great to bring Appa to the farmers' market today and visit with everyone and look at all the wonderful things to eat, sample the goods, smell all the yummy things, and see all the smiles.  Preston and the girls picked cherries this afternoon and brought them up the hill in a bucket.  It's nice to feel the warmth in the air and the warmth in our hearts.

Restoring a Home, and a Wood Stove

So, in the time since I've last posted, we have suffered a death in the family, been through a horrible bout of some kind of nasty virus, and moved to a entirely different home.  It makes me tired just to write it out.

The place we've moved to we absolutely love.  It's definitely more of a permanent place for us, and we have the option to buy if we decide we would like to make it ours for good.  But, the moving in was incredibly difficult.  It's a very long story, but the short version is our very sweet landlady was taken advantage of by someone close to her and the home was hoarded and then pretty much abandoned.  It was supposed to have been clean, safe, and ready for us to move into, but that didn't happen either due to some bad circumstances, so we ended up doing a lot of the work ourselves.  It was hard, dirty, gross, and there's still a lot to do, although the main living spaces are clean and are renovating nicely.  After Christmas, we hope to take on the apartment and storage spaces that are still full and badly in need of some tea tree oil.

So far, we have, in addition to cleaning out the home (many truck and trailers' worth of trash hauled out, a metric ton of cat hair, urine, and feces cleaned, and making everything fresh, safe, and non-sticky), added chandeliers to the dining and living area and a ceiling fan to the girls' room, painted the girls' room, added solar lights to the sidewalk, taken out the upstairs carpet so we can finish the wood floors, oiled and polished all the wood surfaces, fixed the dryer, cleaned off the front porch and added a gate, chased away a million spiders, and generally made the place a home again.  All in the last two weeks.

Tonight's project for me was refinishing the wood stove.  It is a sweet, sturdy, cast iron thing, just wanting to be loved again.  It was covered in rust (and cat hair and dirt) and the first thing I did was vacuum it.  I wish I had taken pictures...actually, I wish I had taken "before" pictures of the entire place, but I was in survival mode just trying to get us into the new place on schedule and make it on that ragged edge of acceptable for the girls to be in.

Anyway, the top was covered in loose rust and I just vacuumed it away to see what I was working with.  It was pretty rough, pocked and pitted, but seemed to be just surface damage.  That was as far as I got until tonight.  I bought a tub of Imperial Stove Polish from Lowe's for less than five dollars, and some SOS Pads.

I began by using the steel wool to scrub away as much of the rust as I could.  I was really surprised by how much of it came off, it actually came away very smooth.  I was worried I would have to sand it, but that wasn't the case.  I washed off the soap with wet rags and let it dry.  I then began applying the stove polish with a piece of cloth.

Ugh, so sad and dingy!

I started at the top and just covered the whole thing.  A word to the wise, wear gloves.  Unless you have no common sense, like me.  Then just plan to paint the rest of your nails black.  Also, don't touch your face or you'll look like you've been making out with chimney sweeps *again*.  Don't ask how I know.

 The last step is to buff the finish with a soft cloth to bring out the satin finish.  There is no odor to the polish, it's just carbon black in a paste form.  It may smoke a bit when you put your next fire in, it will only last a few minutes as the finish cures and is nothing to worry about.

Then, just enjoy the beautiful heart of your home!

Isn't he gorgeous?

Doing the Diapers

I was going to write today and show you all the curtains I sewed for the house.  We moved in and had NO window treatments in any of the windows, and I was really tired of having to huddle in our tiny bathroom to change and then turn out the lights to get into to bed rather than risk scandalizing the neighbors with me in my nightie, but I changed my mind and will do that post later.

Instead, I'm going to blow your mind with my awesome find.  But first, a little backstory.

We are a cloth diapering family.  Both of our girls wore Sunbaby pocket cloth diapers like these.  We have loved them dearly and I can't tell you how much money we've saved over the last two and a half years by using them.  We sing their praises to everyone we know.  Not only are they good for our budget, they are aren't chlorine-laden, and when we use them we don't generate mounds of garbage that will sit in a landfill somewhere for goodness-knows how long.

However, we are having a quandary.  Our new place does not have washer and dryer hookups.  Our little river community has it's own laundry mat that is very close and convenient.  However, at $1.00 a load to wash, and $1.00 a load to dry, we would lose the financial advantage of cloth diapering.  I would also be spending a LOT of time traipsing back and forth to the laundry mat with two little ones in tow, only to find out that all the machines are full.  (It's been happening a lot lately.)

So, we've been using disposables.  And I don't really like it.

Enter the Panda Portable Washing Machine.  It is small, easy to use, hooks up to your sink, and washes a load with about the amount of water it takes to flush a toilet, compared to the forty gallons a standard washer uses.  I think it will be just the thing to wash our clothes and diapers.  It also features a laundry spinner, sort of like a salad spinner, that gets all the water out so they are almost dry when you hang them up.  I plan on using a retractable line outside and a drying rack indoors in inclement weather, just like I did when we went without a dryer in our first house.

I just ordered mine from e-bay for 159.00, along with a optional 26.00 three year warranty that will repair or replace the machine at any point within three years if it stops working for any reason, with free shipping to send it in.  I think it will be well worth it to know that my investment is protected.  I have also figured that, doing a load each night of our regular clothing plus a load of diapers, I will no longer have to go to the laundry mat except to wash very bulky items like comforters.  The machine should pay itself off in two months if you count the savings of at least $10 a week in quarters for the laundry mat plus the cost we're currently paying for disposable diapers (about $14/week between the two girls).  Our water here is included in our rent, so it's not an additional cost, but with as efficient as the machine is, I don't think it would add much, if any, anyway.

I just ordered and hope it will be here very soon.  After I've been using it for a little bit, I'll let everyone know how it's working out.  I'm super excited!