Boy, is 2012 gonna be busy!!

[BarredBuff]

I was setting here at the computer as the cold air flows past the window, and I have all these thoughts and ideas about how I want to improve my homestead next year. And well I organized them

Oh I will be soooo busy but loving every minute!

Hard Core Homesteading Goals

The Homestead Garden
1. Grow enough tomatoes for a years supply of canned tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato sauce, tomato paste, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, salsa, and tomato soup.
2. Grow enough potatoes for a year round supply of baking potatoes, frying potatoes, soup/stew potatoes and seed potatoes.
3. Grow enough green beans, sweet corn, and carrots to can for a years supply of each.
4. Grow a years supply of large bulb onions.
5. Grow a years supply of sweet potatoes to store and can.
6. Grow enough peppers to use in canning recipes and dry/freeze.
7. Utilize fall and spring growing seasons to grow things like spinach, lettuce, and cabbage.
8. Use cold frames in the winter to grow lettuces for winter salads.
9. Build up soil with cow manure, chicken manure, and rabbit manure.

The Homestead Berry Patch
1. Establish a productive blackberry patch.
2. Establish a productive strawberry patch.
3. Establish and re organize a productive blueberry patch.
4. Establish a rhubarb patch.

The Homestead Orchard
1. Improve upon our current orchards.
2. Continue bringing in new apple trees, and learn to graft our own trees.

The Homestead Herb Garden
1. Improve upon raising all necessary spices including garlic, oregano, and thyme.
2. Add some medicinal herbs to the garden.

The Homestead Chicken Flock
1. Reduce flock size to a more manageable number. About 14 hens and a rooster.
2. Begin making a homemade chicken feed with an egg and milk as a base, mixed together with cornmeal. In addition to free range.
3. Use only hen hatched birds in our flock.
4. Cull to only young birds that are either Australorps or Buff Orpingtons.
5. Raise more meat chickens. About 35 for our use and 15 to sell. The time of year is still to be determined, based upon feed availability.

The Homestead Rabbit Hutch
1. Continue raising meat rabbits. Around the wintertime, and a batch to sell at Easter.
2. Integrate a more grass based diet, through hays and yard scraps.

The Homestead Dairy Cow
1. Build a 24 by 24 barn, this includes: 12 by 24 Dairy Cow/Beef Calf stall, 12 by 12 for Hay/Feed storage, and a 12 by 12 for yard equipment.
2. Purchase a Jersey or Jersey/Guernsey Cross milk cow that is within a month of calving.
3. Begin milking the cow, and use the milk to make our own dairy products such as butter, buttermilk, ice cream and milk.
4. Begin bottle feeding the calf to either sell as a heifer or butcher as a steer.
5. Build a lot for the milk cow that is in front of the barn.
6. Come up with a type of grazing situation either by renting property or tethering the cow.
7. Begin using the cows milk as a base for the other animals feed.
8. Purchase a years supply of alfalfa/grass hay for the cow and calf.
9. Sow the lot in clover, and other legumes in Early Spring to maybe promote some grazing in the lot.

The Homestead Pig
1. Make some adjustments to the old chicken run to allow for a place to raise a pig in the winter.
2. Purchase an 8 to 12 week old weanling.
3. Begin feeding the pig with yard waste, table scraps, and milk.
4. Butcher the pig in April. Saving all parts of the pig to be used for other purposes.

Atleast Im young!

 

[SSDreamin]

Very thorough list! And, except for a few tweaks, very similar to the one in my head I have for us.

Now that I see it written down, I really wish I was young!

 

[snapshot]

That's a great list! I'm afraid to even start one as we aren't sure what house we will be in. Feel all wound up with no place to go!

 

[justusnak]

WOW!!! What a list!! I am still winding down from this year, I cant even start thinking of next year....yet..I have to get through the Holidays first. LOL

 

[moolie]

Definitely sounds like you will be busy, but you sound pretty well-organized

We only have a city lot, but we had a very productive garden and canning year and have made our lists for 2012 as well. We've already mapped out how to enlarge our raised bed gardens to double what we produced this year, and continue to scour freecycle and kijiji for free windows to upgrade our hoop house to a full-blown greenhouse.

The raspberry canes are spreading and we'll be dividing our rhubarb in the spring to share with a friend plus start another crown or two of our own (it's a huge old plant). We plan to add a third apple tree and were super pleased with how productive our two existing trees were this year since only planting them back in the spring.

I've got herbs on the windowsill for the winter months, and will plant them out again in the spring. And the canning shelves are full. Bringing the herbs in for the winter, taking tomato plant cuttings, and saving some of our own seeds will really help us enlarge the gardens next year.

We can't have meat animals here, but we know when our Farmer's Market buddies have the best deals, plus we buy in bulk when we do buy, which saves us some more.

 

[FarmerChick]

you aren't kidding being young helps with that list.

establishing fruit trees, berry patches is a great idea. once you get them going they do require little work to maintain, if you do a little pruning etc at a time and give them maintenance. And they give so much back for jams etc. Gotta feed that sweet tooth

make sure you finish that hog off on grain at the end. scrap fed hog meat just is not as good as grain fed hogs. Tasted both, prefer the grain fed like ours.


great list. you do all that and I can come 'shopping' at your home cause you will be your own grocery store for real!!

and good thing it is going into winter, you need planning and prep time to get ready for that list

 

[BarredBuff]

Yeah we will grain feed it. We have several things ordered like strawberry plants, blackberry starts, onion plants. I mainly have to maintenance the orchards, and the garden is in the peocess of being built up and prepared for our veggies......

 

[FarmerChick]

do blueberry bushes do well in KY?

I am NC and I tried a few blueberry but never got them to take...hmm...just gave up in the end.

 

[FarmerJamie]

Don't forget to carve out a little time to be a kid and enjoy life a little bit.

When you get that all finished, I have a few chores I could use help with up here!

 

[StupidBird]

I'm just gonna copy/paste your list to my computer, with just a couple changes!


The Homestead Garden
1. Grow enough tomatoes for a years supply of canned tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato sauce, salsa, and tomato soup.
2. Grow enough potatoes for a year round supply of baking potatoes, frying potatoes, soup/stew potatoes and seed potatoes.
3. Grow enough green beans, sweet corn, and carrots to can for a years supply of each.
4. Grow a years supply of large bulb onions.
5. Grow a years supply of sweet potatoes to store and can.
6. Grow enough peppers to use in canning recipes and dry/freeze.
7. Utilize fall and spring growing seasons to grow beets, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and cabbage.
8. Use cold frames in the winter to grow lettuces for winter salads.
9. Build up soil with compost including our chicken manure.

The Homestead Berry Patch
1. Tame the blackberry patch.
2. RE - Establish the strawberry patch.
3. Mulch the blueberry patches.
4. Baby the rhubarb plant.
5. Establish a raspberry patch.

The Homestead Orchard
1. Improve upon our current orchards - prune, train, mulch, spray oil, build trunk/root base protection.
2. Continue bringing in new apple trees, a pear, some kind of cherry.

The Homestead Herb Garden
1. Expand/redo bed for raising all necessary spices and teas: mints, nettle, tea camellia, parsley, sage, oregano, thyme.
2. Add some medicinal herbs to the garden: aloe vera, boneset, chamomile, feverfew, fenugreek, lavendar, etc.

The Homestead Chicken Flock
1. Reduce flock size to a more manageable number. About 10 hens age 2 and under, 2 geriatric pets, and one rooster.
2. Begin growing homemade chicken feed supplements: corn, sunflower, greens.
3. Replacement chicks will be only Buff Orphingtons.

The Homestead Rabbit Hutch
1. Let DH try raising meat rabbits. Around the wintertime, and a batch to sell at Easter.
2. Integrate a more grass based diet, through hays and yard scraps.

The Homestead Beef Critter
1. Let farmer "x" know we'll be getting another grass fed beef next winter.
2. Talk to the butcher about facility upgrades. Mention new state initiative to help small producers, vacuum pack equipment instead of paper.

The Homestead Pig
1. Find somebody like farmer "x", who raises nice pigs. Make same arrangements.

At least I'm still mobile!