Create Your Own Yearly Homestead Schedule

Keeping an  Annual Homestead Calendar has been an incredibly beneficial organizational tool for me as I attempt to manage our yearly homestead schedule more efficiently!

It makes this otherwise undisciplined person, well, slightly more disciplined. Helps me to get my ducks in a row if you will.

Having this yearly homestead schedule easily accessible in my Homesteading Binder throughout the year helps me keep my mind de-cluttered from all that needs to be done, when it was done last, and when it ought to be done again.

In fact, having a yearly homestead schedule has been so beneficial, I  recommend you make yourself a similar list- fitting the sundry needs of your homestead and varying seasons. I especially would suggest it to new homesteaders. Who knows but that such a small step will help prevent Homestead Burnout Syndrome?

I challenge you for the new year to start a document on your computer or make an old-fashioned paper list, whichever and start taking notes.

I know some folks are looking for someone to just tell them when to do the tasks, but really those are things only you can figure out for yourself. Your homestead is different than mine. What you’re growing and raising is different. So are your management styles. Your climate very well may be different. Gardening tasks for folks growing in Texas are going to be a whole lot different than what I’m working on up here in Ohio.

So you do you make your own yearly homestead schedule?

Start now or think back to earlier in the year. Take notes of what you did and when.

What did you do in January? Order seeds? Or did you wait until April and it was too late and they were out of stock of your favorite tomatoes already? Perhaps you should add placing your seed order to an earlier month? Did you get your broiler chicks too soon last year and lost a third of the chicks to a huddle during a cold snap? Maybe back your order up to the following month. You get the picture.

You can put together a rough outline now for next year based upon your recollections from this year, take notes throughout the coming months and with that bit of planning, next year will be all the smoother for it. (Hopefully.)

This upcoming year it will be like starting from scratch for us in a way as well.  It will be our first full year on our new homestead and our former yearly homestead schedule needed revision in order to meet our new needs. Our new cow will be calving and bred on a different timetable, there are no more hazelnuts to harvest, we now have wood to gather for fuel, asparagus beds to maintain, and so on.

I’m sure that more needs will manifest themselves as the year goes on and cause this list to be revised, but so far as I can see, here are the areas of homestead or homemaking management that will need to be addressed each month throughout the year.

Here is what our Annual Homestead Calendar is looking like at this time:

(Note: I do put some of the more annual homemaking tasks into the schedule as well as the agrarian lifestyle can be difficult to compartmentalize, it’s so integrated. And many of the homesteading tasks are my responsibility to fulfill. Also, I’ve added my notes in here of observations I’d like to be making etc.. so I don’t forget to make them.)

Our Yearly Homestead Schedule

{January}

• Set Goals – Yearly Homestead goals; Yearly Financial goals with monthly mini-goals; Personal goals
•Plan Vacation – if applicable (which it usually isn’t)
•Plan Seed & Perennial Purchases -If I can wait until January that is… make purchases early in the month.
•Make a Seed Sowing Schedule
•Calculate Yields,  Expenses, and Cost Analysis for Previous Year
•Sow Early Indoor Seeds  –Onions and some herbs are sown late in the month
•Home Maintenance/Remodeling Needs
•Dry Up Holly -Last week of the month will be 60 days before her due date; Begin calcium supplements to prevent milk fever (research more thoroughly first)

{February}

•Design Vegetable Garden
•Plan Birthday Gift Purchases or Plans and Cakes--Because if I don’t I always miss them. Horrible mother. 
•Gather Firewood
•Tap Maple Trees; Prepare for Sugaring -This was added last year and will only be if we can find local trees near our new home and get permission.

{March}

•Orchard Work – Pruning; Transplants; Grafting
•Sow Indoor Seeds -Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, etc… early; brassicas… late
•Sugaring 
•Change Chicken Bedding & Scrape Nesting Boxes
•Calving Season -Last week of the month; Have milk filters purchased, supplies in order, and milking area re-cleaned
•Prep for/purchase feeder pigs 

{April}

•Prepare Perennial Beds -Pull early spring weeds and heavily compost after plants begin to emerge
•Vegetable Garden Preparation Early, Plant Early Crops -Peas, radishes, transplant onions, lettuce, etc…
•Make a Spring Compost Heap
•Prepare for Chicks  -Layers and broilers; check heat lamps; set up brooder; make sure feeders/waterers are clean and disinfected
•Install Screens
•Spring Sewing/ Seasonal Clothes Exchange

{May}

•Spring Cleaning
•Plant Annuals Late
•Plant Vegetable Garden Late -Our last frost date is the third week of May *Note: When do cows go out on pasture?? Move Holly’s breeding to 9 months prior to then. Move “prep for/purchase feeder pigs” to coincide with the next calving
•Clean out Sacrifice Area  -After cows are on pasture (The sacrifice area is where the cows are overwintered and kept off of the pasture. Weekly maintenance is performed, but there is still some build-up that needs to be cleaned away.)

{June}

•Begin Homeschooling Lite
•Haying Early -Alternately, arrange the purchase of hay and begin to stockpile for next winter
•Preserve Strawberries –Freeze & Jam
•Freeze Peas
•Change Chicken Bedding & Scrape Nesting Boxes
•Powerwash & Whitewash Coop
•Clean/Maintain Chimney

{July}

•Can Pickles
•Freeze Green Beans
•Freeze Zucchini
•Prepare for 2nd Batch of Broiler Chickens -Layers and broilers; check heat lamps; set up brooder; make sure feeders/waterers are clean and disinfected
•Haying Late -Alternately, arrange purchasing hay and begin to stockpile for next winter

{August}

•Butcher 1st Batch Broiler Chickens Early
•Preserve Elderberries (Make Elderberry Syrup)
•Freeze Peaches -if I can find a source
•State Homeschool Testing Mid-Month
•Freeze Blueberries -purchase from neighbors again?
•Preserve Blackberries, Late
•Freeze Corn, Late

{September}

•Preserve Tomatoes
•Curriculum Preparation and Purchases
•Change Chicken Bedding & Scrape Nesting Boxes
•Preserve Grapes, Late

{October}

•Reserve Absentee Ballots (just in case)
•Fall Cleaning (one week)
• Gather Firewood 
•Preserve Applesauce; Preserve Winter Squash/Pumpkins; Pumpkin Butter (one week) •Garden/Yard Winterizing; Cover/ Heavily Mulch (one week)
•Make a Fall Compost Heap
•Fall Sewing/ Seasonal Clothes Exchange -(one week)
•Lesson Prep
•Storm Windows-This place didn’t come with any, so if we end up buying some later they’ll go in now.

{November}

•Resume Homeschooling Full-Time
•Freezer Baking, if applicable
•Condition Wooden Utensils and Cutting Boards
•Butcher 2nd Batch Broiler Chickens/Turkeys/Cull Laying Flock, if necessary •Gutter Cleaning
•Cut Back Asparagus -Once it has died off
•Mulch Asparagus and Strawberry Beds for Winter

{December}

•Update Homemaking Binders
•Add New Recipes to Family Cookbook
•Allocate Estimated Tax Return Funds
•Change Chicken Bedding and Scrape Nesting Boxes
•Butcher Steer/ Hogs/Sheep/Goat/ -According to weather (Schedule: Week One-Kill steer & hang;  Week Two- Slaughter/butcher hogs; Week Three-Process steer)

While my Homestead Managment Printables have over 100 worksheets to print out and help with your homestead organization, you can click HERE to get the Annual Homestead Calendar Printable for FREE!