When we first began homesteading, the only planning we were able to do was a garden layout and roughly when to plant. We didn’t know what we wanted to do or should attempt to take on, and so we just went where the wind took us. Each new undertaking was a learning curve, and there is only so much research you can undertake before finally deciding to give things a try. After that, it’s a lot of trial and error. We learn what works and what doesn’t. As we gain this wisdom, little by little, it becomes easier and easier to plan for each new year on the homestead.

Really, there are two primary types of homestead plans… the long term and short-term. Long-term goals shape what things you’ll do in a year (the short-term goals). Short-term goals are the things you hope to accomplish in a calendar year: what plants you’ll grow, what animals you’ll raise, what projects you’ll work on, what skills you’ll learn.

Before you dive into planning for the year, ask yourself what the long-term goals are: What are you working towards? A milk cow? No grocery stores? Or maybe just a simpler, healthy life for your family? These long-term goals could be part of an overall life-view, or part of a 5-year plan. With that established, we always start by asking ourselves what steps we can take towards reaching those particular goals. Some of our long-term goals include starting a fruit tree nursery (we’re on year two of this goal), and building a summer kitchen, which required that we clean up the location where the kitchen will go. This year, we’ll be ordering more root stock as we establish our supply for grafting, focusing on protecting our nursery, and finish building a walk-in-cooler. As for the summer kitchen: this winter, my husband has been working on finding logs that we can mill for the frame while he cuts firewood for our outdoor wood burner, and we’re hoping to do some repair work on the foundation we plan to build the kitchen on.

Homesteading goals for the year may include many short-term or even repeat plans, but there are many things to consider before plans are set for the year. We’ll go through some of the most important factors to consider as you shape your calendar, but the most important thing you can do is to discern what God is calling you to, and when you’ve finished making your plans, take them in prayer to God. As you begin to think about the dreams you have for the year, consider the following six points, and then decide whether those plans are practical or not.

1. Budget. This is something that you will likely need to revisit several times throughout the planning process. First, you need to know what kind of funds (if any) will be available to you throughout the year to spend on things for the homestead. Do you have a chunk of money in savings for a large project? Will the money come paycheck to paycheck? Do you live off of an hourly or salary paycheck? Will your budget depend on a side-income? We have a rough monthly budget for the year because my husband has a salary income, which allows us to plan for things like purchasing gas for farm vehicles, seeds, animals, and feed. We use tax returns to pay off things like medical bills or to invest in larger projects around the homestead, like installing an outdoor wood burner for heating the house.
2. Time. Do you work a job away from the homestead? Do you have kids? What kinds of activities are you involved in? My husband works a full-time job away from home, and some of the older kids now have jobs away from home, too. Both of these impact what can be accomplished on our homestead. We homeschool, which means that there are chunks of time I’ve committed to working on the kids. We spend some time volunteering for our parish, knowing there are days we have committed to work for the Church. And there are things which might be on the schedule for a given year, such as a wedding for a relative, or a vacation we’ve been planning for years. (Note: vacations might need to be planned around the work of the homestead!)
3. Limitations. How is your health? What kind of help do you have? As of writing this, I’m pregnant with our 9th, and I’m due around harvest time. This is a serious limitation for our homestead since I am the primary worker in the garden. I do most of the planting, weeding, harvesting, and preserving. Since I know the older children are going to have some time commitments this summer, it means that I won’t have the help I’d normally be able to rely on. I might be able to rely on some help from my mom or from friends, but they have their own obligations, and so though even know I’m sure I’ll be able to get some help, I know I can’t rely too heavily on them.
4. Skills. What skills do you have? The idea of raising a pig and making a ham is all fine and well, but if you don’t know how to raise pigs, or butcher them, or cure a ham, it might be too big of a goal. It’s not impossible, but it might prove to be too much. Our first year raising pigs, we did butcher, but we didn’t do any smoking or curing. Meat we wanted to make into sausage was frozen until we had time to recuperate from the work of butchering (it’s physically very intensive), and could take our time with sausage-making. I highly encourage you to learn a new skill or two every year, but don’t commit to a project that requires a new skill if you don’t have time to learn before the project needs to be completed.
5. Resources. This could be people, natural resources, or materials you are able to gather from another location (such as lumber from an old barn). I highly recommend you make a list of people, businesses, and tools you have access to that will be a benefit to your homestead. Our neighbors have horse manure that they give to us. We haul it away, which benefits them, and the manure feeds our garden beds which is beneficial for our soil and our food. The local mill is where we can get bulk feed and order our chickens. The people who run it are also a wonderful resource if we need help finding pigs or a used implement for the tractor. We have a tractor, a tiller, etc. What books and websites do you like to reference?
6. Help. Just as a lack of help can be a limitation, a reliable source of help can be an incredible benefit. I know some of my kids are capable of shucking corn, chopping veggies for salsa, and digging potatoes. As I said, there are some friends and family who are often willing to help with various things. A few years ago, a friend helped us build a new building. A couple of years ago, another friend helped us clean up a different building that burned down. Another friend has grown tomato and pepper starts for me. If my husband and I were to do everything ourselves, there are so many things we still wouldn’t have accomplished. Community is critical to success. Don’t just ask for time, be sure to give it, too!

After you’ve assessed these things, you can review that list of dreams. Do your finances, time, or limitations make the goals unrealistic? God can overcome our obstacles, but He also expects us to think and plan and do the work. We are expected to be good stewards of what we have available to us. Over-extending ourselves can lead to unnecessary stress and burn-out. Take a look at one goal at a time, and then assess how your time, resources, and finances will be saved and spent.

If circumstances appear to allow you to raise chickens for the first time, consider when the best time of the season is for you to raise them. Chicks require time under heat lamps (or in a very warm area) until they have begun to grow their first true feathers instead of the downy fluff that makes them so adorable. Once they have those feathers (around 4 weeks) they can be moved outdoors, but not if the weather is too wet or cold. Meat birds can be stressed and die in extreme heat. How will you keep them hydrated? You’ll need to have a brooder, and you’ll need to have a place to move the chickens when they are too big for the brooder. What does the timeline look like for all of that? How long will you raise them for prior to butchering? What supplies do you need to acquire before butchering? Can you borrow supplies from somebody else? Do you have somebody to teach you or do you need to watch a lot of videos, and just do it? Asking yourself questions like this can help you to determine a timeline. How much will all of the supplies cost, from brooder to chicks to feed, from field to freezer?

One of the most important things to consider that we have yet to discuss is that God’s plans are not our plans. Hopefully, we’ve discerned His will well, but sickness and injury and death and crop failure can happen. There are many things that we cannot foresee. Just as negative things can happen unexpectedly, positive things can as well. Things like positive, unexpected job changes could provide us with more time or more finances to meet goals. In either positive or negative circumstance, our plans may need to pivot. It’s important that we don’t cling too tightly to our goals and end up bitter about change.

Lastly, since we are all about liturgical living here, there’s the liturgical calendar and your interests to consider. This might be more a part of the “dream” portion of the planning for some, and it might be the seventh point of consideration for some. Will your homesteading activities be dictated by the liturgical calendar, or will the liturgical calendar you observe be dictated by your homesteading activities? If you make candles, you might want to observe feast days that relate to bees, beeswax and candles (St. Ambrose, the spring Ember Days, and Candlemas). If you are newer to homesteading, you might decide to decide to grow grapes because you want to make sacramental/liturgical wine, or maybe you are devoted to St. Hildegard and decide to grow a physic garden (herbal, medicinal garden) because you are inspired by her. And perhaps it will be a little bit of both.

If there are particular liturgical goals for the homestead, make sure you put them on the calendar as you are able, perhaps with a note/reminder a few days in advance about what needs to be done, so that you don’t forget! You can make butter in honor of St. Brigid a few days in ahead so you don’t have to do it the day of. If you want to have a Rogation procession, you’ll want to prepare your supplies days or weeks in advance. And don’t forget to consider just how much time it can take for a project to go from start to completion! If you want to grow winter wheat, it has to be planted late fall, and spring wheat goes in once you can prepare the soil after the winter frost has thawed. If your goal is to raise wheat for Lammas Day (Loaf Mass Day), know that you’ll have to have ripe wheat prior to August 1st if you want to have bread that has been made from that wheat to bring to Mass to be blessed. You may need a day or days, and depending on where you live, you might only be harvesting a little bit of wheat if the crop is not completely ready for harvest. If your intention is to grow winter wheat, you’ll be waiting until the following summer to harvest that wheat for Lammas Day.

Don’t feel bad about saying no to potential outside opportunities or obligations if it doesn’t meet with your goals or if a particular tradition/observance is really important to you. But don’t forget that we do these things in order to grow in and share our faith. Invite others to join you! Some of these traditions impact when we choose to do other, seemingly unrelated work. For example, the feast of Martinmas (St. Martin of Tours) is celebrated every November 11th. Goose is a traditional meal for this feast day, but people would butcher farm animals (not just geese) prior to this feast, and then shift to working in the woods (hunting, cutting wood, etc.). Our family has taken up the custom of butchering any animals we’ve raised for meat prior to this feast day, usually the weekend before. The weekend of butchering is essentially non-negotiable for us. It takes too much planning and work for us to drop things or move it without significant notice, but we’re open to others helping out if they’re able to work around our timeline.

Once you know the what, you can work on the when. When to order chicks, when to plant your seeds, when to harvest… If you have yet to do much in the way of homesteading, you can check out the calendar I’ve assembled for liturgical homesteading here, where there are rough timelines for various things (according to where we live- zone 5 in Wisconsin). It’s still being added to and edited. It is intended to provide insight and inspiration, and is not meant to make you feel like you have to do something.

Need help working through a problem? Let me know in the comments or reach out through our contact page and I’ll do my best to provide some insight. If you are looking for more inspiration for creating a liturgical homestead, don’t forget to subscribe!

In Christ,
Danielle