Simplifying the Homestead

This is the time of year when everything happens at once. Caring for plants, animals, grass… it can get overwhelming.

And yet we always start new projects. In the cool days of later winter and early spring, everything seems possible. Why not plant more trees? And grapes! And till a huge space for corn! And put in a watermelon patch!

And then the weather gets hotter and the weeds start to proliferate. And sometimes we get floods. Or droughts. Or a flood and a drought, like this spring.

And then… it’s 90 degrees out. And then 95.

And then everything starts falling to pieces. And it’s no fun to weed big areas, and carry water to new trees, and drag the hose around the nursery, and fix the fences for the cows…

And by the time June/July hits, all enthusiasm for gardening is gone, and you are glad to get the occasional watermelon to quench the heat.

It’s Just Too Much!

Yesterday I was talking with Rachel about how we need to simplify again. We moved to our property almost three years ago. Since then, we:

Planted a food forest
Installed dairy cows and built a milking area
Installed Grocery Row Gardens
Built a chicken coop
Started a plant nursery
Bought a tractor
Bought a Bobcat
Started clearing popcorn trees
Built a greenhouse and filled it with plants
Planted an apple orchard
Got ducks
Got goats
Got pigs
Tilled a big area and planted corn, potatoes, pumpkins and yams
Installed cattle panel trellises for vining crops
Made a big composting area
Bought an old zero-turn mower and started collecting grass clippings
Bought a trailer for our plant nursery
Did multiple plant shows
Started selling at farmers’ markets
Launched a private community on Skool with video courses
Started expanding on Instagram
Wrote Minimalist Gardening
Did multiple Scrubfest events
Published Free-Range Survival Chickens…

…and man… we are super, super busy!

For all the extra work, the finances have not greatly improved, either. You get ahead, and then have to pay more to fix something or get a new tool, then you try to get ahead again, and then…

Life is complicated!

We got rid of our goats, and the chickens were dispatched by a predator. I haven’t replaced them.

We also quit doing the farmer’s markets. The nursery takes a lot of care, but we just sell some privately and at events. It’s hard to do everything. But we’re still doing too much.

Simplifying

Sometimes I look at little houses near our church in Pensacola. Tiny little yards of grass that could be mowed in a few minutes. We could just go to Publix for food…

But then I think of having neighbors and noise. And intrusive government. And in an economic downturn, we’d be completely reliant on long supply chains. And then I look at my productive mulberry trees and persimmons, pecans and yams, and feel grateful that we planted them. This morning I picked a handful of huge, fat, sweet blackberries from a Prime Ark Freedom shrub I stuck in the Grocery Row Garden last year. And I’m watching my plums fatten up in the food forest. And we’re still eating pork from the pigs we butchered last fall.

The work isn’t bad work. It just may not be the best use of our time.

We just need to focus on the 20% of things that do great.

And really, if we had a little place in the city, we would long for the food forest and orchards. It might be a nice vacation, but we couldn’t do it for long.

I started so many plants in the nursery that we aren’t really selling or using. I have unknown gingers in pots that don’t make anything for us, I have tropical seedling trees that can’t live outside here, I have transplants I never got around to planting out…

Instead of enjoying all these things, it’s getting to be too much. Instead of doing a few things really well, we do a lot of things poorly.

There are only so many hours in the day.

Who Gets the Axe?

Last year, I started a ton of Osage orange trees and honey locusts. Though I love these trees, they do not sell well! I am watering and caring for them without return. I think it’s time to just plant them in the yard.

We also found a local source for raw milk that costs less than the value of the labor it takes for us to care for the cows, feed them in winter, milk them, and keep the fences fixed. So I am thinking we might just sell the cows. Rachel has to homeschool children, and if she is milking cows, she is taking a couple hours per day away from homeschooling. Does it make sense at this season of life to try and raise all our own food? Probably not!

As much as we loved all the butter and cheese and fresh milk, we can at least meet our milk needs from elsewhere.

And eggs? I have a friend with pastured layers that gives us an amazing deal on 6 dozen eggs per week. Do we need to take care of chickens right now? Fix the henhouse and patch the entryways and get another flock? Maybe not.

I am going through the lists of all the things that do great for us… and those that may be too much work… and simplifying.

Dejunking our lives and our schedules.

Mulberries, Southern apples and yams have been great sellers for us, so we could just concentrate on those instead of on a hundred different plants.

Writing books has usually been a good use of time, so perhaps I should do more of that while spending less time on the nursery.

High Effort/Low Reward

Here’s one example that hit me yesterday.

For four years, I have been growing a jaboticaba in a pot. It’s now taller than me, and is fruiting for the very first time. Perhaps ten or so little fruits along a couple of branches.

I have probably put 40 hours of care into it, for a few fruits. Now it should start bearing regularly, but wow… what an investment of time! I do love jaboticaba, but I can’t just plant one in the ground here, since it’s too tropical for our climate. It’s perpetually going to be a high-needs plant, and it could out-live me! In winter I have to lock down the greenhouse and run a propane heater to keep it alive. And I have to have a greenhouse if I’m going to grow it. Talk about a time sink.

On the other hand, I planted a couple of white mulberries in the yard and they both bore an abundance of fruit without me having to care for them much at all. It’s easy to keep them here.

Back to Basics

In Minimalist Gardening, I cover how simply you can grow food. And how you don’t have to complicate your life. And yet, we plant nerds are always making more work for ourselves. Especially in those dangerously pleasant days of early spring.

Perhaps it’s time to pare everything back to just the winners, and let all the time-eaters go.

Maybe I could throw a huge rare plant sale and say goodbye to the tropicals.

Perhaps I should confine my gardening to just the Grocery Row Gardens and the Food Forest.

It’s one thing to write Minimalist Gardening… it’s another thing to really live it.

We have too much to care for and only so much time. The food forest is easy to care for. The greenhouse plants are not!

Just thinking out loud. How are you all doing with your gardening projects? Animals? Homesteading? Any great tips for paring down – would love to hear from you.