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.
10 comments
no chickens!? is homeschool getting in the way of the kids’ education? aka farmhanding. badum pssh.
hate to see talk of a slowdown, but i doubt i understand the obsene amount of work you’ve had on your plate here lately. fair enough. people talk of balancing growth or say “go fast and you’ll never last, go slow and you’ll always go”. hope you find your pace.
Thank you, Jeff.
Having the chickens killed off a couple per night and not being able to keep the predator out was too much. I thought, “well… I could rebuild this coop again for $600 in materials… or I could just give the last few birds away and quit.” Since we already spent probably $15-20 a week on good feed, plus had to water them and collect the eggs for about 15 minutes of work per day, it wasn’t a big deal to just let them go and buy eggs from another farmer. For now! We can always do it again if conditions deteriorate economically.
I would also like a better way to produce chicken feed on our own farm. Free-ranging hasn’t worked since they tear the gardens up too much.
I understand this quandary. As much fun as it is to try something new, sometimes we have to appreciate what it taught us and move on. I definitely think you’re on the right track to focus on what is profitable. Prayers as you discern what is best for your family and your land.
The last 2 years I have been very driven to simplify life and have found it’s actually complicated sometimes to simplify – who knew? But we’re finally seeing the good that I believed would come if we just kept focusing on what was truly important to us and cutting out other stuff. I found that a couple of thoughts have helped when getting rid of or closing down things (whether material goods or things on the to do list, habits, etc.):
1. Is this something I can stop for this season of life and pick back up later if I choose to? (Thinking of your chickens and cows here!) This made it easier to let it go for this season.
2. What will I gain from letting this go? Our biggest example currently is we are selling our property and my mom’s and buying a property that has a house suitable for multi-generational living under one roof. We knew we wouldn’t always be able to care for multiple properties and it was eating into our time for other things, but we’re committed to caring for our elders as they age. So we eventually landed on this solution although it’s a huge change for everyone! But we will gain so much time, peace of mind with having those we care for so close, and a big simplification of things to take care of on a daily basis.
I hope that’s helpful and good luck with the simplifying!
I too went overboard – it was the winter shopping on Etsy and rare plant sites that got me. Now I’ve got stuff like bitter melon seeds that I feel obligated to plant but have no idea why I purchased in the first place.
I do think chickens are worth reupping once you get on the other side of this spring cleaning. For us the work was all in building their coop and run into Fort Knox after losing so many. But now that it’s on lockdown it’s by far the most productive aspect of the property and my 11 and 9 year olds can handle the majority of the upkeep.
And I wouldn’t let the fire burn out on the self sufficiency dream. It sounds like exotic plant care and growing a lot of random stuff for market took up a lot of your bandwidth. That’s where I’d cut back, but I wouldn’t give up entirely on homegrown eggs and dairy – just look for ways to reduce long term inputs to make it less of a chore.
Its the time of year to be tired from the work in the deep South, I think. In New England where I grew up, this would be harvest time for most of the garden, and that would be it. Instead, I’m in North Florida and it’s the end of the spring garden and round 2 is beginning with okra and melons and cucumbers and blackberries and peaches and all the other round 2 stuff. And the temperature is going up and we remember…last year’s heat, like being pregnant and remembering a bad labor.Why did I do this again?? Now, it has been a beautiful spring, and I am grateful for the garden. Tired happens, though.
I am learning to toss more potted plants, especially if they have an aphid or mealy bug problem, etc. If it’s edible, it goes straight to the chicken coop, where is it rather satisfying to know that not a single pest will escape the vicious mini dinosaurs. If its not edible, it goes into the dumpster.
For my tiny plant business, I have a few plants by the road on the honor system, with a number to text to make an appointment to see more plants and a bigger selection. I advertise on FB. Keeps it manageable. I’m about to cull some of my slow sellers…to the chickens or mulch pile.
My chicken coops are cattle panel hoop houses. We used an angle grinder to cut the leading edges off the short sides and then drove the resulting spikes in the ground to help prevent anything from digging under, zip tied the hoops together to make a tunnel, zip tied 2×4 fencing over the top, and then bought silage tarp to put over the top, white side out. We closed off the ends and put in a door, done. Cheap, reusable, fast to put up. Keeps the chickens cooler, and the silage tarp lasts forever. I have lost one hen to a predator in 3 years, have to keep a bucket of dirt in front of the door at night for weight.
Thinking about expanding my moringa population to supplement chicken food.
Off to do chores!
My wife and I have been having this conversation too. I work my corporate job to pay the bills and my wife is busy with our 1 year old. We have a 10 acre homestead that’s mostly forest with gardens, chickens, goats, and geese.
I think we are also going to get out of the chickens. It’s just not enough return anymore for all the inputs that goes in. Goats and geese are mostly working for us, but sometimes the goats can be troublesome. I can’t recommend geese enough though for busy Homesteaders, and I believe they are probably one the best sustainable meat sources once you get started.
There is so much that I want to do with Gardens. I’m so new to it that almost everything is an experiment. I want to do more and plant more. I believe it’s critical to for me to garden to provide for my family in these tough times that are coming. Like you I have a vision and I push myself to make things happen. Doing so much and getting so little back can wear you down.
I will say this though from my time in my prayers with God. Ive been told that these anxieties about success and failure are burdens we dont need to carry. We need to hang on and kindle that spark that God put on our hearts to grow things. For me the Grocery row has actually helped since I can capture that excitement of just chaos gardening, and not worry about the timed rotation of plants or even if they don’t work out. I feel blessed for every plant that comes up that I forgot I even planted.
Spend time in prayer man. God will let you know what he wants you to shake off and what to hold fast to.
That’s right. Every day I pray the Our Father multiple times, and it’s helped me to remember “Thy will be done,” not my will. We are good at junking up our lives and our time with stuff we don’t need to carry.
I’ve found some things that work really, really well, and I want to double-down on those.
Agreed. When undertaking new projects, I always look at the future monthly/weekly/daily time investment required, and if possible, I’d like to invest time now to reduce time commitments in the future. Fictitious example, I can install in 20 hours a predator-proof chicken coop, with a feeder and a waterer that can hold a week’s worth of food, with a 5 min a day future time investment (daily eggs, weekly watering and feeding), or I can invest 10 hours in a more modest coop, but with 15 min daily investment (daily watering/feeding) and every 6 months having to raise new chicks to replace the eaten chickens. Option A is my choice, as it will be less time invested overall, but it also encumbers less “future time”. Having that mindset allows you to have time to invest the 20 hours instead of being already being bogged down by time commitments from prior projects.
Right! Sometimes it just makes sense to do the very best right at the beginning and take the financial/time hit, so future you is wasting less time and money.
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