i just realized that i haven’t yet written a post detailing a typical day in our life from my perspective. so, i’ve decided to do just that! this is certainly a typical spring day, with longer daylight hours and better weather for planting and outdoor chores.
so, here is my typical day in our homestead life:
5:40 am
- roll out of bed and put on my coveralls. i take the dogs out to pee and open the chicken house and feed the chickens their first of two daily meals. also, since we’ve gotten the geese, i’ve been letting them out of their nighttime enclosure and into their larger pen. they immediately head for the kiddie pool and start drinking and splashing about.
- luckily, during this time of year the sun is already on the rise (still not sunrise, though) so all of my morning chores are easier and more fun to complete!
- i load up the car, complete with the chicken bucket that i use to collect my students’ lunch leftovers for feeding to the chickens, my lunch, and my breakfast (which i eat during the 1 hour commute to work).
6:15-7:15 am
- this is my drive-to-work time, which usually consists of listening to the radio and munching on my breakfast, i would rather be recording podcasts or writing songs, but i still have to get organized for doing things like that.
- luckily it is easy to enjoy the car ride to work because i slowly get my brain geared up for working with kids and i get to enjoy the lovely country views (which in spring are filled with lots of horses, donkeys, goats, chickens, and flowers!).
3:00 pm
- i get off of work and begin the drive home, sometimes later than 3:00.
4:00 pm
- once i get home i let both dogs out, and often have to clean up after bridey who has probably peed inside, pooped inside, or both. i unload the car and start on the everyday afternoon farm/outside chores.
these everyday chores are:
- dump and refill the “goose pond,” which is their beloved kiddie pool, and their water. i also feed the geese their afternoon grain.
- feed the chickens the leftover scraps from my students’ lunch and their afternoon grain, refill their water, and collect eggs. collecting eggs can either be simple or not, depending on the mood of rex, our standard rooster, and whether or not he feels territorial and pushy. the hens also sometimes lay eggs under the house (perhaps they’ve wised up and realized that i take their eggs that end up in the nest boxes) and so i have to fish/roll those out with a metal hook.
- feed the dogs their afternoon/evening meal and feed the cat.
- wash the eggs, dry them, and put them in the fridge for storage. lately i’ve been washing goose eggs too, which are so amazing!
bolt, hanging out with me during afternoon chore time!
5:00 pm
sometimes my daily afternoon chores are completed by 5:00, sometimes not. once they are complete, i move on to other farm chores which don’t necessarily need to happen every day. these other tasks are often a little more creative and less routine. some of these, which i happened to do yesterday and today, are:
- water our new seedlings that are growing in trays
- water the flowers i’ve planted in pots, and the new mums that jason brought home from work the other day!
- stake cages around our newly planted fruit trees and bushes
- water our fruit trees/bushes
- tie white tagging tape around the tops of each cage so we can see where not to step (the cages are really hard to see since the metal is so thin and dark)
- jason and i moved the goose pen yesterday–our plan is to move them to fresh pasture every 2 days
- i also finally figured out how to plug the holes (where the spill drain used to be) at the top of my 2 cast iron/enamel tubs for soaking my mushroom logs. i used circular cuttings from an old mahogany door and layers of a thin, deflated, old tire. i placed the tire materials over the hole and hammered the wooden plugs into the hole. this pushed both rubber and wood partially into the hole, filling in all gaps and making a nearly-watertight barrier.
- after determining that my plugs worked yesterday, today i went about soaking 1/4 of my logs, 7 in each tub (batch 1–the batch labeled with orange marking tape). they will soak overnight and i’ll lean them back up against the corn crib tomorrow!
two bathtubs filled with soaking mushroom logs!
today’s batch for soaking was the “orange batch,” labeled with flagging tape so i can keep straight the info about when logs were soaked.
my rigged plug–working well!
in addition to these chores, jason spent yesterday digging his hand-dug pond out even more, planting more fruit bushes, watering plants and the seeded garden beds, and beginning to build our newest bed: a raised hugelkulture bed downhill from our others.
8:30 pm
- sometime around dark we head inside, eat dinner, and try to rest a little.
bedtime and pre-bedtime (anywhere from 10:00 pm to 12:00 am)
- one of us always writes a post in the evenings (monday–friday)
- we take the dogs back out to pee
- lock up the chicken house
- close the geese into their smaller, fenced enclosure
and that is a general idea of what we do in this spring season to keep the homestead running and fruitful. some days we do more outdoor, farm-related chores, and other days we do less. it just depends, really, on our mood and the homestead necessities!
.:.
