I got a lot from this episode. Cautions, glad you said that- Killer manure is herbicides-treated hay which the animals eat but continues to have herbicides in the manure. This site tells you how test hay, manure, or soil so that you don’t bring home a disaster. http://northword.ca/features/environment/mean-manure-killer-compost-grazon-after-effects-in-the-bulkley-valley/

Thanks for this, Jack! This couldn’t have come at a better time for us. We’re in the process of buying four acres with a house in middle Tennessee where we will move next month. I’ve been thinking about where to start and what to do on the property this first year, and this is solid gold. Much appreciated!

Great show. I too have learned a lot of this the hard way (a.k.a. “the expensive way”).

My solution is a bit different from what’s recommended here. I created a “Time budget”. I allow myself 30 minutes a day for maintenance chores. That is to say, without starting any new projects, I have 30 minutes per day to handle routine tasks like feeding animals, watering and weeding the garden, etc.

Before I start a new project, I assess it in terms of “Does this create more work or reduce work for me?” and if it creates more work, I need to reduce my time spent on existing on other projects. If it takes 30 minutes a day to water all the gardens with a hose, I have no time for anything else. But as Jack said, install an irrigation system. If that’s on a timer, my daily work in irrigation is reduced to 0 minutes, and I have time for other work. Only then would I start a new project.

This system allows you to break up big jobs into small, effortless tasks. Instead of spending all day on a weekend once a month weeding the garden, I do 5 minutes a day, then stop. No fatigue sets in, no strain from bending down for hours at a time. You can clear 10 square feet a minute moving at a fairly slow pace. That 5 minutes a day is 35 minutes a week, or 2 hours and 20 minutes a month. Because you’re always doing it, nothing goes to seed, so it gets easier as you go, and you get the side benefit of spending time every day in the garden, observing with regularity what is happening, adding to your experience.

Also think seasonally, especially if you’re in the north. Your daily tasks change with the seasons. It’s easy to take on stuff in the winter when you have idle remaining in your budget, and then find yourself way over the limit in spring when other chores start popping up. In the winter, you’ll spend 30 minutes a day just tending a fire to keep the house warm. If you cut your own firewood, you can spread that out over the whole year with 5 minutes of splitting logs each day and stacking them for later.

Here’s a look at my current homestead routine:
5 minutes splitting and stacking wood
10 minutes checking on animals (feeding and water is automated, but still need to clean manure, collect eggs etc)
5 minutes a day weeding garden beds
5 Minutes spent on “waste”. That’s tending compost piles (I cheat and turn them with a roto-tiller), also sorting trash, using paper, cardboard and fabrics into compost piles or using them under mulch layers as weed blocks, chipping yard waste (branches) for mulch, sifting out the recycling, and compacting the remaining trash.
5 minutes on infrastructure maintenance. Mowing paths in the property with a brush hog, or cleaning gutters, oil hinges, other small repairs as needed. Basically “what can I fix today in 5 minutes or less?” then I do that. This is a big one, as it generally encompases all the little things you know need to be done, but can’t find the time for. Fixing a gate latch, tightening a high-tensile wire fence, re-setting a T-post from a leaning tree… if you look, you can find hundreds of these small jobs. Making the time to do them while they’re small problems will prevent wasting days on the larger repair jobs they will become if you ignore them.

I omit cooking and cleaning chores from this budgeted time, but you need to leave time for them as well.