Sunday, December 29, 2019

End of Year in Hindsight & Looking Forward

Looking back this year, I got a lot of things done, plus a lot of things not done. Sounds par for the course. Last January's list for 2019 included:
..."finishing the house" Ha, that didn't happen. The bathroom still doesn't have a new shower, nor are the walls completed. But I did get a new roof on the house, and completed  lots of little finishing tasks. And got a very nice deck built. I just couldn't get myself motivated on that bathroom. The bathroom functions just fine. It just looks like a half finished construction site, which it is. 
..."make pig pastures" I actually got the pig pasture system working, then decided to get out of pigs. But the work wasn't for naught, because I'm using the pastures for sheep. I like being around sheep better than pigs. I might continue having a pig off and on, but I'm not going to breed them anymore.
"upgrade pastures" still in progress. Made some improvements but have a mountain of work still to do. 
"homegrown livestock feed" I made considerable headway, but I'm still developing the system. I still need to come up with some seed/grain production. 
"expand veggie production" semi success on this one. 

So what's in mind for 2020? 
1- finish that bathroom!!!!! (Yeah, I've said that one before!) 
2- continue working on the pastures. With 2 paddocks improved, work on upgrading others. 
3- I really want to dramatically increase veggie production so that my veggies can become a regular presence at the farmers market. My main obstacle is lack of time to get it all done, so I need to work on a more efficient time schedule. Perhaps I need to upgrade my methods, getting away from some of the time consuming methods and heading for "modernizing" ......such as going to a permanent in place irrigation system rather than hand watering. I'll look at others ways to trim work time. But I really enjoy farm work, so it's sad to switch to shortcuts. 
4- The pallet growing boxes have been so successful that I want to continue building more.  I've got a good sized area of pahoehoe lava where I can't grow anything. So it's the ideal place for grow boxes. 
5- Get a hot tub set up. The deck got built, then nothing happened. I was all for getting a stock water trough to use temporarily, but hubby balked. So here we sit with nada. Gotta get a hot tub!!! 
6- Try another wwoofer type helper. The first one didn't work out the way I hoped. I was too soft, and he was too lazy. I've learned that I need to set firmer rules and adhere to them. So I'm thinking about trying again. Not right away, but maybe later in the year. 
7- Improve the driveway. This is another project that gotten a lot of talk time but little work time. The driveway needs to be resurfaced with stone. 

Those are the major projects that come to mind. Many more will crop up during the year. And there will be hundreds of little tasks to occupy my time as the weeks go by. I like working on this farm, so the thought of the coming year is something I look forward to. 

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