Summer time... and the living is easy???

Not really...    

  The gardens have been planted for late summer and fall harvest.  That's how I do it here in West Virginia.

  July is coming fast and the garden gets some attention with weeding and fertilizer but most of my attention is drawn to "Things that need to be done"...  other than plant and harvest.

  I find my attention being drawn to things like the overgrown trees on a hillside that need to be cut... I could be a full time sawyer if it paid a nickel.  One benefit of living in the Appalachian Rain Forest is the endless supply of firewood...  

  The old Low Tunnels that I used to use for propagation of nursery stock are looking like storage sheds and I am having visions of a large High Tunnel for growing food under cover during the colder months of the year.  I have all the stuff needed I just need to do it!  

  I have nut trees and fruit trees that were "socked" into the earth with good intentions but now I find they are suffering and have cultural issues that can be addressed by moving to a different location in the garden/food forest.   It's all work,  fun and invigorating but it's all work.   Thank God I have a little tractor...

  Speaking of Tractors...   Machines need worked on.   Tractors,  Spreaders, Loaders, Snow blowers, Mowers, Trailers, Saws and Brush Cutters the list goes on ad-infinitum.   So, I prioritize...   Daily driver car is #1.   July is my go to time to put the primary transportation unit together well enough to last another 30k  miles...  #2 The Farm Truck.   Frame and steering, brakes and fuel, lights and tires and maybe even a 20ft. paint job.   ( a 20ft. paint job is one that looks great from 20 ft. away) hahahaha...

  There is no way in Heckyville that I am buying a new truck and I often think that the old scythe and axes I have tucked away would be easier in the long run because they are always at the ready.

  New Fence and Old Fence...  I like to use the Deer Buster Fence hanging like a curtain with 3ft. wire stretched across the bottom...  the deer are respectful and the 'hogs are minimal...    I have been using 10ft sticks of Poly electrical conduit over T-posts for years and I am ready to upgrade to Locust posts and hinged gates.    

  Summer is when I tighten up the house and outbuildings too...   replacing a few boards, roofing, paint, driveways, walkways.  

  People often post about building communities and villages...   it's because it takes an enormous amount of labor to create the often "lofty and idealistic"  Homestead that  many of us see on social media.   I find that being methodical, persistent, thrifty and clever are my best practices...   "CAN BE DONE"  but there is nothing Easy about it.  Good Luck finding people that are willing to put in the time and effort needed.   Squatters seem to team around sites that Homesteading Community use to network and communicate on.

  Keep in mind...  unless you are a dedicated full time Social Media Guru or sitting on Grandpa's money... Most of us need to keep a full time job in order to keep the taxes paid and a roof over our heads.   Kudo's to You if you can find another way.     Market Gardening is an entirely different endeavor than simply "Homesteading" and though many appear to be successful at it I find that anything in the Agri-Forestry industry requires amazing marketing and sales skills in order to pay the bills.

  Hope your' summer is filled with fun and adventure, success and lots of happy smiles...   Mine is... it just comes from living just a little bit differently than most of the other people that I know.

Peace...  

Yes. I feel that. I've got a number of projects to get through. But wy commuter car needs a new valve cover gasket. That's pretty high on the priority list now. I was able to put a gutter on the new chicken coop lsat weekend. Next I will put a rain barrel under it and plumb in some poultry cups that my brother in law left for me. Ope, the coop needs some paint as well. I might whitewash it

"Life on the farm is kinda laid back"  Thank God I'm a Country Boy - John Denver  -  don't we wish!
However, it's what we want, so it's as laid back as we want it to be.  That pressing job comes first, anything can be rescheduled, until the next pressing job. No pressure 👌😁

I don't have a homestead I only have an allotment and it's pretty small comparatively.  But when people say to me, "I wish I had one," my reply is, "It's a lot of work" by which I mean I highly doubt you'd manage  Seriously, I can barely keep up with it this time of year:  weeding, seed sowing, planting out, mulching, watering.  And of course harvesting and processing the harvest which takes at the very least half an hour a day during the summer months.  I love to do it;  it's my therapy.  The site itself has a pretty high turnover of allotments--clearly most people aren't as crazy as me.

Was feeling a bit overwhelmed a while back with everything that needed doing on the homestead.  Partially exacerbated by the personal desire to turn the continuously falling trees on my property into biochar.  Also grappling with the adulting of my teen sons who contributed a good bit of labor to the homestead during their tenure.

My conclusion was that I need to prune, hard.  No more raising beef, dropping back to a pig every other year instead of every year, and a smaller garden.  Still trying to keep up the biochar project.  I’ve got around 4 cords of wood cut that I’d like to char, but after that, planning to take a break and work on other things.  

Endeavors that have made the cut are wood heat/cooking, sheep, chickens, veg garden, and the fruit/nut trees I planted in my pasture, and of course biochar.  

Equipment (other than hand tools)includes a weedeater, push mower, chainsaw, trash pump, and garden tractor.  Resisted the urge to level up on equipment years ago when a friend was telling me about servicing his Kabota by the book and the cost of a rear rim when it rusted out.

Hard to say if it will be enough to relax a bit, but that is the goal.

The problem with dropping back is all the work it takes to do it.   But that is my plan as well.  I am reducing livestock and moving work areas closer to the house. Of course, as I try to reduce work, my wife and I find  ourselves planning new projects.  My main goal this summer is to complete all painting projects.

Well, summer is migrating from primary, winter, family homestead to forest-steads & secondary, summer, fallback homestead.  First a two-week break in lush green over-watered over-grown north-central Appalachia, planning & prepping autumn & spring heavy thinning & plantings + mundane matters like ground transportation/ equipment staging/ food provisioning, seeking cost-share funding to help make good other peoples' degradations & other generations' neglect, picking off & gouging out every day's ticks, jumping in a real lake with wet water.  Can barely lift a finger when temps + humidity both over 80.  Second, hot bone-dry high desert homestead which caretaker eventually turned out to water minimally but not to cultivate at all.  Then, southern Rockies dry forest for beginning monsoon, hinterland recently ¼ burned to standing charcoal & ⅔ spot-burned scattered openings, the rest meadow with running rivulet, old acequia & orchard, new fruit/ nut/ berry plantings.  Chainsaw, brush cutter, hand saw, pruner, shovel, pick-mattock, rolling rocks into rills & gullies, lidar precision GIS individual tree database, fuelwood & riving.  Working on putting up shelters, deer exclosures, rain-water tanks, equipment storage, orchard-gardens, greenhouses, nurseries.  Dream of shipping container, solar, forestry E-UTV.  Getting as far as a few weeks solo + friends can before heading back to winter horticulture.  Always over-whelmed, never well-resourced, gritting my teeth, hauling out the old body, but realised making do is the only way & this is the life for me.