Managing the Homestead While Working a Full Time Job

Running a homestead is hard work. There’s early mornings, long hours, and at times, back breaking labor. It’s a full time job. No one ever said this is an easy lifestyle, but it is a life full of beauty, wonder, and most of the time, peace.

However, running a homestead doesn’t exactly pay the bills.

Sure, many homesteaders out there (many on YouTube or in the blogosphere) are making a full time income on their homestead. I envy them. However, they will be the first to tell you making an income from this life take a lot of hard work.

Someday I hope our homestead will be able to pay for itself. Until that day comes we still need a way to put food on the table. And care for our animals, and fix things that break, and put new tires on the car, and, and, and.

Therefore, both my husband and myself teach in town.

Teaching is more than a full time job. We leave the homestead while most people in our neighborhood are just getting to morning chores. Many nights, especially in fall and winter, we get home when the sun is on it’s way down and most of our neighbors have already finished their evening chores.

So how do we make it work? By having a set schedule of chores and each of us doing our part.

Morning Chores

I am NOT a morning person. Just ask my husband how many times I hit the snooze button. (Actually, on second thought, please don’t!) We leave most homestead chores for the evening. Mornings are only for chores that must be done before leaving for the day.

Basic Morning Schedule

5:15 (or earlier!) – My wonderful husband teaches high school, so he gets up before me and makes the life-giving coffee. He has his own morning routine to get ready for work.

6:00 – My obnoxious back up alarm goes off reminding me I REALLY need to crawl out of bed and get moving on the day. Now that we have ducks and geese, and I need to drink my coffee and eat breakfast at home I can no longer stay in bed until 6:30am. (Thank you school districts for making us go into buildings during a pandemic where it feels unsafe to be eating my food…)

6:05 – Finally crawl out of bed, get dressed, brush hair, water current round of transplants so they’ll make it through the day.

6:10 – Make my way downstairs, work on drinking said life-giving coffee, and head out to the ducks. Wonderful husband takes care of letting dogs out and feeding them.

6:15 – Let duck/geese out and give them breakfast, get followed by adorable geese would would like more attention than I have time for.

6:20 – Head back inside, make breakfast, eat, finish coffee, finish getting ready for day.

6:45 – Make sure stove is REALLY off, that dogs are in the house, and head off to work.

I’m going to be honest, I haven’t had to make this new schedule work yet. Last week we were doing professional development days that didn’t start until 8:30. This week we start at 8:00, and next week I’ll need to be in the building by 7:30-7:45. As I said, I’m really not a morning person. Wish me luck!

Evening Chores

The bulk of our homestead chores take place in the evening. We have more time most evenings and are able to use this time to make mornings easier. There’s not so much a set schedule we follow as we are not trying to get out of the house. Instead, we have a list of chores that need to be completed.

This has been a little more challenging this year as we both need to come home and shower immediately since we had to be in a high risk environment for COVID all day.

Afternoon Chores

• Let chickens out when one of us gets home from work. The chickens unfortunately don’t get to spend their day free ranging like the ducks and geese. They are close to the power lines, and hawks like to perch on the poles to hunt. The chickens have a small enclosed run for times we’re not home.
• Let dogs out when one of us gets home.
• Collect eggs
• Water garden if needed
  – We do a modified Back to Eden, so we don’t have to water every day unless we have seeds or seedlings to keep moist.
• Harvest in the garden
• Short walk with dogs

Evening Chores

• Fill chicken feeders
  – We fill them once the chickens are getting themselves to bed so it’s one less thing to do in the morning. They get a set amount of food each day to keep them from over eating. Obesity in back yard chickens is a real problem, especially when chickens are confined to their runs for long periods of time.)
• Check chicken water, fill if necessary
  – We have a chicken nipple waterer that keeps their water from getting nasty and can be plugged in during the winter to keep from freezing.
• Rinse and refill all duck/goose waterers (except pool, that only gets a few times a week)
  – This allows us to not have to fill water in the morning. Once it gets below freezing outside this will move to morning AND afternoon chores.
• Give ducks/geese dinner in the coop and lock them up for the night
  – We also use this time to hang out with them for a bit and hand feed them BOSS or peas. Some of the BOSS/peas gets added to the food bowls to help them go into the coop when it’s bed time.
• Lock chickens up for the night
• Make dinner

There you have it. That’s how we manage to take care of the homestead AND work full time jobs in town. The weekends are reserved for larger jobs like mowing, planting, and laundry. We also try to spend more time with the waterfowl on the weekends and give the dogs longer walks.

If you are struggling with managing your homestead AND working outside the home here are some suggestions that may make your life easier:

1. Make a list of all the chores that need to be accomplished each day.
2. Look at your list and decide if everything on the list really needs to be accomplished every day. For example, while my waterfowl would love it if we refilled the pool each day, we don’t have a long enough hose and have to carry buckets to fill it. Therefore, they get their pool refilled only a couple times a week.
3. Split that list up into morning and evening. “Streamlining” is going to be your new favorite word.
4. If you have more time in the morning, do the majority of your chores then. If you have more time in the evening, do the bulk of your chores then, and do whatever you can to set your morning chores up in advance.
5. Save larger chores for the weekend or your days off whenever possible.