Setting New Year Goals on the Homestead

Howdy folks! Just popping in to wish you all a Happy New Year! And to share our Homestead goals for 2019.

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These are current articles on the blog that are things that relate to what you can be doing now in your garden or on your homestead, or getting ready to do soon!

Seed Starting 101: Winter Sowing
Seed Starting 101: The Essential Seed Starting Equipment List
How to Prune Apple Trees on the Homestead

Also, be sure to check our all of our favorite Homesteading and Gardening tool in our Amazon Shop!

Summing up 2018

This past year brought a lot of changes around here! Last January, my oldest daughter got married! Seems like she was just born yesterday! How does that happen?!? Anyway, we are very happy for them and it has been fun to have a son/brother join this family of mostly girls!

Than my hubby got laid off after 23 yrs on the job right after July 4th. That threw us for a loop and was completely unexpected. Needless to say, it put a huge damper on things as we sorted out what came next. He got a new job in October which we are very thankful for. We had been used to having him work from home, but now he goes into the office, so that is quite a change.

I also went back to work part time working from home and I am now working for my old architectural firm doing some CAD work for them. I had to catch up on the latest software for that, after being home for the last 20 yrs, and spent August doing that training and started doing work for them in October.

My middle daughter started her second year of college last fall, and my youngest is a senior in high school this year. Crazy to think she will be graduating so soon and that we will be empty nesters!

In February, I finally launched this blog! I am having fun with it, but boy is it a lot of work. There is so much more behind the scenes stuff that goes on to make it work, you wouldn't believe it unless you are a blogger too. I am glad to say I spent a lot of time last year figuring out the basics. This year I hope to add a lot more content.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me if you are struggling with something in the garden, with your food preservation efforts, and/or raising chickens related. Those are where I feel my strengths are, and I am happy to help!  Plus, it may give me an idea for a blog article! The easiest fastest way for me to respond is if you reach out on Facebook or Instagram as I am on them many times a day. Sometimes my email doesn't get seen right away. So if you haven't yet, feel free to follow me on my Facebook page or on Instagram.

Setting New Year Goals on the Homestead:

1. As "soon to be" empty nesters, we need to declutter, purge, simplify, minimalize and make some major decisions about how long we are going to stay in this house, or when we want to downsize. It has always ben our goal to downsize once the kids have moved on, and that time is near. Don't worry! We just want to downsize the house, and ideally upsize the land! So if we should choose to move in the near future, the homestead will be moving with us! LOL!
2. Restock the canning pantry in a major way. The year before last, we spent the year remodeling our unfinished basement. Canning went on the back burner. This past year, with all the job stress, again, it was not a high priority. I hope to can much more this year.
3. Grow more food, and maybe start a veggie stand to sell the excess along with donating food to the local food pantries.
4. Bring in more income from the homestead. With the blog, with the veggie stand, selling veggie starts/plants, selling more hatching eggs and chicks and try to come up with some craft ideas for an Etsy store.
5. Bring in more income with the blog. I have a goal of reaching 25,000 sessions on my blog per month by the end of the year. To do this, I need more viewers! Please feel free to always share my blog content on Facebook, message boards or groups where my content is appropriate, or especially on Pinterest! Pinning my blog articles on Pinterest is the best way to help bring new viewers to my blog, so I truly appreciate every single Pin! Also, if one of my blog posts resonates with you, Pin it to remember it for later!

Happy New Year!

OK, well I seem to be blabbering on, so I will wrap this up. Be sure to watch the blog for a couple new articles about pressure canning coming up within the next week or so.

Again, thanks so much for reading! I really appreciate it!
Wishing you all love, peace, happiness, kindness and a productive New Year!