New Year’s Resolutions for Homesteaders

Homesteaders always have a never-ending list of projects, ideas, and chores to be done. As you enter the new year, consider these New Year’s resolutions for homesteaders to help set clear goals and accomplish more this year.

A new year approaching is a time to reflect, set goals, and make new year’s resolutions for homesteaders. I think the hardest part sometimes is recognizing and setting attainable goals for oneself each year. It’s easy to come up with lots of ideas and plans, then quickly fall short and give up on all of our ideas altogether. Hopefully this list of new year’s resolutions for homesteaders will help give you some guidance points as you reflect on your own homestead goals and plans for the upcoming year! Let’s jump right in and start planning out our goals for this year’s homestead growth.

Evaluate and Plan Your Livestock Needs

As you start to think about your homestead goals for this year, consider making one of your new year’s resolutions to evaluate your current livestock and determine a plan as to what you will keep, add, or sell this year.

On our homestead, we’ve had a variety of animals including pigs, cattle (both beef and dairy), meat birds, and laying hens.

As we look back on this year, we can see that we definitely have enough chickens in our freezer, so we most likely won’t be raising meat birds this year unless we have a customer base who would ask us to do so.

You might be considering adding an animal to your homestead. Perhaps this will be the year you try meat birds for yourself or maybe you’re going to add some pigs. Start thinking about those animals now so that you can be prepared and ready when it comes time to add them to your homestead later in the year.

Plan Your Family’s Garden Needs

A new year’s resolution for homesteaders each year should be to plan for your family’s garden needs. Look at your food preserves and evaluate which preserved foods you definitely planted enough of last year, which foods you ran out of sooner than you’d have liked, and which foods you want to do something differently with as we enter into the new year.

For us, it’s easy to see that we definitely planted enough green beans, carrots, and tomatoes. We have enough corn to get us through the year, but we definitely weren’t happy with our crop and have some ideas on how to improve for next year. Our potato crop was a complete failure this year, and again, we are setting goals on how to improve it as we enter into the new year. Applesauce is another crop that we are eating less than we’d like, just because we want to make it last longer. Next year, foraging for more apples is definitely on our to-do list!

Learn a New Skill to Save You Money

There are so many things that you can learn that can save you money. Perhaps you learn how to make your own soap using the pig lard you got from when you butchered your pigs. Or, maybe you want to learn how to identify mushrooms or other wild edibles so that you can reap the benefits of Mother Nature without having to spend any money.

I have a whole post dedicated to homesteading skills that can save you money that you’ll definitely want to check out if this sounds like a goal you would want to have for you homestead.

Evaluate What You Can DIY vs. Buy from the Store

Homesteaders love to do it themselves, so it’s not surprising that one new year’s resolution for homesteaders is to take a hard look at what you buy often and try to think about how you can DIY it instead. When it comes to food specifically, making it yourself often tastes better, can save you money, and is healthier for you. Other items, like cleaners, soaps, and detergents, also can be much cheaper, healthier, and safer for your family when you make them yourself.

Take a look at this list of commonly purchased items that you could resolve to DIY this year to give you some ideas!

• Homemade Vanilla
• Homemade Chicken Broth
• HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE FLOUR TORTILLAS WITH JUST FOUR INGREDIENTS
• EASY SOURDOUGH BREAD

Try to Find a Way to Go Green

A really great new year’s resolution for homesteaders is to try to find a way to go green. Homesteading, largely, is all about dependence on the planet, so it’s really important that we do our parts to take care of it.

You don’t need make huge drastic changes in your lifestyle to “go green”. I mean, if you want to go solar instead of being on the grid, that’s awesome! But there are more simple ways to go about going green, too.

Some ideas you might choose to incorporate into your homestead could include:

• Starting a compost pile for your leftover vegetable scraps
• Setting a curfew time for major appliance use in your house to save on energy costs
• Upgrade your appliances and light bulbs to be more energy efficient
• Change your fencers to solar
• Pay attention to the chemicals in products and avoid buying and using anything with toxins in them
• Plant trees
• Hang your clothes out on a clothesline
• Grow your own food in a garden
• Start rotationally grazing your animals
• Buy local! When you buy local, you’re cutting out the middle man which in turn cuts out transportation costs, amongst other things.

Ditch Technology for a Night Each Week

Let’s face it. Technology is a horrible time sucker for many of us. Ditching technology for just one night per week can make a big difference in your life! It can enable more productivity and help encourage more relationship building activities with your family members. Even if you make it a new year’s resolution to try it out for even a week, you might be surprised at how much you enjoy this newfound time you have (and how much you can accomplish in that time)!

Connect with Other Homesteaders

It’s hard to live a homesteading lifestyle when other people around you just think you’re well… weird. One of the best things homesteaders can do is connect with other homesteaders! That’s why a great new year’s resolution for homesteaders is to take that first step to find likeminded people just like you. Trust me, they’re out there!

I’m a bit shy and have a hard time reaching out to new people to form friendships. But it’s definitely something I have on my goals for the year. We’d love to find another family like ours to connect with in our area! Connecting with other homesteading families can give you people to bounce ideas off of, barter with, teach you new ideas, and encourage you as you work through the many challenges that this life can create. See who you can connect with this year to really help boost your own homesteading journey.

Conclusion

Homesteaders usually have a huge list of things they want to do each year, but hopefully this new year’s resolutions for homesteaders post has given you some direction and motivation to get started on some of them. My best tip is to make a to-do list for the year and hang it up on your refrigerator where you have to look at it everyday. If you’re like me, seeing a whole bunch of unchecked boxes will definitely motivate you to want to get those resolutions accomplished instead of forgotten!

What new year’s resolutions do you have for your homestead this year? Leave a comment below!

Read More…

Check out these other posts as you set your new year’s resolutions this year.

• Old-Fashioned Ways to Pass the Time
• HOMESTEADING SKILLS THAT CAN SAVE YOU MONEY
• THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START HOMESTEADING
• HOMESTEADING SKILLS THAT CAN SAVE YOU MONEY
• SUSTAINABLE WAYS TO SPEND LESS ON GROCERIES THAT ANYONE CAN DO
• CONTEMPLATING A FAMILY MILK COW? YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
• EASY HOMEMADE VANILLA EXTRACT RECIPE
• SIMPLE OLD FASHIONED ACTIVITIES FOR AN OLD FASHIONED LIFESTYLE
• HOMESTEAD CHECKLIST FOR STARTING A HOMESTEAD

Pin this Post!

Don’t forget to save this post on New Year’s resolutions for homesteaders!