2011 homesteading to-do list

The start of any great plan starts with a brain dump. What we have here is a list of every possible task I can think of that I want to accomplish in 2011 in terms of building up my homestead along with a few other skills I wanted to note such as hunting and foraging. There are many other tasks I need to accomplish on my home itself, but they are out of the scope of this list.

Now I am a realist, I realize that I can’t possibly get every single task done that I want to accomplish, so what happens now is I will go through all of my goals and identify the “next actions”. This means I need to determine the next actionable step which is required to complete a project.

So for example mounting mason bee houses, the “next action” would be “Search Shop for appropriate scrap wood (2×6 or whatever)

For acute items like “building top bar hives” these next items will have a hard deadline (Bee packages are already ordered) and those deadlines will go on a calendar.

As I said, this is just my first brain dump and will be tweaked moving forward.

Hopefully this list will give ya’ll some ideas for your homestead, or you can add your own projects to my list if I forgot some useful or important ones.
Homesteading Tasks 2011

1. Planning
   1. Create full inventory of plants/trees/resources
   2. Create shadow maps of property for each month
   3. Create wind survey of land
   4. record when apple trees blossom, fruit etc and get varieties identified
   5. Start diary
2. Nuts – plan for and don’t miss nut harvests this year (walnut/chestnut)
3. Orchard
   1. dormant oil (this needs to happen this month!!)
   2. winter pruning (ditto)
4. Prune Grape Vines (this month!)
5. Mulberries
   1. Make wine from mulberries this year
   2. Try new harvesting technique (shaking tree onto tarps)
6. garden
   1. garden plan
   2. determine crops which need to be started indoors
   3. determine if seed starting area needs to be increased and additional grow lights need to be purchased or not
   4. make additional seed purchases as necessary
   5. start seeds
   6. prepare new beds
      1. purchase: spading fork
      2. purchase: determine how much, if any, compost is required in addition to compost made last year, call garden centers and get a delivery (vs buying bags from lowes)
   7. Build low tunnels for new beds
   8. Determine planting for the planter boxes on the sun porch (part shade)… can we grow biomass for compost or feed here? Or just fill with bee forage?
   9. Plant at least 3 new types of vines on fence line
   10. plant additional berry bushes
   11. Order mushroom fungus to inoculate garden beds
7. Bees
   1. assemble langstroth hive
   2. purchase: bulk sugar and powdered sugar
   3. Put new blade on table saw
   4. build/assemble 2 top bar hives
   5. set up mason bee houses (minimum 2)
8. chickens
   1. make the call… to do this or not? I’m inclined to cut this from the list OR to purchase established chickens and start later in the season
   2. obtain pallets and build chicken tractor
9. Shiitake/Mushroom logs
   1. Finish chain saw work on existing maple logs
   2. Determine number of logs to inoculate
   3. Order spore
   4. Determine time to inoculate
   5. inoculate
10. Worms
    1. obtain materials for worm tower (local dump??)
    2. obtain materials for outdoor worm bin
    3. obtain worms
11. Rain catch
    1. obtain rain barrels
    2. install system
    3. plan/install drip irrigation system
12. Compost
    1. obtain pallets for composting and determine compost location (easiest task of the bunch!)
    2. Fix/Replace lawn tractor spindles and attach new blades
    3. Harvest shredded leaves after spring thaw after shredding with lawn tractor
13. Hugelkulture
    1. Determine location of dry beds (most likely in the north east corner of property
    2. Prepare Hugelkulture beds using apple pruning
    3. Plant legumes or other cover crops over Hugelkulture beds
14. Aquaponics/Vermiponics
    1. Complete design of winter 2011 system
    2. Determine feasibility of starting the system in winter 2011/2012
15. Rocket Stove/Biomass stove (winter 2011/2012)
    1. Obtain materials
    2. Test effectiveness in shop
    3. Determine/Plan fireplace retrofit (is it possible? How to design this?)
16. Earth Sheltered Green House
    1. Determine location and needs
    2. Develop plan
17. Generator Transfer Switch Install
18. Root cellar
    1. Obtain metal barrels from the source I found
    2. Obtain source for hay bails
19. Purchase Excalibur dehydrator
20. Second well
    1. determine needs of the well. Can this run on PV? Manual pump install?
    2. clean up well house
21. Naturalist Training
    1. Begin naturalist training program in spring
    2. Identify local edibles on normal dog walking route
    3. Gorilla garden existing blackberry patch
    4. harvest wild edibles on land (dandelion, etc)
    5. Make tea from dandelion roots and stop buying dandelion tea
22. Learn how to fish and learn existing fishing spots (contact Sean B.)
23. Go hunting at least once and learn how to shoot safely and properly (utilize mentor)