Setting yearly goals for developing our Homestead. We didn't do very good last year.

you guys all ready to move to the other side let's go come on across there you go morning Maya you ready to go it's a little chilly today hey guys I'm Evan welcome to Country View Acres so today it's New Year's Eve and it's the day we're going to talk about our goals and our plans for next year and we're going to do our goals a little bit differently this year we're going to change kind of how we do them maybe make them a little more realistic but before I do that we need to go over what our goals were for this year and see how we did on them so last year I wrote our goals up on this Blackboard here in the workshop that way every time I came in here they were like staring me right in the face hopefully that would keep me motivated keep me working toward my goals now we did get quite quite a bit done this year I feel like we've accomplished quite a bit but as far as our goals are concerned I really don't think we did very good focusing and and working toward these goals now our first goal for the year was to actually finish the inside of this Workshop so as you look behind me this one side of the workshop is still unfinished it's still insulation no wood on the walls this little corner over here this we were wanting to put a side door in so that we could walk straight out into the outside of the dog kennel instead of having to walk around the building needless to say we didn't make a single video working on this Workshop we didn't do anything toward this goal it was a complete failure uh we got a big fat zero when it came to finishing the workshop so goal number two was to finish fixing the Alice chers d17 tractor we had already had it torn mostly apart at the beginning of the year we we pulled off the lift arm assembly and the PTO shaft we pulled that off the very back of the tractor we we got that rebuilt and then we we mounted that back on the tractor we got one of the axles mounted back on the tractor and then all work stopped and we did not come back out here and work on this I think until around November we finally came back out I started cleaning up parts again started working toward getting the other axle back on and we are finally to the point where I just painted the back half of the tract yesterday so we got a Fresh coat of primer on here we got a bunch of parts over there that's primered and tomorrow or no later today I will should be putting on the first coat of Alice chmer Cher's orange paint it's going to get a couple coats of orange paint and then we'll finally have a video out of of painting the back half of this tractor so even though we are to the point of painting there is still quite a bit left to do um I'd say overall everything that need to be done maybe we've got 25 5% of it done there's still another 75% to do before this is actually running where we can get it out of here and use it outside again so overall didn't do very good on this goal at all um yeah I'd say 25% so goal number three was to install a solar power system that could power our critical loads during a grid outage and our critical loads would be like our lights our microwave our hot water heater our refrigerator and our freezers um and our propane furnace you know to be able to heat your house uh the critical items that you would like to have going not everything and I wanted it to be able to do that in December when the sun is low there's less solar there's more clouds so everything is sized to run those in December and we did get this goal complete we installed the Canadian Solar EP Cube it has we have a total of 20 kwatt hours worth of battery uh here for energy storage and then we got 11,000 a little over 11,000 Watts worth of solar panels on the roof and this does power our critical loads but it in normal operating time it actually Powers everything it Powers our whole house it Powers the garage it it lowers our electric bill it sells power back to the power company it does so much more than what our original goal was but if there was a grid outage I can turn everything off and just run the critical loads if um if it was sunny outside this could run our critical loads indefinitely if it was sunny every day if it was no sun this can go for over a day without sun and power them before I have to use a gas generator to to charge things up or to run something so I think overall we we met that goal and um of course the winter time's going to be worse it's always going to do better in the in the other times of the year so I think we definitely achieved this goal it's it was definitely our most probably one of our most timec consuming and one of the ones that took the most amount of money so this definitely took a lot of our time this year to get this all installed but I I'm very happy with the end result so goal number four it says was to clean out old Fen rows now I don't know if I necessarily like the way that it was written I looked at my old handwritten notes and I originally wrote that up as to continue to work toward having more pasture and to have more pasture I needed to clean out fence rows so that I can install fence new fencing right along where the old fence used to be and so that's the whole intention of that was to just work toward fencing in this front 12 acres really so there was three fence rows that needed to be cleaned out we cleaned out one and a half of those fence rows and I think we've got 12 or 13 videos cleaning out fence rows this year there's quite a bit of work in that and we got about 50% of it done on that goal so goal number five was to install a well pump and new water lines from the old wellhouse now that's an old shallow well on our property I just didn't realize how shallow it was it's not 15 20t deep it was 6 feet deep and I pumped it out really quickly it's Springfed it's kind of weird well that it is but I pumped it dry really quickly so that worried me I didn't want to put a lot of time and effort in something I didn't know was going to supply enough water so we abandoned that goal I replaced it with the Corral building a Corral around the white pole barn and you've seen us work on that over the last few months we've got a fence on the east side of the Corral and we've currently been working on the fence on the west side of the Corral and um I'd say overall you know we've got most of our posts in the ground I think I've got seven more to go uh for the loading alley and and I'd say we were probably 30% done on the Corral build but uh I think we got a decent amount done the last couple months so last year we did set like three more side goals or side projects and first one was to get livestock that was more purposeful and we did achieve that we got rid of the dairy goats and the fing goats because they're more like pets and replace them with kadan sheep which is more of a market animal that we can sell the second one was to fix up the firewood shed we didn't do anything on that and the other one was to modify the Barnyard uh fence and fix the back of the livestock Barn the old wooden Bank Barn uh we did do a little bit on that we did put up one little fence line with a with a fence line feeder with a feed trough on it for the for the heers but um we really didn't get much of that done I would say we got like 10% of that one done so overall you can tell last last year we really didn't get much of these lists completed and that brings us to this year's goals and I'm like I said I'm going to set these up a little bit differently and the reason being is because I think a lot of these are things that I wanted to happen but they there was always more important things to do um the the things up here like finish the workshop that was a want I would like that to happen but when it gets down to it the animals need fed um hey needs cut there's stuff that just has to be done right so that these jobs never get done this year I'm going to set my goals up differently we're going to put down the five things that just need to get done and then we can set up uh a secondary list of all the things I'd like to happen of all the things I want that might happen that might not happen but the main thing is is our five goals for next year are going to be the things that have to happen okay the things that need to happen so goal number one the thing that we need to get done the most is we really need more pasture we have been overg grazed for the last couple years and all we are doing is ruining the pasture that we have by overg grazing it we really need to get this 12 acres in the front we need to get this fenced in and we need to get planted so that we can graze our animals in it and and that goes back to we still need to clean out some fence rows to get that complete so this fence row right here along our driveway this is one of the fence rows we need to do um I've been kind of saving it till last but we need to get it cleaned out and we just need to get this front pasture fenced in we got three sides we need to fence in on this 12 acres and get it planted so that we can actually graze animals and have the actual right amount of acreage for the animals we have goal number two is we need a way to handle livestock to be able to sort them to be able to work on them vaccinate them and and to be able to load them in a trailer um so that is why we need the Corral system that we're starting to build back here we need to get it finished that way we can work and give vaccinations to the cattle and to the sheep and we can load them in a trailer when uh when it's time for them to load up so now goal number three the thing that we'll need to get done if we have this 12 acres over here fenced in and turned into pasture our animals will actually spend a majority of their time over here Grazing In that pasture so we don't actually have a livestock barn or any type of shelter over here for animals and that's why every time we move the animals over here we always move them back at the end of the day over to the other barn but we really need to have some type of a shelter on this side and that's where this white pole barn is going to come in it's going to be part of the Corral and the livestock handling but we're also going to use it for a place that the animals can take shelter out of the wind the rain the cold weather and then as a part of the handling facility when we build that I think we can also incorporate in a couple of pin so that we can we can lock up an animal in a pin if we need to if you need a birthing stall um or if you need to isolate an animal from the rest of the herd so I think we're going to be able to use this as a livestock barn and be able to put a couple pins in there as well if we need to um but we do definitely need a shelter on this side once we are keeping the animals over here all the time so that leads me to goal number four so if I turn the inside of this white pole barn we turn that into livestock handling and into a livestock shelter um I'm going to need a new place to store my round bales we make uh 4 and a half four to 4 and 1/2t diameter round bales I like to store those inside out of the weather to reduce the spoilage on them um and that's just that's my preference that's that's the way I want to store them so I need to find a new location to store these and uh we store our square bales we store that in the other uh livestock Barn the wooden Bank Barn we store those there um I don't know if that will really work for round bales so we're going to have to figure something out on how to store these next year and now for our last goal which is goal number five and this is what Rebecca says we need this this is her need um so I have wanted bookshelves for a long time I have hundreds of books I love to read they're stacked everywhere stacked everywhere and I've kind of been hinting at it for a few years and this year I've said it's an absolute need I have to have bookshelves so yeah and it's not going to just be any kind of bookshelf I think we kind of come up with a plan and it's going to be we're going to build do a built-in and it'll be like U it'll be bookshelves and maybe some cabinets for storage but we're going to put it up upstairs in our Loft so she can have like a little library for her books so excited my own Library yes so I've done a I used to do a bunch of woodworking in the past I haven't done that for a few years so we'll have to um jump back into woodworking a little bit this year and see if we can make some built-in shelves and cabinets and get those installed for Rebecca so that is definitely what she says is need y mhm she has been harping on me for a while and I'll get it done this year I hope and you make beautiful woodwork we could show I have some I think I've showed some of the woodwork before so I used to do a lot of Lathe work making stuff on a wood lathe and this this was something that I had given my grandmother and U after she passed away I ended up getting it back but that is a a nice little I don't call it a base of some sort it's about 12 14 in tall yeah it's beautiful made out of mahogany and and maple Burl so just imagine how beautiful my library is going to be we'll see I'll have to do I'll have to do a good job she's got high standards now so needless to say if I'm going to build the shelves and built-ins that Rebecca wants I'm going to need my workshop back I don't normally show this side of the shop and there's a reason reason is because it just it looks completely filthy so I've got a couple tractor tires sitting there I've got the fenders on the other side and I've just got miscellaneous alist trer Parts kind of laying around that still need cleaned and then I've got a parts washer and just a there's just a bunch of stuff in here that has to do with working on this tractor it's taken up this project and all of its parts has taken up 2third of the workshop so I will have to get this this finished and running again so I can get it out so that I actually have the space to to make the shelves and the built-ins for the Loft so um goal number five is kind of dependent on getting the Alice chers out of here so those are our our five goals for 2024 and I really do think that we've set ourselves up a lot better this next year I think these five goals are really I think they are achievable but I think they are five things that we will definitely work on and that we will definitely be more likely to complete um so I think that this this year's goals for 2024 I really do think that they are more attainable just because they do need to happen so they will take precedence right they will take priority and we will focus on them more than the things that we wanted to do and that's where I think we screwed up last year a lot of these I would consider once they are things that I would really like to have have in the big dream of our property and and homesteading and living in the country we have big dreams and Ambitions and these help fill out those dreams right but they don't necessarily need to happen so I think last year we kind of set ourselves up for failure because these most of these probably 75% 70% of these are once they don't didn't necessarily have to happen and we focused on the things that we needed to do to to keep this place running and to keep the livestock fed and the hay made and you know we we stayed focused on the priorities and since these weren't needs these took lesser priorities and we didn't get our goals done you know so I think we kind of set ourselves up a little bit for failure just by naming a bunch of wishlist items on our goal list so and there's never a shortage of wish list wish lists right there's not a shortage of dreams of things you want to do and we've got several now we may or may you know may or may not work on these items up here that we didn't get done these are all these are all still items we want to do so we may or may not work on these anytime soon but like I said I don't have a shortage of things I'd like to do so I'll list a few more that I would like to do I don't know if I've mentioned these before so besides everything here we didn't get done I would also like to build a farm fueling station I'd like to have gasoline and Diesel on hand where we can actually fill up the tractors fill up the lawn mower and not be hauling gas cans back and forth uh we can get off-road diesel that is cheaper a little more cost effective so I would really like to get that established sometime soon I would really like to build a root seller this is a project I've dreamed of for a while of course it's a want right it's a big project that doesn't need to happen but we've got the hillside out here from our house down to the pond we can actually build a root Celler into the side of that Hill Hill fairly easily I think I mean at least dig it out fairly easily and build a root seller and that'd be a cool way to be able to store vegetables from the garden and that just fits in with the whole homesteading self-sufficiency kind of mindset and dream um that probably won't happen for some time but that is one of the things I would like to do and then of course we've talked before about building a bridge across this Inlet of the pond so that we can access this side of our property over here easily and be able to use more of our property basically it's just kind of all overgrown and you can't really get back there very easily if we could build a bridge it'd be a lot easier for us to get over there and keep that side of the pond mode and you'd have more areas to fish that's that's another thing that we would like to do but all in all that's part of the homesteading kind of country lifestyle dream and they're not necessarily things that have to happen to just kind of keep this place functioning on a day-to-day basis so uh I'm sure that all those things I mentioned will eventually happen over the next several years but will we work on them this year we'll just have to wait and see but uh I definitely do have a good feeling about this year I think we're going to do good on our goals a lot better than we did this last year so just stick around and and wait and see what happens and follow along with us and watch us slowly keep developing our 41 Acres you know we're slowly getting to the point where we're going to have the whole thing you know finally developed and using everything it takes a while it does take a while but we're going to we're going to get there eventually so anyway I think that's it for today's video guys so thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Country View Acres

Views: 57,601

Keywords: Homestead, farm, farmstead, hobby farm, self sufficient, homesteading, rural life, country life, farm life, goals, yearly goals, homesteading goals, farming goals, property goals, new years resolution

Id: SFauQ1kPZWk

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 31 2023