There are two types of smallholding tasks, the usual maintenance stuff that keeps us ticking over and the more ambitious stuff that grows the holding and our skill base. Lately, there's been a lot of the former, unsurprisingly. Spring is on the way.
Most of the tasks we've been doing are maintenance - cleaning, hedging, painting, fencing, repotting, cutting the grass, pruning the bushes, and upgrading worn out fixtures and fittings. We're hobby smallholders, that is, we both have full-time jobs so can only smallhold in our spare time. We don't sell any produce, what we produce we eat ourselves. Time management has always been at the forefront of our mind so we deliberately do not take on too much. If we can't cope and it involves animals, they could suffer. And if we do find a way to cope we could suffer!
We have been extremely restrained since moving here and have never bitten off more than we could chew. Apart from purchasing two more chickens when we arrived, for the first few months we did very little - propagated some strawberries in preparation for raised beds, bought in some basics for keeping pigs and cut the grass. Martin didn't move up permanently until November 2016 so I didn't like to start without him and there really wasn't much I could do with winter approaching. It would begin the following spring. And, in all honesty, we were shattered. Moving house squeezed the pips out of us.
When we did finally start, we took it slow and tried to make it as easy as possible. Where possible we paid for help, intending to learn and then do it ourselves one day if cost-efficient to do so (the kind of help the sheep are offering below while I tried to recover the chicken pen was more of a hindrance! They are very sniffy, licky, chewy sheep).
I sometimes read articles in smallholding magazines about people who move to their dream smallholding with acres of land to look after and within a year are breeding pigs and sheep, have a big flock of chickens, a few horses, geese, goats, tractors and ATVs in addition to jobs and children and a small business and I think "How??? How are you managing to sleep at night? How are you making money? Where are you getting your energy from?"
Maybe I'm just a bit wary after years of rushing into stuff with enthusiasm, only to have the stuffing knocked out of me by chronic fatigue. I've learnt to start small and do things in small chunks. A little every day and things get done. But smallholding is so bloody seductive, especially the animals. It is so easy to rush in joyfully and scatter a ton of money and energy and end up getting spanked for your efforts. Animals that someone claims are healthy are not but you don't spot that on purchase because you don't know what to look for. That means expensive vet's bills. Or equipment you think you'll need but on later reflection you realise you could have got by without it or done it on a shoestring.
I've realised over the last few months there's a lot of peace of mind to be found in trialling options slowly and thoughtfully, and much to be said for thoroughly mastering the basics. Even if all you ever do are the basics, on a smallholding you can end up achieving an awful lot.
