Homestead Management in the New Age

Balancing Technology (and an Offer to You)

Balancing technology is the curse of my generation. 

We fondly recall the way things used to be. More than just a feeling of nostalgia, it’s a visceral reaction that something is wrong with the trajectory of humanity. There’s less and less “human” in it in so many ways. 

On the other hand, technology, when used mindfully with purpose, can be a powerful tool to help us fulfill our daily tasks. 

We are on the rack, pulled between opposing ideals, always aware of our place between two ages. As I began to pull together the next Homesteaders of America magazine, there were so many thoughtful technology submissions, it is the focus of the issue. It is a burden on so many hearts.

In my life, one area where I struggle to find balance is maintaining homesteading records. 

A simple notepad checklist used to suffice, but as my stepladder of children grew, I needed more. I’ve been using printable worksheets in a homesteading management binder (this is my current favorite) for 15 years and marketed them online between 2011-2018 when I sold my website.

By then I had started using apps like Evernote for journaling & note-taking or SmartSteader to track finances and yields. The searchability of the former and the auto-calculations of the latter undeniably streamlined my record-keeping. 

But when my phone crashed and I lost years of records, all the convenience in the world didn’t amount to a hill of beans. 

I tried using published farm planners but my life is too diversified and I ended up with multiple planners to manage. The inefficiency and guilt of unused pages that didn’t apply to my farm was crippling. “Do the next thing” it is said but without a system to default to when I don’t know what the next thing was to do, I find I do what I want instead of what I ought.

Different strokes for different folks and all but, if you’re anything like me, the to-do list of living an All-Things-Home-Centric lifestyle can have your brain clogged up like a kitchen sink drain clogged like a cholesterol-ridden artery with a ring of cooled bacon grease that is then stuffed with pasta which was pushed down the drain instead of scraped into the hog’s slop bucket. 

Is that my vivid imagination speaking or the reality of living with a whole passel of kids? Decide for yourself. 

Having the bones of my day pre-planned where I can fill in with the urgent tasks necessary to keep the ole’ homestead humming along semi-smoothly, puttering out reasonable production, and the hearts all beating is critical to keeping my cortisol levels in check. 

I’ve known this about myself for years. 

As my older children are going out into the world to start their own lives, many of my delegated duties are falling back onto me and my, heretofore untrained, younger crowd. I realized this spring my piecemeal system simply wasn’t cutting it. 

So I went back to square one, completely overhauled and redesigned my original printables, and brought them into the new decade with fillable (searchable) forms and hyperlinked tabs, and a table of contents to find sections easily.

I love the way it works! And I’m giving it as a gift to my supporting members so you can love it too!

Of course, when I made that decision, things got out of hand and I just kept thinking of more and more pages that would be helpful to those no matter what their homestead looks like.

There are pages for:

• Goals Planning (Complimentary Annual Goals Planning page available here.)

• Daily, Weekly, Monthly, & Yearly Scheduling

• Routine & Habit Trackers

• Daily Planner pages

• Menu Planning + Grocery & Price Lists

• Cleaning Worksheets

• Budgeting & Financial Tools

• Project Planning 

• Home Maintenance Logs

• Homestead Expense & Yield Records for just about every facet a homestead can have

• Garden Planning Tools including a Vegetable Planner (how much should you grow); Sunlight Trackers; Seed Purchases & Inventory; Growing Guides; Garden Design & Projects; Task Tracker; Orchard pages; Cut Flower Task Calendar; & Herbal Sufficiency Worksheet

• Livestock Health & Litter Records

• Bill of Sale

• Pedigree

• Incubation Chart

• Rabbit Production 

• Market Animal Worksheet

• Pantry Planner & Inventory

• Food Preservation Tracker

• Inventories for the homestead, herbal apothecary, home dairy production 

• Cheese Making records

• Butchering records

• Curing & Home-brew records

• Medical History

• Food Journal 

• Materia Medical 

• Homeschool Planner pages

Over 140 pages in all!

The layout is clean and fully customizable, yet with no wasted space or vacuous pages.

It is undated so there is no need to worry about sourcing a new planner next year (or if I’ll ever stop updating the year in the future.)

The planner is color-coded by record type (homemaking, finances, production, etc) so if you completely rearrange the pages to make a custom planner just for your homestead, you can still easily visually assess which type of page you’re on.

Instead of being pigeonholed to a single garden harvest page, you can add 10 if needed. Don’t make your own maple syrup? Delete the Sugarbush page. (I recommend duplicating the original file to drag and drop pages into your planner in the future.)

Being fully hyperlinked you can use it digitally on any device (and it’s searchable for future use.) 

Print out the pages and put together a custom homestead binder. (This is my new favorite- so many pockets!!) Or upload the PDFs to your favorite note-taking app, such as GoodNotes. 

I’ll be somewhere in the middle. Some pages I’ll pre-fill some areas and print to finish filling out over time. For example, on my cow’s health record, I filled out all the static information (her birth, sire/dam, registration number), printed a copy for my binder, and then will fill it out as the record needs to be updated.

If we’ve got new ways of technology to make our lives easier, why not use it for good to help us more fully return to the old ways of living? 

Get your Digital Homestead Planner

»Current paid subscriber? Shoot me a reply to this email if you’d like a copy and I’ll send you links! Thank you so much for your support! 

»Don’t want to upgrade to be a supporting subscriber but still want the planner? You can purchase the planners in my new Etsy shop. Use the coupon code “PLOWINHOPE” for 20% off everything in the shop. 

»On the fence and don’t know which route to go? Allow me to incentivize you! I’m offering new Substack subscribers 20% off an annual plan right now. Sign up and you’ll get the links to the files today in your welcome message!

I appreciate each and every one of you and it is my deepest hope that these pages will help your home and homestead flourish and run decently and in order!