Unlike Fate,  I don’t do New Years resolutions.

I am,  however,  going to set out some goals that I am going to strive towards this year. I will try to do posts every month,  or couple of months,  referencing these goals.  I want to try to track my progress and hold myself accountable.

1.  Greenhouse

I want to work on getting the greenhouse up and running this spring,  so as soon as the weather warms up enough I can move all of my seedlings out into it. My plan this fall was to get it set up and start growing year round lettuce and cold crops.  We missed our window of opportunity in the weather to set it up,  though,  when my grandma died.  You need between 50-70 degree days to stretch the plastic and we plunged into freezing temperatures really fast with very little return to warmth since then.

I want to be able to start all the he flowers I normally buy.  I just don’t have room in the house to start everything I want to plant.  Some things come up good from seed,  however,  a lot of the flowers I like I just haven’t had any luck with. I bought quite a few medicinal herb seeds I want to get started this year as well.

2.  Garage

The garage is currently packed full of things from the store that we shoved in there.  It’s been 2 years now since we closed the store and a full year since we closed the business,  it’s time this stuff went away.  We halfheartedly went through the stuff this fall,  sold a bit,  and then just quit.  I want to get everything store related out of my garage this year.  I want to be able to work on my projects in the garage,  store my tools where I can actually find the damn things,  and move my rabbits into the garage.  I want to be able to easily keep the rabbits cool,  as well as keeping the space above freezing in the winter so I don’t have to switch from water bottles to crocks in the winter.

Also,  I can’t do this until I have room in the garage:

3.  Quail

I really want to start raising quail for meat and eggs.  My plan is to house them with the rabbits,  however,  I can’t do that until I can house the rabbits in the garage,  I just have absolutely no where to put them and they need a more protected area then my 3 sided shed can give them in the winter.

4.  Hatching eggs

I want to start hatching out eggs,  both chicken and quail.  My friend kept back a rooster for her flock that should produce sex link chicks. Our intention is to hatch out our own meat birds, quail, replacement layers,  and whatever else we see that catches our fancy.  Maybe I can hatch out ducks and geese,  they sell for quite a premium.  I’m excited about this one,  I love raising baby poultry.

5. Earn enough money to take Geoff Lawton’s online Permaculture Design Course.

The more I learn about Permaculture the more I think it’s the way to go for the world.  I want to understand it better then I can just reading and researching all the free stuff out there,  where else to look but to the leading name in Permaculture Design work? I hope to be able to set aside enough money in 2014 to take his online course in 2015,  or as soon as I can earn enough and the class is offered. I’d love to go to a course in person,  but he’s out of Australia and I hate flying.  I’ve also heard that the online course is far more information rich just due to the amount of questions he is able to answer online vs in person due to the lack of time during a live course.

I have quite a few money making ideas,  I just need to get off my ass and do them.

6.  Get my horse trained and start riding.

I plan on this spring getting a trainer to put 30 days on him and then finishing him myself.  I’m just not comfortable getting him started,  which is why at 17 he’s still not trained.  I have no intention of riding him hard like a 3 year old,  I’d just like to be able to get out and ride some again.  It’s been a long time and I really miss it.

7.  Get the house shoveled out and ready to sell

We have too much stuff.  Tho,  I will say,  I’m not sure if the problem lies in too much stuff,  or too much extra stuff that’s not ours.  Either way,  this goal is a companion to goal #2.  The house needs to be shoveled out and cleaned/fixed up so we can sell it.  We are looking for a piece of property that has acerage,  but we are never going to be able to move if this place isn’t ready to sell. I’m not going to put a goal of finding somewhere to move to,  I think that will happen organically,  however,  getting the house ready for sale will not.  It’s gonna take work and lots of it.

8.  Consolidate and fix up fish tanks

My fish tanks have gotten pretty sad.  I want to consolidate down to 2-3 really nicely set up fish tanks with lights on timers.  I keep forgetting to turn on the lights and my plants are dying.  My favorite tank crashed (heater went out) and a couple projects failed so I kind of lost interest.  I need to get things back to awesome again,  only this time a bit more automated I think.

9.  Kick the back yard into high gear

I’ve fenced off an area for the chickens and need to fence off another area as well (the dogs need to be able to use part of the backyard too!) I have plans to replace the grass is those two areas with a mixture of food plants with both the chickens and rabbits in mind. I want to tractor grow out rabbits through the back yard as well as rotate chickens through.  I hope to be able to feed my breeder rabbits from the surplus as well.  I’m trying for more food security for my family,  however,  I’m not happy with feeding or treating what I eat with the same normal that you can buy at the supermarket.  I want my food to be as healthy and happy and as close to naturally fed as I can manage. If I wanted the same quality meat as I can get from the supermarket,  I’d just get it from the supermarket.  It’d be a hell of a lot easier!

There are also a couple of trees that need to come down. One is an elm tree that is starting to completely shade out my garden. The other is a peach tree that has been limping along for a couple years now. I will be surprised if it comes back at all in the spring,  it started weeping sap this fall. It’s never really produced,  I’ve just kept it around in the past because I hate to cut trees down and I keep hoping it will give me awesome peaches,  but no dice.  It’s going to go this year for sure though.  I will probably replace those two trees with several more in a Permaculture setup,  which will improve the back yard by leaps and bounds.

10.  This blog

We have big plans for this blog. It’s ebbed and flowed over the past few years since we set it up.  It’s had times of high posting and even more times of low to no posting. This year I have a couple of changes in mind for this blog and it’s broken down into two parts:

— My intention is to post two times a week this year,  Tuesday and Friday.  There may be more,  however,  I am going to try to at least hit those days,  even through the busy gardening and canning season.   Fate and Blazed Monkey will probably post as well, whenever they want to, this goal is just My goal. I’ve set up some redundant reminders for myself,  I tend to forget to post,  hopefully those reminders will help.  Unfortunately,  when it comes to this blog, if I don’t see it,  I forget about it, and there isn’t much to remind me about it in day to day life. Hopefully I’ve changed that,  but it remains to be seen.

—Podcast! Fate got some recording equipment so he could record the piano and it just so happens that the same equipment translates into podcasting equipment as well! We’ve been talking about starting a podcast for awhile now,  but haven’t had the equipment to be able to do it.  Our Podcasts will be posted on this blog as well.

There are quite a few other things I am planning for this year,  however,  most of them are just continuations of things I am already doing,  or things that I’ve got to get done that I don’t plan on focusing heavily on. Those things should find themselves on the blog eventually.

I’ve set my tablet up with a nice bluetooth keyboard these days so typing is a whole lot easier and amazingly faster.  I forget how fast I can type when I’m not just limited to my thumbs. Hopefully this will translate into more blogging.   Between my reminders setup,  the keyboard,  and podcasting this blog should be rocking this year!

There are 8760 hours in 2014, what are YOU planning on doing with them?

-Fin