6 Ways to Make Chores Easier

I don’t know about you but chores seem to me like they take up enough time and energy without having to be extra hard. Here are a few tips to keep chores easy and more organized.

1 Make sure the gates open and shut – there is nothing worse than getting to the fence after probably strulggling through the muck and the mud just to have the gate not open and have to a) crawl through the barbed wire fence and possibly snag your pants on them, or b) have to climb over the wooden beamed fence that is a hard landing if you fall. Keep your fence lines and gates up to date and easy to use. If you know your gate is reliable its half the battle of getting your chores done. 

2 Keep the feed and water near by to your animals. Feed should always be kept in a dry area but a lot of farmers make the mistake having the feed across the barnyard from the animal you need to feed, this is unneeded work, no one wants to carry a 5 gallon pail in multiple trips across the barn yard, keep the feed close in containers that can be easily refilled or in graineries beside the pens. Hoppers are a great way to keep feed such as grains and corns dry and clean they can easily be set with a tractor or bobcat in place and stay there for the entirety of your farming career. Other ways of keeping feed close are by keeping bins in the coop with a sealed lid or having feeders that can be filled up that will last severel days if not weeks, doing so will save on your back and mental health. Hay can be stacked on pallets and moved with farm equipment to the allotted area, if there is no shelter for the hay it can be kept under a tarp to stay dry. Here are some suggestions for Feed storage: 

There are many waterers on the market and also DIY ones that can be filled up to last long periods of time. 

3 Don’t build low to the ground! I see this mistake often in DIY demos of people just homesteading, building your own chicken coops and buildings are great and so resourseful especially chicken tractors that allow the birds to be on fresh patches of grass every day, but the reoccurring thing I am seeing is people bending down to get to the chickens level to replace the waters and feed, this is not going to help your back in the long run! Instead use a building plan that will allow easy access that will save not only your back but also make it easier on your part to clean and transport the building. Remember you are a farmer and your time is precious you have to make the most of what light in the day you have and you also want to enjoy having that farmers life you have worked hard for. 

4 Don’t buy the animal before you have the pen set up! Ok I know what your thinking, well I just got my heard of sheep now where should I put them on the farm yard? I know because I have done this umpteen times, I have learned though and I am here to encourage you, before you get your animals, have a plan. Sit down and map out where you will have them, keep in mind weather, water and feed supply and area volume all these are important in finding the perfect spot for your new critters. Now blue print a building and supplies, it will help you immensely to have the set up needed. Whether you are taking an old grainery and transforming it or taking on the task of building from scratch both are good ideas just do the building before moving in the animals, have the waters and feeders set up and have a plan for where the waste will go. Always keep in mind clean up and having an easy access in and out of the building, if you need to be able to get in there with a shovel or a tractor you need to think of these things when placing the doors on those sides of entry. 

5  use transportation- if you are on a farm one of the best and most needed things you will own is a wheel barrel, they were invented to make the load less heavy and help you to carry long distances, let the load not be on your back. If you are fortunate enough to have a tractor, side by side, quad, truck then use them! Don’t carry things across the farmyard to prove a point there are plenty other ways to use your muscles on the farm, let the wheels do the heavy lifting to your destination for you. Be creative if it is things that are hard to move, being a farmer really does entail being an inventor of ways to manage and get things from point A to B. 

6 clean up! Being organized sometimes comes later in life, in the before mentioned sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and put the cart before the horse so to speak. Being organized and keeping your farm clean will help you to be able to move on with the days job. If things are clean you will feel less stressed because you wont feel the burden to have to do that one more thing. There are not enough hours in the day to be building more work for yourself on the farm. If you are coming from an old farm that has 30 years of stuff around the place do not fret! All you can do is start today, there are many ways to get your farm cleaned up and keep it clean. Here are a few helpful tips:

Tin removal: our family farm had years of tin stacked up all over the place, mom and I got busy and started filling up the flat bed with them all, there are several metal depots to take them to that will pay you cash for the metal, just research what they do and don’t take. 

Old farm equipment: Sometimes antique sites would love to have that old 1950s tractor you have laying around, and if not, again metal companies will take them, some may even come to your house to take them off your hands and pay you to do so, this goes for old cars too. Better to get a few bucks off of them than to have them sitting there another 30 plus years.

Old hay: hay can have many reasons for being left in piles around the yard, the animals were moved but you didn’t find time to move the hay, it got rained on and wasn’t properly covered etc. You can use old hay on your plants as a compost or put it in your compost area turning it with manure and such to get a deep rich compost. Check your nurseries in your area if they would like a load of old hay for their plants. You also can burn them but this process takes some times and you will have to check with your local laws on buring piles. 

Old barns and buildings: Time for the demo! Advertise in your area on fb and social media for people to come take the old wood for you, many artists use it for crafts or furniture and it can be worth money to you. If you feel it is unusable you can either hire people who will come to your home and demolish and take it to the dump for you or you can tear it down and again burn it if you can get the proper licence to do so in your area. Some old building just need a little love, use what you have on the farm to get the most profit out of it, if you have a building that still has good bones add a little tlc to it and make it into a new useful building such as a chicken coop or storage unit. We have repurposed many old buildings making them like new rather than spending more money on something brand new. DIY is a big part of a farmers life. 

Have a garden shed: everything should have a place on your farm, if you have a garden on one side of your yard your tools for it should not be in the garage on the other side of the barn, find things around your farm to repurpose into a small shed that can be close to the garden, everything other than the liquids will be safe throughout the year as long as it is dry and secure from the weather. Old kids playhouses are the perfect size for theses. 

There are multiple ways to make the farm life a little easier.