The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner ─ What to Do & When to Do It

The Backyard Homestead Season-by-Season Workbook details not only what tasks to do to keep a small farm or homestead running smoothly — but when to do them. Each season is divided into chapters for early, mid, and late, with each chapter opening by identifying signs of the times: mud, flood, blossoms, and baby animals mean early spring, for instance, while grass growth and insect populations both peak in early summer. Handy lists and accessible sidebars highlight the season’s tasks and priorities, while narrative sections focus on one especially timely topic for each chapter, including plant rotations and soil building in late spring and sustainable woodlot management in mid-autumn. Individual season-by-season charts on what to do when for each topic, such as tractor or equipment maintenance, orchard care, and animal cycles fill out the appendix. Readers have plenty of room to check items off lists or leave notes such as, “Didn’t do this in Feb.; remember in March!” or “Need new gate latch by summer,” making the format of this book a welcomed workhorse.

Ann Larkin Hansen is a homesteader and a small-scale organic farmer. The author of The Organic Farming Manual, Finding Good Farmland, and Electric Fencing, Anne has lived on a small farm in northern Wisconsin since 1992, where she manages a small orchard, a moderate garden, 40 acres of tillable acreage, another 20 acres of rough pasture, about 120 acres of woods. She has sold hay, eggs, pork, and chickens in the past, but her main cash crop was always beef cattle until three years ago, when she switched to custom-grazing dairy heifers for a nearby organic dairy farm. She has been a journalist for nearly 30 years, primarily for magazines publications such as The Country Today, a state-wide agricultural newspaper in Wisconsin, and Mother Earth News.