Victor and his partner race to plant a potato garden before October 10th frost, cramming five beds, twine setup, and planting into a morning with milking and other chores. They work through broken equipment and tight time blocks, using the 80/20 principle to focus on what matters most.
Early summer means explosion on the homestead. Today is no different. We have to get the chickens out behind the cows. We have to plant the potato garden.
Can we make it today? Can we make it?
They need to go back out to the cow pasture.
For the garden, I'm in a rush because today is July 13th.
These potatoes will become fully mature October 13th. Our first possible frost date is October 10th. So time's ticking and I'm already out.
We have to harvest the tomatoes.
We have a dumpster that needs to be filled. The chores need to go on. The cows need to be moved. Lunches need to be made. It all has to happen at once. We tried to move these chickens and the door latch came undone and they all escaped.
A little jiggling, this— it comes out. We used to have one over here that would help.
Let's see if we can't find a wire to strap that shut temporarily.
Long enough? It might be if I unbend it. Let's try. We gotta secure for the long haul. Fence must still be on. I just got shocked. You got the fence off? Yeah, you got shocked. Yeah, I did. Bix, need more water? Man, thirsty pigs are going though, Josiah. Uh, August 10th, the market pigs. Can you hang in there for the big payday? It's a little after 9. The goal is to get done milking by 10 and then having an hour to do the garden. We're about to milk, but the pan has been left behind. It's one thing after another today. But there's the pan. I'll just look at this as training for my half marathon.
One of the best things we've done to ensure our success is compartmentalize our life. We have a certain time in the morning to do chores and farm work and pretty much have a hard stop, and then it's lunch, and then it's office time, working on the business, working on Abundant Permaculture, Abundance Plus, all these things. And then another hard stop for dinner, and after dinner, more relaxing things.
7 minutes, we still gotta process the milk. Ain't gonna happen.
Any of those time slots, there's not enough time in the day to get it all done. And what that does, though, is being disciplined in that area, if we're sure to say what is the most important thing.
10:07, we got the milk taken care of.
Let's see what we can get done.
25 minutes, we just got the twine set up, trying to dig just to the right of it, building the bed up right there. Maybe I can get another one going.
We may not always get it right, but if we're going at the most important things, chances are we're going far and beyond towards our dreams. It's that 80/20 rule. You get 80% of your results from 20% of the effort. So if there's 10 things to do and you just get 2, but they're most important, you could just get those 2 things done, chances are you're getting 80% towards your goal.
How's it going in there, Beck? Killing squash bugs. She's crushing it inside the high tunnel.
One of the very important things we have right now is we've got to plant potatoes because every day that goes on, we're getting further and further into the harvest, into the frost date. We want our plants to grow to full maturity without frost, so there's a bit of a rush.
Lily's gonna go in and make lunch. It is 11. That'll save us some time if she does it. Jonah, 1, 2, you got 2 beds. Uh, 1, 2, 3 more to go. We're gonna have a hard stop at 11:20. Hard stop at 11:20, babe.
Like always, we had some distractions during chores.
What's happening is the oil's coming past the— out of the block and into the cylinder Had to talk with Mark. Looks like Sally's done for. That's not good news. That's like engine rebuild, but she's like total— it's not even worth it to do that, probably. Booyah! Got the rows built. It's a hard quitting time.
I wish we would have had the potatoes planted, although we did not get done We did get 5 garden beds built. How much less would we have gotten done had we not aimed to plant the potatoes? It was an impossible goal, but we got so much done because we aimed for the impossible. And what do I say? I say aim for the impossible and extraordinary things happen.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
