What did and did not work during our trip
The Dumyahn Family recently got back from a 3 week Europe trip and preparing our homestead for us to be gone and someone else to take care of it took a lot of careful and thoughtful planning and work. If you have not read it and are interested, please read our post on preparing the homestead. This post is to explore what did and did not work well while we were gone, and what we might do in the future to improve our preparation.
First off, let me reiterate as I did in our recent post, it is of the utmost importance that you have good support. For us that was family. Our sister and her boyfriend did a great job managing and taking care of our homestead. After getting back into the groove of things after our trip and analyzing the homestead, as well as, debriefing with my sister there were a couple clear things that worked well and that did not work as well as I would have hoped. First let’s start with the things that went well.
1. Food storage next to the coop and goat pen
Putting animal proof storage containers close to their pens was a huge improvement to the efficiency of the process of tending to the animals. Even since we have been back, I wonder why we did not do this sooner. It saves time and energy not always having to haul food and treats up to the goats or to the chickens, and it also has really helped us keep the animals well fed.
2. Hoses next to animal structures
This addition has been paramount. If we are feeding or just checking on the animals and notice that they could use some fresh water, all we have to do is grab the hose close by and freshen up their water. This ended up working out much better than the automatic goat waterer which we will talk about later.
3. The automatic dog feeder and waterer
Though feeding and putting water in the dog bowls is relatively simple and quick, this is a step that has been helpful for when we don’t want to make the caretaker of our home have more to do, and has also allowed us to take a couple small weekend trips without having to worry about asking someone to come feed Kiva, or give her water. Therefore, this is a success in our book.
4. Automatic watering system for garden
This has always been an important aspect of our homestead to make things more efficient for us and to make our homestead more self-sustaining and, at least a little easier to take care of. Having a watering system with a timer is a time saver, a water saver and helps to keep the plants alive whether you are home or not. We can set it to come on for a certain amount of minutes in different zones of the garden multiple times a day. This becomes important in the dry and hot climate we live in so that we can give the plants enough water, and so that we can water at times of the day that are more eco friendly (early morning and evening). Our only regret with this so far is that we haven’t taken the time and the money to invest in a better system.
Okay, so now for the things that didn’t go as well as we had hoped…
1. The automatic goat waterer
There were a couple of issues with this set up that luckily I discovered before the trip, making me set up a hose and a water bin close by in addition to this automatic waterer. The first problem was that the float valve would occasionally get stuck and not work 100% of the time. The 2nd issue which was just an oversight on my part was how hot and gross the water would get in the Arizona summer heat. The water in the bowl would get hot and then the hose leading to the bowl would get so hot that even when it needed to refill a little bit, the water coming out into the bowl was just as hot if not hotter. Needless to say the goats did not like this, therefore our sister, the caretaker of our home while we were gone had to go and fill up the big water bin about once per day.
2. The newly made PVC tube feeders
I did some research and watched a couple videos on these before making. Some of these videos had people reporting that they wouldn’t have to refill the feeders for 2-3 weeks! Sounds great and more self sustainable right? That’s what I thought so I went ahead and built some myself. Now, maybe my design was not as good as some of the ones online, but what I found is that my PVC feeders lasted maybe a day if I was lucky. Maybe our chickens are just not tame enough, but the moment I put food in there they go for it and shovel it out onto the ground quicker than I can say, “oh thats not gonna work as well as I thought.” Because of this, I kept our hanging feeder in the chicken run below the coop and it also led me to put a food storage container closer to the coop as mentioned in the successes above.
3. Weeds!
There is really nothing you can do about this unless you pay someone or bribe the one taking care of your home. Our garden beds definitely had their fair share of weeds. Luckily, the plants still looked relatively healthy and we were able to get most weeds taken care of the first week we were back from our trip.
4. Time of year
Summertime is when people do most of their traveling. Normally this is probably fine. But when you live in the dry heat of Arizona, there is more to tend to. You have to take extra care that your animals have enough water and a cool place to be, you have to make sure your trees and plants get enough water and as discussed above, its a great time for weeds to grow if said places are getting enough water. That being said summer may not have been the best idea for a trip, but then again there will always be things to take care of and do on a homestead. We just need to pick a time of year that may be more amenable to travels and less work around the homestead.
