Interactive lesson

Homestead time and money, step by step

Interactive lesson: how many hours a week and how many pounds a garden, orchard, hens, bees or goats take, what the homestead gives back and how to stay within your limits.

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The whole lesson as text

1. Hours by area

You pay for a homestead twice: with money at the start and with time every day.

The vegetable garden in hours — Vegetables and potatoes take roughly 0.035 hours per m² a week in season. A 100 m² garden (about 1,100 sq ft) takes about 3.5 hours.
Polytunnel and fruit trees — A polytunnel takes 0.08 hours per m², because it needs ventilating every day. A fruit tree takes 0.05 hours, plus winter pruning.
Hens and bees — A hen takes 0.15 hours a week, every day and in winter too. A hive takes 0.25 hours, and more in May because of swarming.
Goats take the most — A goat takes 2 hours per head a week, because it is milked twice a day. A sheep takes 1 hour, and less without milking.

Why: This is rough routine work in the growing season, April–October: sowing, tending, harvesting, feeding and cleaning. Building and large-scale processing are not included. The 4freelife personal plan uses the same norms.

Mulch and drip irrigation cut the work in the garden by a quarter to a third.
Animals need work every day, holidays included. Plants can sometimes be left for a week without you.

2. How much time you have

First work out honestly how many hours a week you really have.

Weekdays — Multiply your hours after work by 5. Realistically that is 1–1.5 hours a day.
Weekend and household — Add the hours on Saturday and Sunday, realistically 4–8 hours. Add the hours of others in the household too, but honestly.
Take off 20 % — Take 20 % off the total for rain, illness and commitments. That is your hours budget, and the plan must not exceed it.
Invisible jobs — Mending fences, shopping for supplies, firewood, paperwork and cleaning belong to no area. Add roughly 20–30 % to the total of the areas.

Why: People overestimate their free time because they forget tiredness, rainy days, illness, children and other commitments. For a family working full time, time is almost always a tighter bottleneck than money.

Example: 5 h on weekdays, 6 h at the weekend and 3 h from a partner make 14 h. Minus 20 % is about 11 hours a week.
Plan for no more than 80 % of your free time. The rest is a buffer for breakdowns, rain and a harvest that all comes at once.