The Long View

In the fourth and final part of his series on time management on the smallholding, Tim Tyne considers how to plan for the longer term

- Tim Tyne

So far in this short series I’ve been looking at managing the daily routine of running a smallholding or small farm, so now I’ll draw it to a close by taking a longer-term view, and consider the way in which we plan our activities for the forthcoming weeks, months and years. Planning is to an extent made simpler by virtue of the fact that the routine workload on a smallholding follows a regular seasonal pattern, so, for example, whatever you’re doing this week is quite likely to be pretty much the same as what you’ll be doing at about the same time next year. Therefore, the first step towards being reasonably well organised is to keep a daily record of your activities in the form of a diary or journal. However, this will only tell you what you have done, not what you need to do. It’ll also be cluttered up with domestic details, but that’s fine; it’s good to write these things down for future generations to look back at and wonder about. In addition to recording what you’ve done, you also need to note whether or not it was successful; it’s no good writing in the diary that you planted a certain crop on such-and-such a date if you then fail to follow this up with information as to whether the crop germinated, flourished and ultimately yielded well. It may be that it failed altogether, but a subsequent replacement sowing thrived. This is the kind of data that’s essential for forward planning, if we’re to avoid making the same mistakes year on year.

Use a diary