Thinking Ahead

Today is December first.  Why is that significant?  It's significant because I've been doing a lot of thinking about next year and all of the things that need to get done before spring arrives.  I only have four months before I need to get our new broilers ordered.  By that time the layers will already be back outside and some things will be planted in the garden or at least started here in the house.  Before all of that happens I need to figure out exactly what's going to be grown in the garden this year, and what the layout of the garden will be.  This coming year we will be butchering any broilers we raise ourselves.  This of course means that I need to either buy the equipment needed to scald, pluck and eviscerate chickens or I need to build it myself.  Well, I've already got the blueprints to the scalder and plucker in my possession, now all I need to do is start acquiring the materials needed to build them and start assembling.  Those things will need to be constructed by about June first I'd say.  With all of that in mind I spent much of this evening trying to plan for next year.  I started working on my garden layout and did a little research on some other potential income makers for a small-scale farm operation.  I created several spreadsheets for keeping track of my expenses and production cycles of the hens and broilers too.  If I intend to make money in this endeavor I'd say I better treat it like a business.  Soon I may try to design a webpage that is more devoted to the farm products we intend on selling and tells in a short what we're about.  I'll list prices there and it'll be more of a formal business page, I think.  There is a lot do before spring and I fully intend to be ready when it gets here so we can hit the ground running.