Prepare the Homestead for Winter

 Homesteading is all about wholesome cycles…Prepare the Homestead for Winter!

Let’s face it – homesteading is hard work. Let us help you get ‘er done with our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. With over 400 pages of homesteading information, DIY’s and how-to’s, you’re bound to find something of value to you! Here’s what Joel Salatin had to say about the book:

Put it on Your List

I live in a place that has a five to six month winter season. I didn’t grow up in this place so living here has required a bit of education.

It’s good to keep learning things. It helps you know you’re still alive after a long day tugging out tomato vines with your bare hands. Just living on a homestead will increase your education.

One thing I’ve learned to do is make lists. I find them tucked everywhere – my bedside table, the bathroom, the milking shed. The list I’m currently working on is Things to do to Prepare the Homestead for Winter. Oi.

FYI, this list is loooooooong and as soon as I finish typing it I have to go clean out seed heads and cut back Rugosas, and muck a goat barn, and…

To Do List to Prepare the Homestead For Winter:

1. Clean up the spent plants and other piles of “stuff”

You meant to clean up that all during planting, growing and harvest season, but never managed to get to it all. Right? That means the piled weeds, now burned to a crisp in the summer sun need to actually be moved from the space next to the bean patch where you left them in the compost pile (as long as there are no weeds with seeds).

It also means you have to come to terms with the fact that the first October frost really did kill your tomato vines and that darkened, drooping look of their leaves isn’t some vegetable fashion statement:

“They’re dead, Jim.”

Pull them up.

Look around for anything dead or dying and pull it out of the ground, being careful to shake off any dirt so you don’t waste it.

You can create a burn pile if it’s legal where you are. You will need dry wood to mix with your semi-green garden material for a successful burn.

Use Animals for Garden Clean Up

We feed quite a bit of the half dead material to our animals as well.

The chickens we can let roam in most areas and they’ll have the ground cleared and level within a week. Incidentally, here are some things you’ll need to know about getting the chickens ready for cold weather.

The goats are not as trustworthy with, oh say, the trees and even building structures I’d like to keep. Consequently, I don’t let them just free range in my garden. I have been known to take them on a carefully guided walk-about in the yard. A goat on a leash is a very funny sight.

Why Not Leave it?

However you choose to dispose of your spent organic material, do it now before it gets any colder or the snows cover your piles. Leaving this stuff around can wreak havoc on a sustainable system by providing habitat for bad bugs and pathogens. Once spring comes those bugs and pathogens can overload your healthy garden environment.

Cleaning up spent plants and weeds is not to be confused with layering nitrogen-rich plant material on your soil to build its organic content. This is the difference between being sloppy in the garden and using permaculture methods to improve your garden.

Free Sample

To learn more about what permaculture is and how it can make a difference on your homestead, check out the gardening section of our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. For a free sample from the garden section, just email me at Tessa@Homesteadlady.com and I’ll get that to you.

2. Move or Thin Perennial Plants

Now is the time to do this before the ground freezes! You can tell if you have a perennial that needs to be moved if it looks cramped where it is or it’s obviously outgrown its site. It may also be dying in the middle.

If it’s something like a bulb or tuber, it may be coming up out of the soil trying to get your attention. Really, the best time to divide a perennial is the year it looks its best. Wait for that season to finish and perform some mild dividing surgery.

There are lots of books and internet articles on this topic, but just keep in mind that your perennials will perform better for you if you do them this service every few years. Replant your extras or give them to neighbors. Especially if I’m your neighbor.

3. Provide Winter Protection for the Veggie Garden

Make sure you have something to cover your winter veggies with on those really cold nights. Even in snowy climates, if you’ll just provide some protection, you can get things like mache and kale to perform pretty much all year round.

We have a tutorial for a simple structure you can build from natural materials for tender plants like herbs – click here.

Eliot Coleman is a great resource for info on this topic and I highly recommend his book Four Season Harvest.

If you don’t have anything on hand, order it now. I recommend Agribon, which you can buy from Johnny’s Seeds  and various other companies. Even horticultural plastic will work but will probably burn up pretty quickly in cold climates. For more information, here are 7 Ways to Prepare Your Garden for Winter from Family Food Garden.

You don’t want to lose all that hard work and yummy green stuff in the winter just because you didn’t have the right blanket to tuck in your babies.

4. Double Check your Orchard

Look for any damaged limbs or signs of disease. Be sure to  treat immediately as you want your trees going into the winter strong and healthy.

Some people do their actual pruning this time of year because they’re so busy with planting in the spring. I’m too chicken for that here in my zone five area, but go ahead if you think your area is mild enough. The main risk is winter frost damage to the new growth that pops out when you prune. The frost can destroy a small branch to a whole limb, sometimes weakening the tree to the point of eventual death.

On the other hand, I ALWAYS run out of pruning time in the spring.

Anyway, the pruning decision is up to you, they’re your trees.

If you think fruit trees or any perennial needs a boost, you can fertilize lightly. Stay away from a high nitrogen count in your fertilizer if you have severe winters as that will encourage new leaf growth which will just freeze off and stress your plant. Most especially mulch them.

Most conventional literature just says don’t fertilize in the fall but if your plant really needs a boost, it’s better to feed it than starve AND freeze it.

5. Gather All your Seed Starting Stuff

Organize all your seed starting tools into one place and clean it so that it’s ready to go by January or February. You think you’ve got months before you’ll need it and you want to enjoy the break.

Yeah, whatever.

Just do it now and you’ll thank me.

How many times have I missed my first indoor, seed starting dates because I was going to have to go all over the place looking for my pots and soil and warming mats and it was just easier to drink rose hip tea and read the seed catalogs? Too many, my friend.

Make a nice stack of clean pots and clean starting medium wherever you’re going to be starting your seeds next year. Make sure you have whatever rack, heat source and lighting that you’ll need and then come back in a few months and sing your own praises because you are awesome and ready to go.

6. Add Compost to All Garden Beds

If you were going to use them, in harsher climates, hopefully you’ve already planted your fall cover crops. In milder climates you can probably still put some down – something hardy like a winter rye. As soon as they pop back up in the spring, you can till them under when the ground can be worked.

You can also plan now for your spring cover crops; just keep in mind that you won’t be able to plant in a cover cropped area until you can till under the green manure and wait a few weeks for it to decompose. I love cover crops and they’re very easy to use, but you do have to do some math and planning.

Legumes as Cover Crops

FYI, with any of the legume crops, if you want them to fix nitrogen you’ll need to keep them in the ground long enough for the soil to get to 60-80 degrees. Any higher or lower temperature will affect the plant’s ability to fix nitrogen.

Not all legumes are created equal, either. Garden variety beans will generally fix less nitrogen than something like a clover. Tilling them under and allowing them to decompose is great. Using them as feed and letting them pass through the gut of an animal seems to be even better, according to some research.

We do both, till under in the garden beds and grow for the animals nitrogen rich crops so that we can compost their manure.

7. Consider Joining or Starting a Local Seed Swap

Baker Creek and Horizon Herbs are my favorite seed houses but I just can’t afford to buy seed like I used to. Start your own seed group and pool your resources with local seed savers. You may even learn to be one yourself!

Think about growing an heirloom and saving the seed next year. I advise you start with one crop:

• Tomatoes are fun and easy.
• Kale is super easy and so is lettuce.
• Radish is easy and even something like carrot isn’t a challenge except that it’s a biennial and you’ll have to keep it in the ground for two years before you can save seed.

We’re back to the little bit of math and planning I mentioned earlier. Make sure you let the kids plan their own gardens, even if you’ll end up explaining there is no plant that grows saber tooth tigers.

8. Harvest the Last of your Herbs and Flowers

Don’t forget the roots, either! Here’s an article on the sometimes forgotten harvests of this time of year – click here.

• With your clippers in hand, go visit your sage, thyme, rosemary, oregano, tarragon, wormwood, borage, feverfew, comfrey, plantain, your gorgeous mint or whatever it is that’s leafing beautifully for you.
• If you need your Echinacea roots, go get them – no time like the present. Start thinking of all the wonderful, winter teas you’ll make as well as the herbal supplements for health and well being.
• Make sure you wash and dry everything right away. I just lost a lovely batch of comfrey because I forgot I dropped it into the bottom of a basket of last tomatoes that I didn’t get to for a week.
• Start planning which herbal course you’ll be going through this fall to learn even more ways to use your herb harvest.

9. Add Wood Chips and/or Straw Mulch

Mulch up any plant that’s going to need a little protection from the cold.

If you’ve planted for your zone (no cheating because winter is unforgiving – if it says zone 5, it means it), you’re really just protecting from nasty winter winds. Where I live, I usually straw mulch my strawberries, asparagus and leeks. I have a few new plantings that I’ll mulch this year, too, especially around the roots of my David Austin rose.

To learn more about the uses of and differences between wood chips and mulch, just click here.

10. Winter Protect Animals, too!

If you’re growing breeds of livestock appropriate to your zone, then what you really need to protect them from is icy winds and wet.

Double check that your animals pens are winterized. At our place, that means:

• we put the windows back in the chicken coop to cover the open hardware cloth of summer (although, we always leave a little bit open for circulation)
• we double check the paint and roofing on any shelters to make sure that they’re in good condition
• we make sure the animals have clean hay – the poultry we allow to build up their manure on their hay layer for warmth (adding a new layer of hay when it gets yucky) but the goats we’ll clean out and replace at some point during the winter or early spring
• we also boost their herb and mineral intake to prepare them for the winter
• we think about winter supplemental lighting for the chicken coop

11. Make and Animal Breeding Schedule

Prepare the homestead animal families! If you want spring babies, it’s time to arrange date night for a lot of your ruminant animals like goats. Others will be spring maters, but either way, get everyone on a schedule!

Make sure your livestock is healthy and strong before breeding. We use Molly’s herbal wormer and pre-treat our future mamas with herbs like red raspberry leaf.

That means that I have to remember to harvest raspberry leaf BEFORE the frost takes it all. See number 8.

Mark you breed dates on a calendar or special breeding chart – keep each animals separate and take notes over the gestation. Monitor their health over the winter and keep their hay clean and dry.

We’ll be sprouting for our animals this winter to keep up nutrition because we’re having a problem covering feed cost. With sprouts, you get more nutrient bang for your buck. Be ready for those babies before they come!

12. Check the State of your Fencing

We use a lot of chain link fence panels that we buy used off our local classifieds since that’s what we can afford right now and they’re moveable. They are light enough for me to carry and easy to put together but they do require maintenance every now and then. Be sure to check for rust.

If you use electric fencing, you probably already know to check your wires. This is especially if you have pigs or goats, both wickedly clever animals that seem to have black magic powers where electric fence debilitation is concerned.

We rotate the animal paddocks as much as we can on an acre that includes garden space and plant in the richly fertilized paddocks they vacate during the growing season.

My ideal is to have at least four rotational areas for each variety of animal. At the moment we’re up to two for the chickens and two for the goats.

Life is give and take.

Why rotate animals per year?

For the same reason you rotate your crops. Feed the foundation of and then rest the soil, cut down on harmful pathogen build up and provide “clean” space for the organism, whether corn or cow.

14. You Don’t Need 1 More Thing to Do to Prepare the Homestead for Winter

So, go inside, change your clothes and build a fire.

Drink that rose hip tea and hunker down to wait for those seed catalogs (we’re such nerds, aren’t we?). You’ve done good work and from this point on, next year will take care of itself.

While you’re at it, try a few of the soul-warming, simple-living, quiet projects outlined in this seasonal favorite: