Making Plans, Except for Meal Plans

Hipster things to do nowadays include making meal plans each week and organizing closets.

For the last few months, I have included both of these items on my overall and weekly to-do lists…and I have never accomplished them.

I am apparently not a hipster. (Or I have a misconstrued idea of what a hipster does. I do like hiking.)

However, on the second day of the year, I did accomplish all but one of the items I had written down for the day. It was pretty cool. The only task I wasn’t able to complete was taking mineral to the cows at the back of the farm. To do this, I have to cross a creek with the ATV. Because of the recent rains, the creek had risen and swept a long, thick log across the ford. I had to turn back.

This massive to-do list was partly the result of our New Year’s Day farm planning meeting. Freezing temperatures arrived along with 2019, and it’s made for a good time to stay in and “farm on paper,” so to speak.

Dad and I made a list of goals for the year and how we want to achieve them. There is a lot of potential for developing a rotational grazing strategy with several species. There’s also the opportunity for using some of the management strategies I learned in New Zealand.

Farming has a lot of variables, like weather and markets, and what actually happens throughout the year will look different from what we wrote on paper on New Year’s Day. Having the skeleton structure of what we want to do throughout the year will help guide our decisions as we navigate those variables.

We also made a list of things that need done around the farm within the next few months.

Then, I made a personal list for this week, as well as an overall list, by sorting through my old to-do lists and adding in new tasks from the farm list.

And that’s when I discovered I just cannot get myself to make meal plans.

I just know what I have in my freezer and pantry and concoct something on the spot. Somehow, it ends up there’s enough variety that I’m not tired of doing that yet. If there are any leftovers, I’ll save them. It’s more fun that way.

And as far as priorities go, making meal plans and organizing my closet fall behind picking up feed, cleaning the barn, and delivering eggs.

Here’s to a new year and making plans that may or may not be followed.