We did a decent job reaching our goals last year in 2017. For 2018? Not so much. I considered not even talking about how well we’d done this past year since things fell so far off the mark. But… half of the point of this blog is our own accountability. So, here’s how we did (or, rather, didn’t do):

No bees
Virtually no homemade cheese
Garden? Erm, sort of
No online shop
No ancient grains, although plenty of all natural sugars
No backyard meat

…. yeah, we did pretty abysmal this year. That’s okay! We had a newborn in June, so perhaps we were a bit too ambitious from the start.

That said, it is important to still set goals, even in the face of failure. Below, I have a new set of goals for 2019. This year they are fewer, as I think the importance here is to do ‘fewer things better.’ That said, there is something new on there as I think we do still want to branch out a bit, just not in so many directions at once.

1. Figure Out a Permanent Plan for the Garden

The garden has been on our list of goals to work on the last few years, and honestly our outcome has been fair at best. If we can nail down a specific area and have a more defined plan year I think we’ll do better. We’ve talked about trying to grow plants with higher caloric value (corn, beans, squash) as opposed to trying to shoot for sheer volume. We’d have to grow a lot of zucchini to account for our family’s caloric needs, so for now such vegetables are off the table, no pun intended.

2. Get a Buck

We’ve talked about this recently! In order to do better at what we’re already doing, a buck goat is necessary. We’ve settled on getting a Nigerian Dwarf buck, as (a) we don’t need show quality kids, so mixed breed offspring is ok (b) dwarf goats don’t need as high a fence or as strong (c) they don’t eat as much (d) they don’t smell as much. This will hopefully put us in a good position next year when it comes to making sure all goats are bred; this year we got to 2 out of 4.

3. Beekeeping

We had this on our list of goals last year, but it just never came to be. There are many reasons why we want to get into beekeeping, and it’s not just the honey. The beeswax for things like candles will be great to have, and bees are great for gardens. Plus, with the mass die-off of bees, it just helps to have more people with colonies. Our kids are too little for us to go out there and save the world, but perhaps we can save the bees.

And that’s it! The previous two years we’ve had twice as many goals, but I think 3 is plenty for now for where we’re at. I anticipate that there will be much more talk on here this year about all the other things that we will be involved with in 2019 (homeschooling, fiber arts & knitting, the rabbits, possibly a neutered Shetland sheep to keep the buck goat company… who knows!), but all that said I want to make sure that we focus on the big things first before concerning ourselves with the rest.

We want to wish all of you a very healthy, blessed, happy New Year.