How I Plan My Garden and Homestead For The Year

Homesteading Planner

Planning your life is one of the greatest things you can do. It’s not about neurotically wanting things to turn out a certain way, but it’s about developing vision and clarity.

Simply having a garden is easy, but creating a beautiful and abundant lifestyle requires vision and planning. It’s about being a strategic motherfucker.

Developing success is essentially about focus—not dabbling. If a successful garden is what you want, focusing a certain amount of energy on it for planning will pay you dividends in the end.

Steven Pressfield has a book called Turning Pro. To sum it up, he essentially writes about how being creative and mastering our work (whatever that may be) requires us to take the attitude of the professional. Otherwise, you’re half in and half out. You’re in the crowd, afraid to step into the ring. Take the attitude of a professional.

The way I look at homesteading and gardening is that it’s about building a lifestyle and designing your life in such a way that you’re free to live how you want.

Last year was actually my first time planning it all out.

I write out my plan, what I’m growing, projects, the layout, and more—all in a notebook. Every year, I get a new notebook for this. Along the way, I’m continuously updating it and jotting down new ideas and insights. It’s essentially a commonplace book, but for homesteading.

In this newsletter, I’m going to go over how I organize my commonplace book and give you some ideas for yours.

Personally, I like physical books so much more than something like Notion, for instance. There’s a sacred energy that comes with creating something with pen and paper. What I will do at the end of the year is take pictures of my physical book and transfer them over to my Notion, so in case anything happens, I’ll always have them backed up.

With all this in mind, you do not have to copy me exactly. Actually, I suggest you don’t. Take what resonates and leave what doesn’t. Make your homesteading/gardening journal your own unique extension of yourself.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

Vision and Mission

Before I get into my goals, what crops I’m going to grow, or what projects I’m undertaking, I always focus on the bigger picture. On this page, I have the name of my homestead (WithaY), my vision, and our mission.

Developing these things makes it easier to know where to place our energy. A vision and mission always change and grow along with us. Be confident in your vision and mission, but also be flexible and realize they will always change because you are growing and learning.

Values

Knowing your top ten values cuts away a lot of confusion and bullshit. If a vision is the end goal, values are how you direct your energy to create it.

The values of my homestead and business are not the exact same as my personal values, but they do line up. In a way, my business is a personal extension of myself. This means it has soul, it has life, and it has love.

The top ten values of my homestead are:

1. Holism/Spirituality

2. Authenticity

3. Beauty

4. Simplicity

5. Nature

6. Growth

7. Innovation

8. Patience

9. Community

10. Mastery/Excellence

Personally, these don’t stray too far from my own personal values in life.

For each value, I write a description of what it means to me.

As an example, for the value of beauty, I have: Making sure that everything we create is adding towards the beauty of the world. Cultivating inner beauty to create outer beauty.

Keep in mind that no one can tell you what to value. Authentic values come from yourself. You’ll know when a value is true to you because you can feel its effects on your life. It makes you joyful, present, and creative.

The truth is that every human mind is vastly different. What one person values is completely obsolete to another. This is a little off-topic, but it’s important not to trick yourself into believing that your values are somehow “right” and others are “wrong.” It’s not a matter of right or wrong; it’s a matter of higher or lower.

Yearly Review and Prediction

For the yearly review, I’ll look over what I did and how I can grow. I write down all the projects I completed and a short summary of the year. So as I’m writing this, the previous year was 2024.

My motto is that every year gets better than the last, and I will believe that until the day I die.

For the year prediction (2025), I’ll again write a summary of what the year entails. Then I’ll write my intention for the year and goals.

For example, my intentions for 2025 are fun, execution, courage, adventure, and creativity. One of my goals is to “successfully grow marijuana and three different strains of psychedelic mushrooms.”

I recommend not having more than six major goals for the year. Otherwise, you’re going to be all over the place. The exception to this is if you thrive on being all over the place. I kind of fall into this. Because remember what I said: humans are vastly different in their minds. Six goals may be a lot for someone, but for another person, it’s not enough to get them going.

It’s also important to make your goals and intentions intrinsically generated. Meaning that they come from yourself. What I’ve noticed over the years is that if someone gives me a goal like “get one million subscribers on YouTube,” I can never do it. Why? Because it’s simply not mine. When something is generated from within you, you value it at a different level.

When a goal or value is yours, your identity gets put into the place of action, not results. Whether you get the results or not is irrelevant. What matters is that you got off your ass and took action.

Calendar

Next, we have the calendar. Yes, I literally drew out a calendar for the entire year. Each month has its own page.

I really suggest you don’t skip out on this, especially when you’re starting out. It helps so much to look back at last year’s calendar and see when you finished a project, when you planted something, and when you harvested something. It’s essentially a cheat code.

After a while, it’ll become second nature, but if you’re a beginner, it’s life-changing.

Projects

On this page, I write down all the projects I’m doing for the year.

Throughout the year, I’m constantly updating this and writing in new projects. I can’t predict what life will throw at me or what creative solutions I’ll need to figure out, which is why projects are always a work in progress.

Don’t focus on more than three projects at a time. Honestly, I suggest you focus on one at a time. You’ll complete them quicker, and they’ll be higher quality. This is kind of hard when it comes to gardening and homesteading, but just do your best.

Garden Layout and System

For this, I draw out how my garden is laid out. I’ll draw all the garden beds, compost pile, brush, fruit trees, fire pit, and other miscellaneous things. This gives me an overview of what I’m working with. Last year, I had 14 garden beds, and this year, I have 17.

For the system, I’ll put all the methods and techniques I use for growing things. This year, I put hay and leaves on top of all of my beds to act as mulch. What this does is suppress weeds, help with water retention, and create amazing compost for the soil.

Having these two things helps me organize my garden, so I know where to focus my attention.

Crops

This section is easy peasy. Here, I just jot down all the varieties of seeds I want to grow. This allows me to build creativity and see where each plant can go.

There’s something called companion planting, where putting certain plants next to each other helps them grow better.

For this, just write down everything you want to grow and run with it.

Notes and Ideas

In every journal I have, even if it’s my own personal one, I’ll always have multiple pages for notes and ideas.

Whenever you have an idea or an insight, do yourself a favor and write it down. There’s magic to this. Ten years from now, an idea you write down can literally change your life if you let it.

Don’t skip this, I beg.

Conclusion

This is what I’ve found to be a damn good way to organize your garden and homestead, no matter how big or small.

It’s crazy how much simply organizing your life can do for you.

As I said in the beginning, don’t overthink it. Take what resonated here and leave the rest. Make your journal your own.

This is actually an extremely valuable skill in life: the ability to create your own version of whatever it is you consume. This is creativity at its finest—taking something and putting your own original spin on it.

All in all, I know you’ll find some value in this and make your projects come to life.

Peace,

Koby