Your Homestead Plan of Care (POC)

Taking a Break

I'm sure you've experienced an emergency, whether it was seconds (a small child reaching for a pot handle on the stove) or days (a hospitalization). During that time we stop what we're doing and totally attend to that emergency, stopping everything else.

When we are just living normal life we have our routines, we tend to finish what we started, we go to events and appointments we've scheduled; we follow through.

What about the in between? A broken bone, a bad infection, a past mental trauma that's still haunting us, a flare up of a chronic medical condition, a new baby being born. Those all require our attention, but they aren't necessarily an emergency. Do we stop everything? Push through our normal routine and all our scheduled activities? Is there something in between?

Your urgent need paired with your life (including what supports and other resources you have) are going to dictate what you need to do, of course, but the answer is likely in between these two extremes. Many homesteaders I've met (and followed on social media) may trend towards pushing through. After all, animals need care and your plants can't thrive without you. Your attention has to be diverted and some activities need to be stopped (you need time to attend doctor or therapy appointments, snuggle and feed that baby, rest your leg, etc.), but it can be overwhelming to figure out which ones. Trying to make decisions can be especially difficult when you're stressed out and potentially sleep deprived.

Scenarios

When my two year old was in the hospital I put everything on hold to be there with him 24/7. My husband took time off work to be with our other kids, only the minimal work was done for the animals, and the house fell apart. They might have had nachos for dinner two nights in a row. On a normal day this wouldn't be acceptable. I want my children, animals, and house to be well cared for. But in an emergency none of these "unacceptable" scenarios made a blip on my radar; guilt free.

When my now 2.5 month old was born I put most things on hold for a few days, but I had also prepared for that restriction. I'd been able to make the decisions before hand on how to prepare and delegate tasks, knowing I'd be out of commission for a few days and limited for a few weeks. A planned surgery or a chronic illness flare up could fit under the categories of being able to plan under less stress. The key here is being realistic in the planning process and trying to get creative, instead of pushing through the pain, if you don't have to.

Your Personalized Plan of Care

Whenever someone is admitted to the hospital or starts outpatient therapy, there is always a plan of care (POC). There are no new years resolutions, shooting for the moon, in this POC. Basic survival is the highest priority, then comes being able to get around and do your daily activities.

For your homestead POC, first you need to prioritize survival of your family and your animals. This sounds obvious, but I normally would consider daily food for my kids as needing to be as organic as possible and as many whole foods as possible. In this case the standard is a filled belly. The chickens don't need the chicken scratch and meal worms or kitchen scraps today. Maybe you make your own feed usually and now need to buy bagged feed for a short time, guilt free.

Then prioritize your most basic needs. In the hospital as an occupational therapist this would mean focusing the POC on helping someone with a new stroke to learn to feed themselves, get to the bathroom, etc. Hobbies can be motivating and incorporated as much as you can but are not the priority. On the homestead your POC might be to stick your sourdough starter in the fridge, rehome the goats, let your starts become root bound, and get a long handled reacher to be able to pick things off the floor, etc.

What are the things you HAVE to do? Eating, basic hygiene, etc. Think, what would need to happen in a multi day emergency. Write those down.

Then add to your POC the activities most important to you beyond the basic "have-to" items. What are the things that are most important to you? This is likely a longer list so needs to be balanced with, what is the most resource consuming (time, energy, most expensive to pay someone else to do, etc.). What are some ways you can do the items on your list vs offload them or put them on hold? This might be getting rid of something, storing it, having someone else take care of it, and/or come up with a diffeerent strategy or get a tool or assistive device to help you do it. Cleaning the bathroom when I was super pregnant and right after birth was realistically not going to get done if I didn't do it, and was the most difficult physically and energy wise for me, and easiest to offload (it was simple to hire a housecleaner temporarily).

Another consideration to the POC, is the barrier is permanent or long term? Then more drastic measures make more sense. I wouldn't rehome my animals for something that's only a week or two. This again, sounds obvious, but when we are in fight or flight mode the planning part of our brain is not thinking long term. When a favorite chicken on our homestead has died the thought usually crosses my mind whether it's worth keeping chickens. Of course it is! But in that moment of sadness my brain is not thinking clearly. If you've just been in a car accident and everything is hurting, it may not feel like you can ever do your chores again, but there may be friends or family that can help in the short term until you're back on your feet.

We could go on and on with scenarios and special considerations but the idea is to systematically review what actually needs to be done and to rethink solutions / get creative with how things should be done, changing activities as needed, guilt free. Know that your standards may need to temporarily change and that your fight or flight mode means you need to be systematic and write things down so you can review the situation in a different way.