I’m on several homesteading forums were I repeatedly see questions about “can I homestead with small children?” These always puzzle me. People have always homesteaded with small children. Remember Laura Ingalls Wilder? She was 9 in Little House on the Prairie. And for us, we’ve always farmed/homesteaded with children. We laid our first fenceline when I was 8 months preggers with the Ladybug.
So obviously I think you can homestead with children. And I write constantly about the benefits of farm life for our kiddos, so I’m also on the side of you should homestead with children. But there’s no doubt it’s a tough row to hoe, friends. Around here everyone helps. Everyone works. Our kiddos have been doing chores since they could walk and carry a bucket at the same time.
I think it’s been great for them. But having a 5-year-old feeding-up means you have to make some adjustments to your equipment and methods if you want success. As we like to say “competence builds confidence, and confidence fuels motivation.” You don’t want every project or chore your kids try to do to end in disaster, tears, frustration, or failure. And that certainly doesn’t share the work load effectively either. Here’s some of the ways we’ve adjusted things around the barnyard to suit our little helpers better over the years.
Along with some A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E old photos of my munchkins choring! (And you’ll notice from some of these pictures, that these are items we got wrong for a while!)
Kid-Sized Tools and Equipment
You can give a 5 year old a full-size shovel, but he’s not going to get much done. And if he doesn’t see results, he’s not going to want to keep working.
Invest in some kid-sized tools and comfortable kid-sized gloves. I’m not talking about cheap, plastic toys or sand-box tools. I mean half-sized shovels, rakes, and hoes, with wooden handles and metal heads. They’re just like regular garden tools but a size kids can handle for real work. It’s not a huge investment, cost-wise, and it will pay big dividends work-wise.
Use the Rule of Half and Double for Buckets and Feeders
Also teach your kiddos the rule of half and double right away. You can carry half the amount at once, as long as you carry double the total amount of loads. A 5 gallon bucket of corn is too much for a 5 year old. It’s too heavy to lift and carry, too heavy to dump, and usually too full to carry without spilling. But they can carry a half-full bucket, twice. Or you can use a simple plastic mop bucket for a while. It’s smaller and lighter, but it won’t hold up as long.
Along the same lines, use several smaller rubber feed pans or wooden feed troughs, rather than one big one. They’re easier for the kids to gather and lay out, move, wash, etc. Use 2 smaller chicken water-ers so the kids can carry them, rather than one big one that they can’t move by themselves.
Use Scoops and Cups
Want a disaster in your feed shed? Watch an 8-year-old try to “pour” a 50 lb bag of feed into a bucket. Or watch a skinny 10-year-old try to dump a full 5-gallon bucket of corn over a fence line into the trough. Nope, nope, nope.
Make sure you provide scoops and cups for them to measure with and to manage disbursement. You can use a nice feed-store version with a handle (like this one), or you can just use a jumbled conglomerate of old coffee cans, rubber feed pans, out-grown sippy cups, and microwave-stained tupperware, like we do. {smile} With little helpers they will probably get lost or broken pretty regularly, so don’t get too attached.
Use Extra Hose
Filling a water bucket with a hose is easy. This is usually one of the first completely independent chores we assign outside. But figuring out how to get the hose from the spigot, across the backyard, through 2 small pastures, and over the lawn mower is hard. And the last thing you need is to break off the spigot trying to yank a short hose around an obstacle! Make sure you’ve got enough slack in your hoses and water lines not to frustrate inexperienced users.
Lower and Loosen Gate Latches
Think eye-level for a 5 year old. That height should work for years of little farm-hands.
That’s the perfect height for your little helpers to be able to reach–and work!–the gate latches. A foot up or down is not really a big deal to you, but imagine trying to unlatch a gate above your head behind your back. That’s what it’s like for your 7 year-old to try and open a gate chain fastened at the top of the post.
And if you use chains (like we do on most of our pasture gates) make sure there’s enough slack that they can be unlatched without a bunch of finger-smashing, twisting, and wiggling. You don’t want the animals to get out, but you do want the 4th grader to get in! And you don’t want to frustrate them to the point where they decide to just climb over–with a full bucket of grain!
Lower Tools, Feeding, and Cleaning Supplies
While you’re on the height issue, lower your other supplies too. Hang halters, leads, and leashes lower on the wall. Use shelves and cupboards that sit on the floor, rather than hanging for scrub brushes, scoops, and treats. Put the normal supplies they need for their jobs within reach. Stack extra buckets and feed pans where they can get them when needed.
Or give them a stool. We keep a sturdy stool in garage and feed shed for them to use. Remember when you pick something that they’re going to be standing on it, not sitting. Make sure it’s solid. We’ve had these wooden step stools from IKEA for years and love them. They are heavy, but the kids manage to tote them around. And they are solid wood. (And you can paint them any color you want!)
Glance over your garage and make sure the basics are somewhere accessible. My kiddos were comfortable using a hammer, some pliers, zip ties, and a screwdriver for odds and ends when they were 5. Make sure they know where things are kept and how to return them when they are done.
Have Barriers Between Kids and Livestock
This is a safety issue as well as about working efficiently. Livestock mob the feed bucket. Maybe not so much with chickens, but definitely with anything bigger. There needs to be sturdy barriers between the children and the livestock when they are doing intense chores like feeding.
Some examples would be letting the kids throw hay from the back of a truck or wagon where they are above the mob. Or lining feed troughs up along the fence and the kids pouring the feed over the fence line into the troughs so the animals can’t surround them. You can also create temporary or “false” fence lines at feeding location with moveable panels or gates.
Give Them Wheels
This one is a little age dependent, but it is much easier for little people to push and pull than for them to lift and carry most of the time. If you can give them a wagon, a wheelburrow, a 4-wheeler, a lawn mower–even a plastic, battery-powered gator as long as it can carry a bucket!–you’ll quadruple their ability to get things done. And their enjoyment of it. Learning to drive long before your permit-age is one of the prime privileges of farm life!
One day they’ll be driving the tractor and you’ll be crying into your coffee that they don’t need you anymore!
Use WD-40, Liberally
Keep your hinges and latches oiled. Make sure your doors and chute pulleys and slides are working properly. Keep your gates adjusted so they don’t drag.
We’re not always good about these things, but every spring and fall we try to make sure to go over all the gates and adjust as needed. These can easily become barriers to kids being able to get their chores done. And when you do the proper maintenance, they will be able to do the rest.
Do you have any other good tips for making the farm more kid-friendly for little helpers? Our helpers have grown quite a bit now, but I still remember the early days of watching them drag half a bucket across the yard. It’s empowering, as long as it’s not so frustrating that they give up!
