7+ Tips To Take Time Off When You Have A Farm Business

We have vacations in the summer and the Christmas season is not far down the road from that. So how can you get ready for taking time off when you have a farm business you are trying to run and manage?

With a little preparation, you can have a much more relaxing time.– Promise cross my heart. It might not feel like it if you love your work like I do but with practice and patience, it is possible.

Let me tell you a quick story.

My poor husband will probably get sick of me saying this bbbbuuuuttttt……….

In the summer of 2019, my husband decided — after a lot of flipping back and forth — that he wanted to go on vacation with his family. Which was fine.

But do you know how many days notice I had??? — TEN!

ONLY 10 days’ notice to be ready to go on vacation. Not to mention I had 3 FIRST time momma rabbits due just a few days after we left. Yep… I was just a touch cranky about that but I did my best to get the rabbitry ready for my sister to come and handlings as best as I could.

Let’s just say I won’t be leaving on such short notice again. Sorry, not sorry.

No matter how small your farm is a business and then you have a business that needs your attention. You can’t just pack up and go with no warning. There are also other aspects to your farm that you have to prepare like getting people to care for the animals at a very minimum.

So lets get into some things you can do to get ready for time away… hopefully with a little more notice than I had.

Make A List

The biggest reason we can’t settle our minds is because we don’t have physical evidence that we got everything done. So take the time to make a list of everything that needs to be done for your home, on the farm or homestead, and business side. Both for you to be prepared to leave and for the person taking your place for a few days.

Write it all down so you can SEE the list and cross everything off as you go. This simple action will help your mind know that you got done everything you set out to do.

How to make things easy on your farm sitter

List things out:

• Daily chores.
• Where everything is.
• Habits that animals have they may not know about.
• How to open that tricky gate that needs to be pulled towards at the same time as you move the latch.
• Make business meetups super easy.
• Leave money for emergencies.
• Handy tools they might want to use. Just leave them out on the counter or in sight.

Plan way ahead of time

When you run a business and raise animal you need to plan as far ahead as possible. You don’t want to have seedlings that need to be watered, chicks that need to be cared for, or babies being born while you are gone if you can at all help it.

If you have a spouse that doesn’t do as much as you do with the farm business that’s okay. You may have to be the one to initiate the planning for time away. Don’t take offense by them “not caring” about how important making these decisions are for you. We all have different priorities and it’s up to us to bring them to our spouse’s attention in a kind matter-affect way.

If I sense a hint of my husband wanting to go on vacation I do my best to start planning at least 5 months ahead of time. Because we tend to book cabins and those weeks fill up fast. And I can’t just change weeks when it comes to raising young animals and having rabbit litters timed out just right.

Set your farm business up to run without you

Whether you are a blogger, Etsy shop owner, or YouTuber (or all of them) your business can run without you for a time. — That’s a hard pill to swallow when something like that is your baby but trust me it can.

You need to be able to take time off to refuel and come back ready to go. No one can run on an empty cup forever. — Make time to rest and come back recharged.

How do you do that? – Plan ahead of time for sales. Make it known to your customers that there will be a gap in times to purchase if you are going on vacation.

Pre-schedule all marketing content. Literally everything these days has an in-house scheduler. You don’t have to pay a social posting tool if it’s not in the budget. But you can also use something like Asana or trello to tell you when its time to post if you want to do it manually.

Create content plans and themes to make creating content easier.

The trick is to not make it complicated. Because the truth is, its not. We just make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Pre-schedule As Much As Possible

Whether it is your homestead Facebook page or Instagram account you can use Facebook business suite to pre-schedule content. Youtube can schedule out content and email service providers can send out your emails at any time. Use whatever tools you can to have your social media or pillar content go out on its own.

You might be surprised at how much mental peace you will have if you schedule ahead and just let your social accounts, email list, and blog to let them run on their own.

You might like it so much that you start taking more time off:)

Here Are The Tools I Use Or Recommend

Here is the thing. It doesn’t matter what tools you use. – There is no magic bullet or “RIGHT ONE” to use. It’s which ever tool works best for you and which tool you will use regularly to get the job done.

Budget Option – Start with the platform’s in-house scheduler. The only one I don’t know anything about is tick-tock but every other social platform has some form of their own scheduler. It’s true that they may not let you schedule out as far but if your budget is tight a scheduling tool is not the wisest way to spend your money. – Tools that help you get more content out is.

Use Asana or trello to tell you when it’s time to post a piece of content. You can write the caption in the “card” or task and have it notify you when its time to post. – I also like using these tools better than all the different schedulers because you can see all of your content in one place for every social platform. Instead of being scattered.

Take Time Off And Batch Work

Your mind struggles to make the switch between topics when you go back and forth between tasks whether you realize it or not.

I used to write social media, blog posts, emails and so on for each week as I went. Let me tell you I did not get nearly as far as I do now. It was all I could do to keep a week or two ahead if I was lucky.

I now batch my days and have a full day each week dedicated to one particular piece of content style. I now get weeks ahead and stay ahead so I can take at least a week off at Thanksgiving and two weeks over Christmas and New Year.

Because once you get head in your content you can stay that way without pushing hard.

Find Someone Who Puts Your Mind At Ease

You can’t go on vacation and have a restful time if the person you have in charge does not put you at ease. Maybe they don’t know all that much about animals or they aren’t super good at closing the gate.

Whatever the case find someone you can trust and if your nerves get the better of you while you are away just remind yourself why you chose that person.

Also, make them a super clear detailed list of everything you need them to do. Then, here is the hard part. — Trust them!

Turn Of Those Notifications To Have A Restful Time

This is one that will help you with the mind game of feeling guilty that you’re not responding to email, DMs, and social media comments. Just don’t do it. You will feel better if you don’t even know they are there.

You might have to turn off the notification in the settings or completely delete the app of your phone during that time to keep yourself from checking 10 times a day. 

As an army of one, you have to protect your time when you don’t have others to do it for you. Even when you have people to help you in business the temptation will always be there. Develop the habit while your audience is small so you can train your audience to know what to do when you take time off. 

Be OK with What Got Done!

This one is a tough one but probably the most important.

Be ok with how much you got done and don’t beat yourself up over what didn’t happen.

Your farm business will not fall apart and your followers will not leave you for taking time away or not posting for a few days.

You are responsible for the mood and mindset of your vacation and time off. So take control of your day and make it one you want to live. Start planning early and shoot for the moon but be happy with the stars.