New Feature: Prizes

Leroy on August 21, 2023

This summer, our homestead (full of children) experienced a version of what many families with children experience and that is boredom.

Boredom can get some kids in trouble – other kids are aware enough to engage in projects like building forts, lego creations, puzzles, etc. Our kids are somewhere in the middle. They engage with stuff, but end up leaving the messes to find something new. Meanwhile, who is marking off the chores?

Chores, even though notifications were going out from the app, were being left undone. So we realized we could get a new sense of motivation if we attached a prize to completing chores. Our trial run was to have a prize of a run to the local ice cream parlor if 99 tasks were completed. We have about 20 tasks that show up daily, so the prize could be earned within a week. It was!

So the next week, once the emails arrived in everyone’s inbox that the prize was earned, we went out for ice cream! Would we have gone out either way? Probably. I mean, summertime fun in the evenings includes ice cream occasionally, so it made sense. But they got such a sense of completion. And harmony, working together to complete the chores and reach the goal.

Next, we tried setting a big goal: 399 chores completed to get to have a bounce house rental for a few days. The children/team rallied. It took several weeks but they stayed on track with a little nudging. Again – would we have rented it anyway? It was on my personal goal list for the summer – so yes. But we were able to direct the energy and focus of the kiddos toward a common goal and everyone got to celebrate.

Could your family benefit from a system like this? Let us know or better yet, join us.

Why replace the whiteboard in the kitchen?

Leroy on December 3, 2022

A few days ago I was talking with a vendor about Homestead Harmony, basically going through the elevator pitch for the business. Very quickly the representative got it and said, “Yeah, just like the whiteboard in my mom’s kitchen!”

Yes. Just like that. Only better.

We have a whiteboard in our kitchen. It works GREAT for things like keeping track of whose turn it is to sweep the floor after meals, or to wipe the table. But when does it fail us? It doesn’t tell us when a job is left undone.

What about when someone is sick? Yes, we can quickly fill in and take the sweeping task but there are MANY other tasks on the homestead. Let’s do a deeper dive into one task, in particular.

We recently hatched 7 chicks from a few eggs produced by our hens. What a joyful moment! The chicks do fine incubating for a day or so after hatching, but then they need to be tended to. They need to be Introduced to water, given food, watched for pasty butt – all the things. These are the things that NEED to happen in order for the chicks to survive. It is our responsibility as good stewards of bringing in these new lives, to protect and provide for them

I, as the dad, am happy to keep up with them. But it is also a great opportunity for the kids to help. But which child? And when? And what about when one of the kids is sick? We can assume they have handed it off to another kid, or we can assume that mom and dad will step in. But those are dangerous assumptions.

That is where the whiteboard starts to let us down. It conveys who is responsible but fails to report when action is not taken.

Homestead Harmony was built to help with these days. Because not only do we have 7 new, “peep peep” chickies. We also have dogs and other chickens and cats, and plants – that all need tending to, regularly. Because the Homestead Harmony system is not just a whiteboard, we get a text message reminding us to look at those critical tasks and make sure they are completed – or if not completed, at a minimum, have been properly delegated.

In other words, not only are tasks orchestrated and assigned, there is accountability. It becomes the centerpiece for promoting conversation.

I don’t think we’ll ever replace the whiteboard in the kitchen, for that large, homesteading family. There are definitely things that belong on that whiteboard. But for the moments when there is a chore that just can’t be missed, and other family members or farm hands need to be advised when one isn’t completed, that is where Homestead Harmony fills the gaps.

What is Homestead Harmony?

Leroy on November 28, 2022

Homestead Harmony was born out of a need to make sure the animals on our family’s homestead were taken care of.

One summer, weekend morning, the kids were lazily getting out of bed, just like their parents. Mid-morning, someone realized that the dogs had been kenneled for 12 hours. Usually, the dogs are kenneled around 9:30pm for the evening and then let out in the morning around 7:30am. Our dogs are used to this timeline and are comforted knowing they will be inside for the night hours.

This particular morning, however, the dogs did not get let out until 2 hours later than their normal time. We all felt a little panicked and let them out and got them fed. So no real harm was done. BUT, the reality is that we were lucky this time. What would prevent this from happening next weekend?

Thus we realized a tool was needed in our family. We were already using a whiteboard to track a few specific tasks that we take turns completing. For instance, a few of the kids take turns vacuuming and wiping off the table after meals and the whiteboard is in the dining room. But feeding the dogs and letting them out required a different level of tracking for a few reasons…

  • Dogs should only be fed 1x in the morning (in other words, once it is done, it is done)
  • If it doesn’t happen by a certain time, other folks need to know so they can take action
  • The dogs are in a remote part of the house and not near the whiteboard at all

At this point, since we have experience integrating web services that do things like push notifications, mobile apps, SMS text messages, and web portals – we decided to see if we could build something that works for us. You know, the “mad scientist” kind of thing where we try to take our own concoction.

At the same time as our prototype started working, we also started asking other homesteading families what they use. They shared some strategies and we started trying to figure out how their methods could work for us and what that would mean.

Also during that time, we looked at commercial products for To Do list management. And we also started considering if we could do it all through shared calendars. We gave them all a “scout’s bite” (that is, we tried them earnestly) but the combination of potential reporting/summarizing, as well as fail-safe alerting showed us that we needed something special. Something specific.

The recipe of ingredients (web services) that we needed in order to truly ensure our chores and tasks were being handled was simply too specific to be handled by existing tools.

So here we are. We continue to use our system and expand its functionality. And this website was born out of the desire to share it with the public so that it can help other homesteaders achieve the harmony they need in making sure livestock, gardens, and all the assets and resources of the homestead are properly managed.