My partner and I are going to Norway(!) for 13 days and my friend will be watching our little homestead. What’s a fair daily compensation for the following daily responsibilities:
17 chickens
4 barn cats
1 indoor cat with special diet
Small garden (water on automatic timer)
12 fruit trees (water on automatic timer)
Hot tub maintenance (2-3x/week)
I’m leaving him a couple cases of beer, a freezer full of frozen meats and a well stocked fridge and wondering what a fair payment would be?
$50/day? $60/day?
by patrickjchrist
10 Comments
I think you’re being pretty fair. Something around $1000 for the whole stay seems pretty reasonable.
One question to help you sort things out would be to try to get a read on how much time you spend doing necessary stuff every day. Get an hrs/day, double it, look at what a living wage would be to cover that daily rate.
I recently did the same and ended up paying $60 bucks a day. Our person wasn’t house-sitting, just gathering mail and packages, caring for the animals and garden, and coordinating irrigation (timers, but not automatic). He came twice a day for about 3 to 3.5 hours total, and took all the eggs and garden produce in the 3.5 weeks we were gone also. I think your price range is right.
Nice. Thanks for the response. And yeah, he will have all the eggs he can eat and bring home afterwards and obviously any produce that he wants. He’s out of work with an injury so I’m definitely wanting to do what I can to help him out while he’s recovering.
You do the work every day figure out how much time it takes to do the daily work.
On my place right now with the heat I’m out every 2 ro 3 hrs checking waters and such.
So that’s about 6 times a day at 10min so 1hr
Then with feeding 2 times a day each time about 30min so up to 2 hrs a day of direct work.
Then how much is the security worth to you having someone there all day?
Me personally I would not pay less than $20 per hr of direct work and then at least a flat rate of $50 per day for the peace of mind and security. So that’s about $90 per day.
I say this because even a security guard that only sits in a booth at a gate gets that much per day and they are not there 24hrs a day.
So sure there is food and some beer but you need to pay with respect or you are asking for no respect in what they are doing.
So make it easy and give the caretaker $1300 for helping you out.
I’d just give him an oz of cannabis.
But for 13 days thats A little stingy.
What can you afford? Will you need them to help you another time?
Can I just pay YOU to let ME come take care of it? Hahaha sounds like a dream.
In all seriousness, I think your proposal is fair.
You probably won’t want to leave.
Damn, the beer and meat sound fair enough to me. I say $50 a day is fair enough.
Damn. A holiday in a beatufull homestad, caring for some animals, with nice food in the freezer/fridge? Some people pay good money for that. Getting $50/day, I’d sign up in a heartbeat.
Very nice of you that you want to help your friend out that way. Enjoy Norway. It is amazing.