I always start by asking a new sitter what their rate is, but have always gotten the answer “whatever you want to pay, I don’t really have a rate”.When I tell them I pay $30/day for basic chores they are all happy to take it. We are in a rural area where there are seasonal summer tourism jobs that frankly don’t pay squat. Winter jobs for many of these kids are nearly non-existent without going 20+ miles into the larger town.
Work is normally feed my 2 horses, turnout in the morning, clean stalls, check pasture water tank; set up feed, hay bags and water buckets for the evening, and bring horses back in at night. Feed 2 barn cats, and one house cat.
My barn is set up to be very efficient. I can do all of the above in under 45 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes to bring in at night if all was setup in the morning. It’s a nice wind free environment even in the worst of the winter and the pasture gate is less than a dozen steps from the barn. My feed room is heated, so someone can warm up if the temperatures are truly brutal, but I find one can easily stay warm enough just moving around doing chores.
Most of my sitters have been local, experienced 4-H gals; late teens or going to the local community college. Most live within 10 or 15 minutes max of me. I’ve always offered that if they’d like to stay at my house after evening chores, so that they don’t have to drive in the morning that would be fine. None have ever chosen to do so as most have their own horses at home to tend.
At this point many of my past sitters have become young adults and moved into the larger town about 20 minutes from me. In order to keep them available to call on, in those cases where we already have a good history, I’ll up the rate to $40 (or more if needed) to cover their gas.
If an emergency happened and the sitter had to spend extra time, I’d pay extra for that and my sitters all know that. Also vet knows if they get a call from the sitter, I will honor the bill. Vet knows my limits and what to do or not do or when to make the last call. Knock wood, in 15 years I’ve been fortunate to not ever have anything happen while I was gone.
Also, with my husband’s agricultural management job, winter is when we are most likely to be able to get away. Snow is always a threat. I tell my sitters to keep track of the time it takes to plow and I will pay for that separately as well. We have a Kubota with snow blower, heated cab & radio. Super easy to run and very comfy. Each sitter is given lessons (and left step by step instructions on how to run it; most are farm gals so somewhat experience already anyhow) on operating it. It’s garaged, so they don’t have to clear it off, just plug in the block heater while they tend the horses. Then blow the barnyard, drive, and path to the manure pile at the end of chores. Worst that has ever happened is when we took off for a week while our young adult daughter was still living at home. DH forgot to fuel up before we left, DD forgot to look at the fuel gauge and ran out just as she was finishing snowblowing, but did’t have enough juice to get back to the garage. She din’t know how to bleed the lines. DH did have to call a neighbor to do that, but it all worked out. We laugh about that now and DH always remembers to fuel up before we leave (and LOL none of our sitters have had to snow blow since that one incident with DD.)
