Most of the homeowners who we’ve done house sits for have been pretty flexible with us. That is, they are willing to work with us on the timing of our arrival and departure, when and whether we do a visit in advance of the start date, discussing the expectations of the sit, etc. Our sit in Massachusetts was almost five months long, and the homeowners were even more flexible, making it a great experience for us.

For example, we asked if we could do a summer vegetable garden in the side area of their yard. They had no problem with us setting it up, so we collected some branches from the forest and put together a makeshift fence, in order to keep out the many deer in the area. When our sit was complete, we checked with the homeowners and they said we could leave the garden as is, and they would enjoy the late summer produce.

Another example was that we were interested in having chickens. We’re mostly city people and didn’t have much experience with chickens, but we saw that they had an old coop out in the meadow that was in need of some repairs. We had been thinking about giving chickens a try anyway, so we checked and these homeowners were fine with us repairing the coop and bringing in a few chickens. That gave us a great opportunity to try it out without too much expense or commitment. Since we only had a few months, we purchased adult chickens from a local hobby farmer. It took the chickens a few weeks to adjust to their new surroundings, then they began producing eggs for us.

We also try to be as flexible as possible, such as adjusting our schedule in order to meet the homeowners’ needs. In addition, we always do our best to be respectful of the homes where we stay. That’s why we’re sure to get approval in advance of doing things like this. We also want to leave a place as good or better than when we arrived. As for the chickens, we not only got approval to leave the chickens behind, but we also made a backup plan with a neighbor to adopt the chickens in case the homeowner was no longer interested.