I grew up on a small family farm. We were self-sufficient, so I know how hard it is to lose animals both financially and emotionally. Thanks for your honesty.
Wow, thank you for taking the time to articulate your journey with all of us… It actually speaks so much to my heart because I’ve been crying at our struggle over the last two years of homesteading. We have so many tough lessons learned, sometimes making it harder by reinventing the wheel like you said, there’s nothing worse than the loss of life. We had 18 chickens and we’re down to two and there’s so many different factors to why we lost so many and I truly feel like I failed them. My husband and I have been talking about how social media can make homestead look like a highlight reel leave out all the rest!
It's so hard, even when you know very well livestock will die in some way at some point. accidents, weather, predators, mistakes, and of course slaughtering for food. It's just reality. Justin Rhodes quotes another stockman when he says "if you have livestock, you're going to have deadstock". It's just part of the lifestyle. So yes, we can blame ourselves even when it makes no sense to do so and everything involved was out of our control, but at the end of the day we can give up or we can just dig in and try again. Personally, even if the face of our problems, I don't feel as if we are admitting defeat when we aren't doing livestock this year. I feel we are just adjusting to our current reality. We learned a lot, and know how to do it again if we need or want to, and what needs to change should we decide to start again. Even with the expense of it all (in all senses of that word), I feel it was all worth it to know how to rely on ourselves for almost all our basic food.
Such an honest account Tina - Homesteading is a tough life - I love keeping animals but it really tests you - having to cull an animal you have raised, facing the carnage of a predator attack. I am down to a few chickens, ducks and geese - I miss having a large flock of geese but in other ways I'm not. And no more sheep - such a relief - the only animal that lives to die.
Very true, it feels like more can go wrong than right! We really liked the turkeys, and heritage ones are tough as nails once past 12 weeks. Our breeders got eaten by coyotes because we were letting them out to free range, and we were very disappointed. If we do animals again, pigs would be an easy yes, turkeys for sure, ducks winter very well here, as do geese. Chickens...we enjoyed them, but they need a little more help than the other birds in our nasty winters. If I were capable, I would love a milk cow!
My heart goes out to you for all of the lost animals.
I grew up on a small family farm. We were self-sufficient, so I know how hard it is to lose animals both financially and emotionally. Thanks for your honesty.
Wow, thank you for taking the time to articulate your journey with all of us… It actually speaks so much to my heart because I’ve been crying at our struggle over the last two years of homesteading. We have so many tough lessons learned, sometimes making it harder by reinventing the wheel like you said, there’s nothing worse than the loss of life. We had 18 chickens and we’re down to two and there’s so many different factors to why we lost so many and I truly feel like I failed them. My husband and I have been talking about how social media can make homestead look like a highlight reel leave out all the rest!
It's so hard, even when you know very well livestock will die in some way at some point. accidents, weather, predators, mistakes, and of course slaughtering for food. It's just reality. Justin Rhodes quotes another stockman when he says "if you have livestock, you're going to have deadstock". It's just part of the lifestyle. So yes, we can blame ourselves even when it makes no sense to do so and everything involved was out of our control, but at the end of the day we can give up or we can just dig in and try again. Personally, even if the face of our problems, I don't feel as if we are admitting defeat when we aren't doing livestock this year. I feel we are just adjusting to our current reality. We learned a lot, and know how to do it again if we need or want to, and what needs to change should we decide to start again. Even with the expense of it all (in all senses of that word), I feel it was all worth it to know how to rely on ourselves for almost all our basic food.
Such an honest account Tina - Homesteading is a tough life - I love keeping animals but it really tests you - having to cull an animal you have raised, facing the carnage of a predator attack. I am down to a few chickens, ducks and geese - I miss having a large flock of geese but in other ways I'm not. And no more sheep - such a relief - the only animal that lives to die.
Very true, it feels like more can go wrong than right! We really liked the turkeys, and heritage ones are tough as nails once past 12 weeks. Our breeders got eaten by coyotes because we were letting them out to free range, and we were very disappointed. If we do animals again, pigs would be an easy yes, turkeys for sure, ducks winter very well here, as do geese. Chickens...we enjoyed them, but they need a little more help than the other birds in our nasty winters. If I were capable, I would love a milk cow!