05/09/2025
Here’s the ugly truth..farming is hard. Y’all have commented and celebrated victories with us, but a chunk of farming is actually really sad. It’s pouring your heart and soul into animals that sometimes with best efforts do not survive likely for reasons that were also out of your control. A lot of people see the fun farm videos and pictures where we are stealing cuddles from lambs, assisting with goat births, counting new baby calves and think man I would love to do that. If that’s the case great welcome to the family, but I want to make sure you have a realistic expectation as well. All of our animals require food,water, and shelter as a bare minimum. Get prepared to use your weekends and free time repairing things on the farm, doing regular famacha scores on you sheep and goats, treating any underlying issues, cleaning out feeders and waterers, and having about 5-10 projects started but not finished etc. Often the best plan you can have is one that can change because animals kid and calve on their own time and often decide to throw in an emergency here and there to keep things spicy. Farmers do not get a day off. For a while we never went anywhere. It takes a lot of time and effort to find someone trustworthy with your livestock to be able to relax on a vacation. If you ever are lucky enough hold on to that person tight. If you have dairy animals you have to milk them everyday (sometimes multiple times) or they dry up. You can’t sign up and then take care of the animals halfway or you will have way more loss and failures. The work is smelly and sometimes gross. You will carry heavy things and sweat in the summer. You will stink! In winter you be out there freezing breaking up ice on waterers. The work is hard but it’s worth it if you have a passion for your animals. If you are looking to farm without a real passion for what you are doing you won’t make it. Without that burning desire and love when things domino and it seems like when it rains it pours you’ll want out. It’s easy to change your mind after a hard week of challenges or even a few months of challenges. Without the love of the animals themselves and for the way of life you have its a lot easier to throw in the towel. That feeling of defeat hits heavier when you really care and love the livestock you have. The animals left counting on you that you care about will make you dig deeper and push through. We’ve had some rough patches and I never want to falsely advertise the life we live. Sacrifices are made. In our lives the pros out way the cons, but I know it’s not for everyone and a lot of people will never understand it. I’m happy to support anyone with questions about joining in the journey, but know it’s not all butterflies and rainbows. I miss the animals we lose and I think about them often. We’ve been blessed with some of the best guardian dogs, goats, cows, ducks, chickens etc. They mattered then, and still matter now because of the lessons and love they brought us. This picture included so many of the animals we have and seeing that rainbow bridge gives me peace that for those lost it’s just a tata for now not good bye forever.
There’s a lot of faith in what we do and you have to be an optimist or else you likely won’t remain a farmer.
