I had a bout of self pity this evening reflecting on the 2019 harvest. It is so easy to romanticize a homesteading lifestyle.
Envision sunshine warming your skin as you carry your basket full of fresh eggs through the garden, harvesting herbs on your way back to the house to make breakfast. Children's laughter dances on the wind, mingling with the songs of birds and buzzing of bees. Your entire meal is homemade, warm and nourishing. Wild flowers fill vases throughout the house and your home constantly smells like apple pie.
Y’all. This is literally what I thought homesteading would be like. And honestly, some days it is. But this past year had so many hard times for us. Specifically with our animals.
2019 Livestock
It started with our chickens. The spring and early summer were incredibly damp.
Dampness and chickens don’t mix. For the first time in 8 years, we experienced respiratory disease. We lost 7 birds.
Then came the mites. Egg production dropped dramatically as we battled the tiny monsters.
We started raising meat birds this year. By our second batch, we had it down to a beautiful science. Not a single bird was lost, they were healthy, happy, and heavy! 75lbs of pasture-raised chickens, fed non-gmo, fermented food lost in one night as our shop’s freezer went out and left months of handwork to spoil.
Next came the ninja rabbit babies. Keeping with our philosophy to raise animals as close to nature as we are able, we have our rabbits in pasture pens. Those little babies can dig and squeeze in ways we never thought possible to get out.
Fox, raccoon, hawk attacks dwindled our egg laying flock down even further. We currently have 3 guineas left (out of 6), 9 egg layers out of 40 and 2 roosters left out of 5.
The most recent battle has been infertility with our breeding rabbits. Out of 9 breeders, we have only had 3 litters of kits since April. (We should be getting 6 litters every 8 weeks).
We were out of town this weekend and one of our rabbits lost an entire litter. (Completely unexpected, we shouldn’t have had any rabbits due for another 10 days.)
This morning I fought our broody rooster (bless his heart) for our measly 3 brown eggs we now get daily. And wallowed in our failures.
On a whim, I checked for eggs again tonight. There sat one of the hens who barely survived the last raccoon attack. I didn’t have the heart to put her down even though I knew she would probably not lay for us anytime soon (if ever again).
But tonight, she gave us an unexpected gift, one of her beautiful green eggs. A little ray of hope.
This hen persevered, and we will, too. Despite the mud, the loss, the constant cleaning, we know that the peaceful days are a direct result from our hard work. There will be hard times – hard years, even. But the only way to succeed is to learn from the hardships and continue to focus on the future.
