Old Fashioned On Purpose

112. When Homesteading Kicks You in the Gut

April 27, 2020 Jill Winger
Old Fashioned On Purpose
112. When Homesteading Kicks You in the Gut
Show Notes Transcript

While most parts of homesteading are extremely fun and rewarding, it’s not all sunshine and roses.  Sometimes I make mistakes.  Sometimes Christian and I face serious challenges that simply aren’t pleasant to deal with.  If you’ve been listening to the podcast or reading the blog over the past couple months, you’d know that we’ve been working on breeding goats.  When my daughter Mesa went to check on the goats this week, she discovered something tragic.  It turns out our goat had given birth to triplets, but all three had passed away.  Listen to find out how we’ve been dealing with this horrible situation and how we’re going to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future. 

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welcome to the old fashioned on purpose podcast. So I talk a lot about the happy and fulfilling parts of homesteading because, let's face it, there's a lot of them, whether you're making your first loaf of bread or you're getting that first egg from your chickens or planting tomatoes out in your garden. There's just a lot of pieces of this lifestyle that are amazing and satisfying and make you feel like you're on top of the mountain. But I would be remiss to not also bring you along for some of the hard parts of the journey to because they do exist. And in today's episode, I want to share with you something that happened on our Homestead recently. That was really, really hard, and I've hesitated a little bit to talk about this, but I think I need to share it because I want you to see both the good and the hard parts of this homestead lifestyle. I'm your host, Jill Winger, and this is the podcast for the Trail Blazers, the Mavericks, the makers, the homesteaders, the modern pioneers and the backyard farmers. If you're ready to boost your food security and create more of a homegrown lifestyle. Well, you have found your tribe. So I have not talked about this at the time of this recording on social media or the blog yet just mostly, honestly, it was, it was too raw to talk about, and I didn't feel like I could handle the comments from people. Um, sometimes even when I post normal, everyday things that are completely noncontroversial, you know, there's always the peanut gallery of people either criticizing or telling you how you messed up or how you could have done it better. And like I'm not saying this to make you feel sorry for me because this is my job and I very willingly, except this is part of being a public person online. So I'm not like complaining about that. But sometimes you know most the time I can handle it. I'm ready for it. I could deal with it or I can delete them or whatever, but sometimes they're certain issues. I'm just like I can't do. I don't have the emotional bandwidth to handle the comments and the questions and criticism so have kind of kept this on the down low. But as I've been thinking about this, you know, I'm like, is this something I even want to talk about? Even on the podcast? And I decided I did, because I really think it's important to be transparent about this journey and the mistakes we make. And I really don't want you to think that living an old fashioned lifestyle or homesteading or whatever you wanna call it is always rain bows and butterflies 24 7 because it's not. And if I make you think that the first time you hit a rocky spot, you're gonna quit, and that's the last thing that you should do or that's the last thing that I want. So this is a hard story for us. This is a hard chapter in our homestead journey, But I wanted to bring you along and kind of share what happens and how we're going to change for the future. And hopefully you can get some encouragement moving forward in your own journey. So some of you might remember I haven't talked about it a ton, but my daughter, Mesa got some Nigerian dwarf dairy goats Last fall, she bought them with some of the money she acquired from selling her 4-H goat and she wanted to do some dairy goats. And so we got them from a friend and we borrowed a buck for them. When was it? November. And the buck was in with them and bred them right. And we were crossing our fingers, hoping that they were bred. And so we knew that they were going to be kidding, potentially in April. And so with a goat, it's a little bit tricky. You can get them ultrasound, and it's not super easy. So we were kind of operating on on hope that they were indeed bred, But we're fairly certain that the one goat her name was Poppy. She's a little Nigerian dwarf. We're fairly certain she was bred because she was looking quite rotund and her utter was developed a little bit. So I had done the math and figured out when her potential due date would be and, I think was April 9th. And so I wrote it in my little calendar. And there we were.  Mesa was getting excited. She was talking about having goat babies, you know, And it was something we were looking looking forward to, um, so as we got closer to that date, there was a lot going on. So not only obviously were in this quarantine situation, which life feels weird, but we're also calving. So Christian is not really living at home much. He's home a little bit during the day, but we have our horse trailer down at Our neighbors where we lease property for the cattle, and he's sleeping in the horse trailer at least 50% of the nights. He goes down there like midnight and sleeps in the trailer, and he's gone during a lot of days, so our schedules air off. We're not eating supper together, which really always bothers me. It just makes me feel out of sorts. And our life is just feels a little more complicated, right? There's a lot more responsibility for all of us. And last week the temperatures dropped. We've been having 50 degree, 60 even degree days, and we had this cold snap where we went from 50 degrees down to, um, like single digits at night. A little bit of snow, not a lot, mostly just cold. And so the cows, when when you're having during a cold snap, it's vital that we stay on top of the calves and you can have more issues. A lot of times, calves could be born out in cold temperatures and they're fine. But if the moms don't clean them up quick enough, get them dry, they can get chilled and they can die. So Christian was gone a lot. We ended up having a calf in her mud room because it got chilled. It was wet and it's Mama didn't clean it off properly. She kind of just had him out in a snowdrift and left him. So he was shaking and we brought him in and he was in our house for, I don't know, 24 hours. We're working on him and it was just crazy. And so I had this fleeting thought that we should start checking the goats more closely. We're still a week out, right of before the due date. But, I mean, I've done this a lot. We've had baby goats before. I know that goats or animals or humans or anything, they don't listen to due dates. They don't always pay attention to the calendar. So I had this fleeting thought that maybe I need to go out and just start watching them a little more closely. And during that particular night it was super cold, like it drop down to single digits. And in the blur of everything the calf, the cold, like having the kids. Everything had going on. I just just didn't think of it. I just flat out didn't put into action this this plan of checking more frequently. And that morning, I think, was Friday morning. Mesa went out to do chores. The kids always do chores, and she came back in and she was hysterical and told me that Poppy the goat had had triplets and they were all dead. And it was really hard, not just because of the loss of animal life, like how I've never cried on the podcast before, but just to see your kid, so devastated because those are her goats, you know? And she's watched them and it was a hard day. It was a really, really hard day, not a fun day on the homestead. And I think probably the hardest part for me was just I was so angry at myself for not checking like I know, I know it is not my first time we've had baby goats before. We've had lots of baby animals. I know they don't wait for their due date. I should have paid more attention to the calendar, but it just didn't happen. It was just one of those things that it just was a mistake. And it makes me to this just like to this day and just still nauseated over it. Um, but it was just a really rough day, and I don't know. I think this brings up a lot of brings up a lot of thoughts, right? The 1st one is kids and homesteading. And there's so many beautiful things about having kids on the homestead, but also like the hard parts, because animals die and disappointments happened. And our first inclination, I think, is to shield them from it and make it sure they never have to feel that because it's it's hurts. It's hard. And I know my first thought went Mesa when she found the babies course, I rushed out there and check them out, and they were definitely gone. Two were had been cleaned off. One was still in the sack, so I'm assuming that what happened is they got cold, Which makes me really sick that we didn't check them more frequently because we probably could have prevented that. It was just too cold for them. They were in a barn. They they had beddng down. It was just too cold. And a goat Doesn't, you know, sit on her babies like a mama hen does? They don't quite have that instinct. So what we needed to have done was brought them into a warmer building. Like when I knew that she was close. I probably should have had her in a warmer building or had a heat lamp out there in a safe location to keep her warm or just checked every two hours throughout the night and been able to bring, um, her in or be there if the babies were born and then bring the babies in. So that's what should have happened. It did not happen. And I'm gonna I'm gonna ask that. Well, I don't know if I get emails from folks who are trying to tell me all this should haves, like, I'm just not gonna be responding to those because I know, like, this was just one of those things that it was a mistake. So I know what we're gonna do. Moving forward. We have a game plan. I can guarantee you this sort of thing will never happen again. Because when I learned a lesson, the hard lesson like this, I learned it very, very well, and I never forget it. But anyway, I think I got off in a rabbit trail that I think our first inclination is to protect our kids and to shield them. And I remember thinking the day this happened, I'm just gonna go. We'll go buy her some new goats. We'll just buy her some new goats. We'll find some babies, will buy some babies so she can have the babies. And I I'm not saying that we wouldn't do that, but I thought, you know, it's OK after, I kind of got back into my rational mind. It's okay for her to feel this because this is real life. As hard as this is, this is real life and things die and babies die and mistakes happen and disappointments happen. And my kids, this isn't their first time experiencing something like this. This was a hard thing to experience, but you know, they've seen that before. They know the cycles of life and death, and I think that our society as a whole we're just disconnected from that. So I guess my question to myself was, if I shield her from it now, she's nine years old, almost 10. She's still young, but at what point does she then experience that for the first time? So I think it's important to taper these experiences to our kids maturity level. But she's pretty mature for a nine year old. She's seen a lot. She's been there for calving things, everything from C sections to pulling calves to pulling dead calves like my kids have been around the block. So, um, I felt like this was something that, well, they kind of didn't have a choice. They had to handle it because it was what was presented to us. But I think it was something that was a valuable lesson for us all. So I don't know. I don't know if I have a great point or conclusion to this episode but I wanted you to. I just wanted to bring you along for this because this is hard guys, whether it's been like gardens getting hailed out or animals dying, this can be a hard lifestyle, but I don't think that's a reason to shy away from it. There will be things in our lives and our kids lives, hard things that they have to overcome. And this, for a child, is a training ground right when they're with us in our homes. This is their training ground, where they learn how to be in a hard situation, how to deal with a hard situation and how to come out the other end with lessons learned in a plan moving forward. And so I hope even if you don't have kids in your homesteading, know that you're not alone when you have those hard years of those hard sister situations, Um, you're definitely not alone. It is part of the process. There's a lot of this jury that's beautiful and exciting and exhilarating. And then there's there's some pieces that are just will rip your heart out. But I don't believe that's a reason to quit right, because we can't always shield ourselves from the hard things, Nor should we, because that's where the lessons lie. So I don't know. I was trying to think of some action steps to give you, like, if you're in this place or maybe you're listening to this and you've had this sort of loss happen. I don't have a perfect packaged with a pretty bow hack for going forward. Is there I don't really, is one really? It's grieving, right? It's morning, even like last year when my garden got held out gardens, not an animal. It wasn't as horrible as the dead baby goats. But I still have to grieve my garden like because I there was so much work and so much promise and so much hope in that. And when it got massacred by that hail storm like, it's okay to grieve that it's absolutely OK. And sometimes grief is not this easy linear process. It's messy and up and down, and so if I don't have great great action steps for you, but here's what I did. I took the day off when it happened. Obviously, we didn't do our home school. We didn't do work. We just kind of survived. We just stayed quiet and were easy on ourselves, something that really helped me. I think it was the next day after this had happened is I got back in the saddle. So as a horse woman, I really believe in the idea of get bucked off you get back on. And so for me, that equated to planting something right? It was spring. Anyway, I had things to plant, so I pulled up some seed trays and filled them with soil. And I planted some more tomato seeds and it just help me feel like we were moving forward even in our imperfectly way of just moving forward. And it just reminded me of the cycle of life. Right? Another thing we did and I talked about this a lot with Mesa is that we made a plan moving forward what mistakes we had made and how this won't happen again. And what we will do next year to make sure this this doesn't repeat itself. And I won't say that made everything better, but it helped for me. And just the way my personality style is, it helps me to feel like I learned something from this hard thing. And I could be proactive moving forward. And Mesa. Honestly, she's doing well with it. The day it happened was a hard day. She was a little bit teary the next few days. But, she probably did better than me, because if you if you're a parent and you have a kids and animals and it's hard enough when animals die but watching your kids' animals die, it's like probably the worst thing in the world. But she's doing well. Um, and I'm proud of her for just her attitude with it. Like I said, this isn't their first time with animal losses, part of farm life. And I hate it every single time. But it is. It is life, and it is something to learn how to deal with And the goat. The mama goat is doing well, by the way, we were gonna continue milking her. Her milk supply has dried up, which sometimes animals will keep producing. When the babies were gone, sometimes they just don't. So we had tried to kind of continue to Milk her and get some colostrom, but it just she's her body was just like, No, I'm good. So we're just gonna let her be hanging out and doing her thing and she gets lots of love and lots of attention. And we'll try again next year and with a lot of lessons learned, you know, we talked a lot about resilience. I love the word resilience. Um, and there's a lot of cute Internet memes and bumper stickers about resilience. But when you're in the thick of it, it hurts. It's sucks but the whole point of resilience is to get knocked down and getting knocked down never feels good. But it's to keep going. And I know that I really want to cultivate that. It's one of the most important things I think we can cultivate in ourselves and our kids, whether we're growing the homestead or building a business or we're just doing life, resilience is a treat that a lot of our modern society seems to lack. Right. When things get hard, we tend to bail. And so these times are when we get to cultivate and exercise that resilience. And if there is a silver lining in any of this cause man it's been hard, um, I think that would be it is just an opportunity to practice getting knocked down and then picking ourselves back up, dusting ourselves off and moving forward. So I hope that this episode offered you some encouragement or at least solidarity. If you have been in a situation, or maybe you will in the future and you can recall this conversation and hopefully it will give you a little bit of hope because it doesn't last forever, right? Things go back to a new normal, and there's always new things to learn. And that's it for today. My friends, um, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you listening. Thanks so much, and we'll catch over the next episode of the old fashioned on purpose podcast.