The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The Good:
Spring is here and we’ve had the most beautiful warm weather....finally. Ha! After weeks of incessant and seemingly endless rain, the sun made its grand debut. And boy, it really has been spectacular. Garden was tilled, a wood chip path around it completed, a plan, and then the planting. I was able to finish planting it today and I am so excited to have it done. I mostly direct sow the seeds so a)I hope it doesn’t frost again and b)I will anxiously wait over the next week to start seeing some green poke hopefully out of the ground!
We bought a new calf, he is feisty and crazy and we named him Buck, as he bucks constantly around the field any time he sees fit. He is a jersey angus cross, though I feel strongly that he is more jersey than we were led to believe. So far he is adjusting well and we look forward to adding another calf this coming weekend.
The chickens have been laying like champs and are loving the sun as much as I am.
We finally fixed the farm truck after it blew a head gasket in December. It runs perfectly and after working on that truck every free minute we had this winter, that is reward enough for us.
The Bad:
Pig lice. It is gross. They are huge. And tough to get rid of. I have been using DE (diatomaceous earth) to rid them of these nasties. I believe the lice was in some straw that we bought. It’s taken weeks to rid them of the lice, though the pigs aren’t itchy as the DE continually kills the lice ones as soon as they hatch.
The Ugly:
We lost a steer. Patches always looked a little sickly and after a long hard winter, now matter how much hay was on hand, he continued to lose weight and literally dropped one night. I nearly threw in the towel on this Homestead Life. Winter was brutal this year. We lost two of our young piglets as well to the elements after they attempted to sleep on the outside of their house....sigh....I decided to push harder and take all of this as learning opportunities. No one really talks about how the learning curve of raising farm animals isn’t always pleasant and is often mysterious and unclear....until it becomes painfully clear. Our other steer, Unihorn, shortly after started looking sick as well. After some research I think he had a parasite. I fed him DE on his hay for one week along with some liquid vitamins in his water and he bounced back to his old self after just a couple of days. I have noticed today that he is a little sluggish again, not bad, but enough for me to get a jump on the DE again. I will do a two week course this time as it must be a longer living parasite than the average 7 day cycle I read about.
With all of the craziness of the homestead, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly...I need to remind myself to really see how good we have it here. To see the numerous blessings that sprinkle their way through my life. To remind myself to fall in love with the land, the home, the animals, the reasons we’ve chosen to raise animals, the product we get from raising them. I don’t know that I could bring myself to buying beef from a store after having beef raised by our family. The taste is unparalleled. Sometimes it just takes a little sunshine, some dirt and accomplishing a few goals to bring all the positives back into the light.
I’m certain I’ve forgotten or left out many things in each category, but these were some big ones. The ones that continually come to the forefront of my mind.
