"Like anything in homesteading, you need to always understand that doing the uncomfortable in the present has rich rewards in the future. It isn't fun for me to work the hive, weed gardens, trim hooves, muck stalls... "
Working hives isn't uncomfortable weeding gardens isn't uncomfortable, trimming hooves isn't uncomfortable, mucking stalls isn't uncomfortable.
Working hives is magic, weeding a garden is therapeutic, trimming hooves is rewarding, and "picking stalls"* is insta accomplishment.
What is uncomfortable for you is a pleasure for me and many others.
If you want a future of mead, vegetables, goats (milk?), and piglets (pork), leave it to the people who find it a JOY to provide it.
As for livestock, you can't truly raise healthy happy animals in a resentful "self sacrificing" environment. You can recognize a mile away who doesn't enjoy working with or amongst the livestock. They wear ear buds or headphones to drown out the animals. They don't pay attention to their surroundings, they aren't focused on animal behavior, they don't do a good job....they are trying to distract or otherwise entertain themselves. They joke about having to latch the livestock out of the house rather than lock them safely in a securely fenced field. Fencing is work. Latching a screen house door is not.
If you feel like working with animals is a sacrifice or burden you will overlook their needs, too busy fussing with self interests. Animals aren't stupid and pigs especially can't be fooled. I guarantee you the demeanor of pigs greatly depends on the demeanor of the person who handles them.
I honestly can't relate to this post at all.
Today i drove roughly 30 minutes one way to work on and weed the garden at my boss's moms house. I had two elder care clients tonight and it was torture pulling myself away. Gardening fills my soul. Interestingly enough, harvesting and eating comes secondary to planting and weeding. Tending a garden Is a natural high.
Two of my greatest joys in life are gardening and pigs.
Jenna, you want to consume mead, vegetables, milk, and pork. Let us, those who LOVE the work it takes provide if for you.
This word you toss around...luck. it's offensive to every hard worker that earned a reason to be proud. Luck occurs in the game of chance, in the way a card hand is dealt or how the dice rolls. Farming, homesteading, or just raising a few animals or planting a few plants of whatever species or variety doesn't take luck, it takes effort.
You call yourself lucky because you feel lucky. You never know who will send you money, is it a yes is it a no?
I stood in the garden today and didn't feel lucky, I felt involved. I felt fortunate. I felt the carrots needed more water, the beets should have been more appropriately spaced and thinned, I felt the sunflowers had obviously been overlooked...apparent by the morning glory climbing up their stalks, and I felt amazed. Its amazing that when soil, seed, and water combine a plant grows. Its not luck. Its an equation that works.
Raising animals isn't different. You do what works. Its not luck, it's animal husbandry.
You write about leaving your job for a life you love, but you bitch and moan more now than ever. With every work, weed, trim, and muck you complain.
Don't you understand, I (and countless others) love to work, weed, trim, and muck. We look forward to it.
I'm a natural with pigs and it makes me happy.
What are you naturally good at? What makes you happy?
Produce what makes you happy and consume the products of others happiness.
My heart yearns for agricultural work and truly it mourns when apart from those "uncomfortable" tasks.
Why are you filling your life with uncomfortable tasks you don't find fun? It sounds like outside agricultural type work is no more appealing to you than cubicle desk work.
*Mucking stalls is not in the vocabulary of people who regularly (daily) clean stalls. To muck? Who wants their animals to live in or be exposed to muck?
