Time for trying, trying times.

lanaire-ranching wrote: to know that I am not cold as I am beginning to seem to some, but that my heart is just too full to see the suffering in the animals I hold truly

I like the way you put this, I think it really sums it up. It is not cold to put down a beloved animal that is suffering. It is kind, loving and selfless.

uno wrote:Not meaning to hijack, but as I read these great posts, a question comes to mind. How many here had parents who farmed?

Both Hub and I have farming backgrounds. WHen we married he drew his line in the sand. "There will be no making of hay and no shooting of cows.!"  It was a struggle for me to even get chickens, and a stretch again to talk him into meat birds. We BOTH had taken part in chicken killing as children and there wasn't a rose coloured glass anywhere. We knew what it was all about.

I saw the life my mother lived, the life of a farm wife. Not a housewife, but a farmwife. SHE WAS NEVER DONE WORKING. There was always some catastrophe to deal with, lunch to be hauled out across 4000 acres, or some hired hand who'd gone out checking fences 16 hours ago and wasn't back yet. Hub also grew up humping hay onto wagons while his friends went to the beach.

We knew. I wonder how many here come to this rural lifestyle with no farming background?

I love thread hijacks--- they tend to be the best conversations!!  like Sweetened says, sitting around the table having coffee/tea/whatever... the conversations always moves, and comes back.

for me-- no.  BUT. and this is a huge but.   I was a city kid. a horribly miserable one.  and it wasnt until the day I moved out to Alberta to be with Mister (well, soon to be mister at that point!) did I realize WHY I was so damn unhappy in the city.  because without me even knowing it, growing up around it... somewhere deep in my soul, a past life-- I was a country woman.  I had to have been.  I literally drop down here, and dug in like I had been here all my life.  and I have bloomed.  I can honestly say I have bloomed to be the person I knew just KNEW I could always be.  and the city be damned.  it has its place, but not in my heart.  this... home, this is in my heart.  and there are days that I seem to never stop working, and dammit I am mad about it... but then I think that these are the important life lessons that my girls need to grow up with.  and I wouldnt want to raise them anywhere else, and for it and my hard work, I can see them blooming way long before I ever got the chance to and it makes my heart happier than it could ever be!   (Oooo look at me getting all sentimental!!!  ahaha)

now, mister.  sure he came from farming.  but not the loving family kind.  the kind were he was used as the hired hand.  so while he knew what he was in for, and happily gives me the room to grow and do what I need for me... he is also a good reality check for me.  I always always ask him about a new venture  "how did it work for you, what was the worst" sort of stuff... then I know a little better before I start in.  never fully prepared, but at least I get the other side of some stuff before it happens.

I must admit, farming was in the family, but I never witnessed any of it. My grandfather, at the age of fiteen farmed to feed his 5 brothers and mother. he He took care of them all. My father, used to plough the fields with 2 belgians in Whonnock. I think only Cynthia might know where Whonnock is. This was all long before my time, but maybe , its in my blood to live on acreage, and grow things and have animals. Or maybe I'm just as delusional as the rest of you.
And Uno, who wonders who's a boy, and what the boy was wondering, I am a wondering boy on the inside. Wondering about you...regularly...

I know where Whonnock is. 

I am the odd kid who used to stand up in the car and scream as we drove from our suburban lower mainland home out to the Fraser Valley, pointing excitedly at cows and horses...especially horses.  My parents figure I was switched at birth.  But my Grandma (my dad's Mom) was raised on a farm in Germany, and I guess the gene skipped a generation and I got it.

I am nothing like a real farmer, but I have a desire to raise some of my own food, and it really satisfies me to support people who really DO farm for a living, the people who provide me with a bounty every week at the Farmer's Markets in my area.  I am deeply indebted to them as I could probably never do it myself.  Gardening that is.

Sweetened when I moved here to my first real acreage, I had horses, dogs, cats and chickens.  I eventually obtained a few goats with the idea that they could help keep the bush down out back.  I had no idea what to do with or for goats, but I'd seen some tethered out browsing brush when I was visiting the islands of the Bahamas a few years back, and I figured 'who needs fences'?  Well, that works great for a little while, but eventually the goats need handling and containing - they can't be tethered out 24/7.  That's when the trouble started.  They were mostly unhandled, and of course ran from me in terror.... I eventually sold them to a home with experience handling goats.  End of experiment.

Then came turkeys.  Tried them, thinking I'd love to raise some for the freezer.  Well the Tom had other ideas and he scared the crap out of me...I started walking around always looking over my shoulder, waiting for that feather rattle to come scooting up behind me.... Sold that trio too.

Then came Muscovy ducks.  LOVED them!  But just what does one do with all those offspring?!?  I tried and tried to find someone to process them, with somewhat disasterous results two times...and that was the end of those.

So now I know my limit and play within it.  No more horses, just me, my dogs and laying flock, and cats to keep the mice down.   

Good luck to you as you 'try on' the different possible combinations of elements that will eventually settle out to form your dream farm.  It took me a few years, and it's always a working document, but it is at a place that really works for me now.  I hope the same for you.  You just have to give it time and not get too discouraged.  Setbacks will happen, but they're all going to serve to help you make more informed decisions. Don't give up on your dream of owning and living off your farm.  You can, and you will, if you want to.  It just may not look like it does in your current daydreams.  Hugs to you and Moose.  I hope he's not hurt too much.

lanaire-ranching wrote:

for me-- no.  BUT. and this is a huge but.   I was a city kid. a horribly miserable one.  and it wasnt until the day I moved out to Alberta to be with Mister (well, soon to be mister at that point!) did I realize WHY I was so damn unhappy in the city.  because without me even knowing it, growing up around it... somewhere deep in my soul, a past life-- I was a country woman.  I had to have been.  I literally drop down here, and dug in like I had been here all my life.  and I have bloomed.  I can honestly say I have bloomed to be the person I knew just KNEW I could always be.  and the city be damned.  it has its place, but not in my heart.  this... home, this is in my heart.  and there are days that I seem to never stop working, and dammit I am mad about it... but then I think that these are the important life lessons that my girls need to grow up with.  and I wouldnt want to raise them anywhere else, and for it and my hard work, I can see them blooming way long before I ever got the chance to and it makes my heart happier than it could ever be!   (Oooo look at me getting all sentimental!!!  ahaha)

This brought tears to my eyes, especially talking about your daughters. I tried so hard to give this kind of life to my kids, and did for short spurts, but its not an easy thing to do once you are a single mom. It must have been enough, though, because my kids turned out AWESOME!

My parents had a 10 acre hobby farm when I was 5 until they split when I was 7.  It was the absolute best period of my life.  We had a few steers, pigs, chickens and ducks.  The neighbours had horses, that I would ride bareback every chance I could. I remember dad haying oat hay that was taller than me.  I would get lost walking through that field.  We had tons of fruit trees, too, and I still prefer pears and plums a little on the green side.  Peaches have to gush when you bite into them, though! Have been trying to get back to that my whole life, and no matter how mad current hubby may make me at times, he has made it possible for me to have the life I want, and I love him for that.

Dad came from a Manitoba grain farming family, but his parents moved him to BC when he was about 6, so no more farming after that, except that stint when I was small. My mom's mom used to talk about the amazing gardens her father grew on a lot in New Westminster. Mom always had a small veggie garden and a transparent apple tree, but wasn't much of a green thumb.  Dad always has his tomatoes and roses. He loves when hubby cleans out a building that has been a grow-op and brings dad the 'magic dirt' for his tomatoes. So, I guess I have an 'almost' farming back-ground, but I learn quick!

This is a lovely thread and I am enjoying it thoroughly.

Coopslave's response struck a chord with me, about having the proper set up or not.

When Hub and I moved onto this place 21 years ago, there was no water, no power, no driveway, nothing. It was a slab of impenetrable bush perched on bedrock. With an ancient bulldozer and dynamite we did what we could. Okay, WE didn't do the dynamite work, its' not like they'll just sell you a case of the stuff at the hardware store, although I really hoped they would since I had visions of lighting a stick, hurling it, plugging my ears and waiting to see what happened. We cleared and piled and stumped and burned and good Gordon what a lot of work! Before we could build a septic field we had to clear the septic field. By the time the house was done we dropped our tools in exhaustion and then one of us had a baby. (I'm not naming names)

Everything that happened after that was an afterthought, a response to some undertaking that we got into without much warning. Like horses. The kid wants horses? Quick, buy the kid a motorbike and pray. Nope, now the kid rides dirt bikes AND horses. We bought a horse before we had fencing! Dropped it at the neighbour's under cover of darkness. Stealing horses is a problem, randomly seeding them around the neighbourhood is also a problem. So we built fences like crazy  and then for the next 5 years ran a garden hose from house to horse pen and fought with it all winter, every winter, because it froze all the time.

Knowing that this piece of land will NEVER allow for an increase in farming helps keep us real. Cattle? Will never happen. Pigs? Ha ha ha! Goats or sheep? THe coyotes and bears would love it. Our facilities will never be good, so we aim for 'good enough'. Frozen water is no good at all. Now we have a hydrant that doesn't freeze, but our winter water system is still sort of Micky Mouse, but it works well enough and that is good enough for us. No one goes without water. Good enough.

Yes, I carry water to my birds all winter. Just like Coopslave said, we have extension cords and hoses running on the ground, have for years. It's not prefect, but it's good enough. It mostly works. When something doesn't work well enough, we tweak it if we can or admit defeat. BUt we know that the base element we have to work with will never be the perfect set up, the land and space does not allow it. We are thus forced to be very realistic and know that our physical situation limits our farming. This is why I have been looking at land for YEARS and Hub refuses to budge off this place.

Sweetened, I think the perfect set up takes a legion of workers and a huge lottery win. Or you plug away at it slowly for years, dealing with the frustration of 'not good enough' in the meantime. I still have visions of the perfect chicken set up in my head, but unless I pack my bags and leave this property, I will never have it. So I make what I have work, we tweak what we can and call it quits when it's obvious that we simply cannot provide what's necessary. Find that balance, stay in the dressing room until your find that outfit that maybe isn't perfect, but looks pretty good and doesn't pinch your gut when you sit down. Good enough.

This sort of reminds me of a friend I went to school with.

When he got married someone asked him when they were going to start having kids. 

He replied,"We're going to wait until we can afford them."

His mother laughed, "GORDON!  You'll never have kids if you wait until you can afford them!"

Hillbilly wrote:I must admit, farming was in the family, but I never witnessed any of it. My grandfather, at the age of fiteen farmed to feed his 5 brothers and mother. he He took care of them all. My father, used to plough the fields with 2 belgians in Whonnock. I think only Cynthia might know where Whonnock is. This was all long before my time, but maybe , its in my blood to live on acreage, and grow things and have animals. Or maybe I'm just as delusional as the rest of you.
And Uno, who wonders who's a boy, and what the boy was wondering, I am a wondering boy on the inside. Wondering about you...regularly...

Whonnock, yep, having lived in Maple Ridge for about 28 years, I know Whonnock well. We actually, back when we were on the coast, lived on the Whonnock border. Whonnock lake was 5 minutes down Dewdney Trunk Road from us. We had a Whonnock phone exchange, 462 was the first few digits. It was cool, because having the 2 in the number allowed us to call Mission free. Now not even 2 minutes down the road, at the point where 256St and Dewdney Trunk meet, the exchange went to 467 or 466, and that was long distance to Mission. One of my Sisters lived in Mission, so that was nice, smiling.

Hillbilly, I wonder when your Father stopped using the belgians for landwork. I remember in the Pitt Polder there was a fellow that worked his fields with a team of horses, they were belgian crosses I think, and there was 4, but that was in Pitt Polder. Small world this is...have a beautiful day, CynthiaM.

Sweetened, I just read something

"dont compare your chapter one to someone's chapter twenty"


dude.  that really resonated with me!!   I know *hands up* that I am a bad one for always comparing what I am doing (or at the moment what is profoundly going wrong for me) and comparing it to someone who is doing so well, got the kinks ironed out, etc.

anyhow, I just thought this applied to a lot of different situations, and figured I would share!

Great point, Lanaire.

Love that Lanaire!  Going to use it!

What a great read. Having been working my tail off lately at my money paying job and haven't had a lot of time to read what you are all up too. I am starting a week of holidays to work at my soul paying job. I have more chicken coops to build. I am often amazed to find myself here "being a farmer" as I started out to be a sports journalist. I worked in radio for a while, made some documentaries and somehow ended up working in the social service field with a ten acre farm. If you had asked me when I was 18 if this is where I would be in 35 years I would have looked at you like you were crazy. I am way too lazy to be a farmer. I was raised in a  small city and hated helping with the garden at home. I love to hunt and fish but that doesn't have to lead to farming. I was in my thirties when I had my own kids and had worked with kids long enough to know that raising kids in the city robs them of so many things. So we went looking for land. We had no money and no knowledge of life in the boonies. But I love to research and learn new things so it was a wonderful challenge. Having to work somewhere else for a living makes it harder. Some days it helps me appreciate what I have a lot more, other days it is a burden to come home exhausted, discouraged by the days events and have to deal with crisis at home, like no water, animals escaping or dying, neighbours mad at you for something they did. But I also know that is the process of life. We so often get into thinking a successful life is a painting, static and unmoving. Life is the experiences that go into the painting and the last stroke is not laid until the last breath is taken. That is what is great about farming, it is always changing, reminding me I am only part of something bigger, not in charge. My job is to deal with how I react to things, good bad or indifferent. I work hard to set myself up to succeed but often my hard work is unrewarded but only in the way I thought the reward should look. Often when I find the reward as it was meant to be it makes wonderful sense. I think of myself as a realist, I try to see things as they are not as I magically hope they would be. By doing this I have learned that life is meant to be lived small, and it is enjoying the endless supply of small things that enables to me deal with the odd major disaster. There are a lot more small things than big things is this world. We are in a time or tremendous change and I think the people that will weather the storms best will come from the farms. The big advantage of living on a farm is I get to see the full the cycle of life all the time, beginning, middle and end. That works for me. Now if I could only get flat land and win the lotto.

Just want to say I really enjoyed reading through this thread and everyone’s responses. It’s also made me rethink getting into certain critters too... some because I don’t have the time and money to built proper facilities, fences, etc, presently. Others because the idea is likely a good bit sweeter than the reality would be for me. Not all people and animals are compatible.

The most important thing in my mind is to keep things manageable. Find what doesn't work for you, remove that from your life and move on. 

^Stellar advise that. And why I keep my chicken farming at a hobby level. It’s what works for me. Also why I no longer keep waterfowl...
 
Best of luck with all your endeavors Sweetened.

I apologize for my delay on getting back to this thread. I have read it over (a few times really) and I hope I don't miss anything when I'm responding. My internet is super flaky this time of year and so I hate typing up a reply and losing it when it doesn't process. I say to myself "Copy-paste" every time and I never do.

My garden, some of it anyway, is persevering, though I doubt my beans will be there when I get home. Part of the problem with container gardening is if the goats aren't ripping them up, the cats are. I discovered it's the little ones paving the way to destroying my garden and that the big ones haven't really tried to get back in on their own. I've tried yelling and sticks, throwing and banging on things, and none of it has worked at all. Once we get this truck thing settled and a new one bought, if there's enough money it has been decided the goats will get a fence. Then we will start hauling pallets and my garden will get a fence and then the same for next years gardens which I'm determined to have in place for their use.

My Lettuce, spinach and kale have all come back from their goat apocalypse and are producing less bitter leaves than before. I had a spinach salad from my garden that grew back from the bring after the above mentioned goatastrophe. My tomatoes. peas, beans and beats aren't so hardy, and my potatoes have already gone to flower after being mauled by devil-horned ruminants, so there's no telling there.

I'm with Fowler on this one: if you wait until you're set to have kids, you won't have them. So far, diving in head long worked for me, until the goats learned to disrespect fences thanks to a bitter winter. It wasn't until then that I ever had an issue with them. Remarkably, it isn't so much that they're loose, rather they are ravenous for my garden as well as the feed in the chicken feeders. That's what is absolutely killing my mental state right now.

It is certainly interesting the backgrounds people come from and where farming came into their lives. I think, like farmchiq, I'm much of mindset of trying things. Livestock is excellent in that, if it doesn't work out, they can be butchered or sold; determining which way will best 'break you even' for your troubles is the interestingly odd part.

I liked Lanaire's chapter quote, about comparing peoples locations in live to yours at the same point. I've often said something similar to people, especially after hearing something along the lines of "I shouldn't feel this way, so many people have it worse." I like to point out that someone can be raised in a living environment that you would just find an absolute tragedy, but they, on the other hand, may look at you and your crumbled relationships and feel just as much pitty. Just because there's someone 'worse off' doesn't make your place any less bad or difficult in your own circumstances, nor does it lessen the blow caused to you because there are starving children in the world.

Unfortunately, Cynthia, Moose can attest to you that I do throw my hands up in defeat, and when I am done with something, I am most definitely done. It's a part of my personality that I absolutely hate but have been unable to change, especially when I get into the mental state I've been in.

In retrospect, I suppose I've just had a very lucky first couple years. This year, I think due to the mice in the coop, I've suffered extensive chick losses and that's been a real heart breaker. Reaching into the duck pen and picking them up from around the coop has just been terrible. I prefer broodies raising their own, they seem to have less health issues, but even the one broody hatch didn't go so well this year as she either wasn't a good Mom or whatever has killed the others killed hers as well. I wonder if they aren't pecking at the droppings. On Saturday, there was a fox in the coop that killed a guinea. Though the guinea's death was likely partly attributed to one of the dogs playfully trying to finish her off as Lola and the other puppies tried to catch the fox, it's another sad loss to the farm. Hopefully the dozen guinea eggs I have the dark cornish on will do well and replace and grow the numbers for us this year. Also, hopefully the turkey eggs due this week follow through and hatch some delightful bourbon's to a surprised and potentially mortified chicken hen.

On the up side, I've been watching a chick grow up who I wonder about. I think it may be a hybrid, as the others in its hatch don't look anything like it. It's pure white, Chantecler like in legs and growth, however is not getting in very much head feathering. It, in fact, looks like a young turkey, aside from the fact that, at the time of the hatch, there was no turkey's. I'm wondering if it's not, then, a guinea Chantecler hybrid. I've never seen a guinea be bred yet, so I have no idea if it could have been, though there were a few smaller eggs thrown into the incubator that may or may not have been guinea (I only recently learned to recognize them). It is moments like these that's why I do this. Sometimes it's just hard to see the forest for the trees, as they say.

I'm glad others can relate, and I'm thankful to everyone who shared here and continues to do so.