Sometimes people romanticize the farm life and they have visions of pretty little hen houses with window boxs full of pansys and petunias, a well behaved rooster standing on the pretty picket fence lined with roses crowing every morning to wake them up, cows grazing in the fields ever so quietly, goats running and jumping in the wild flowers, pigs that look and smell like wilbur from Charlottes web, ducks that just swim innocently in the pond and rabbits that just hop around in the grass doing their cute,fuzzy bunny thing, a garden that is worthy of the front page of better homes and gardens, children willing and happily helping with farm chores, dad out on the John Deere plowing fields or baling hay, while you are in the well organized, show room worthy kitchen cooking meals from the "Fanicful Pioneer Woman, Ree Dummond"...eerrrrrrrrrrttttt...fast forward to the real world please....
Hen houses need not be pretty they need to be functionable, most do not have pretty little flower boxes attached and trust me when I say if you are living a true self reliant homestead life, there is no time for flower boxes...Roosters crow all hours of the day not just at dawn and most are not well behaved and will be lurking somewhere behind you waiting for you to bend over and give him a great target to show you who is the 'cock of the walk'...
Picket fencing is typically not on the top 'o the list for fencing on a farm...usually barbed wire, electric fencing, and field fencing trump the little white picket fence....
Cows are prime examples of creatures that believe the grass is always greener on the other side..they can have 20 acres to graze alone yet still feel like there is something better just over the fence line and they are not the smartest of Gods creatures, they can find a way out of the fence but never find that way back in...go figure...Cows are not always quiet...if they are accustomed to being called from pasture with feed at 6 p.m. at 5:30 they will begin the ritual of mooing loudly enough to wake the dead, goats are 'me-too' creatures they must chime in with their "maaaaaa"..
Goats...*sigh*...they are sometimes my worst nightmare....while cute with all their goat antics they can be a huge pain in the rear-end...they are escape artist, where they can get their heads, they can get their bodies when they are little...they love to roam and are never quite content to just stay in one place...they are stubborn and bucks can be really cantakerous...I have seen Farm man many a time body slam a buck that has 'rared up' as he went into the pasture...forget the running and jumping in the wild flowers...goat eat wild flowers and any flower they can get to...lol...if you are a skirt/dress wearer little goats also like to stick their heads under your skirt and then they freak out cause they can't see the 'world' and begin thrashing their heads like mad trying to get out and you are gyrating around looking like someone that is being tazed..hands waving madly in the air, stumbling around like a drunk person all the while trying to stay in an upright position..thank God I live off the beaten path with no neighbors that can see this...This happened to me just this morning which is where the inspiration for this entry origninated... :0)
Pigs, like wilbur....not happenin'...pigs stink and will root under fencing, they are a booger to catch...ask me how I know....most do not bathe their pigs...while they can be friendly some can be rather mean and one can get hurt real quick by a big ol' bore...pigs are good for eatin'....yes, I know you can tame them down and show them...but I am talkin' self-reliant farmin here..
Rabbits...while generally easy to take care of, if you are a farm in the south it gets hotter than a 2 dol
lar pistol...rabbits do not do so well and need lots of care to stay cool and survive...Ducks...ducks like to swim in any water they can find, including but not limited to the dogs water dish, the goat trough, the stock tank and the chicken waterer...inspite of the fact they have a 1/2 acre pond...
Gardens...I have yet to have a garden worthy of better homes and gardens and have gardening well over 20 years...again in the south it get hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch..and gardens need lots and lots of work to thrive....
Children helping...LOL...even the most well behaved, compliant children get tired of going into the heat/cold to take care of critters and it becomes a battle of wills to get them to help..by the time its all done you have heard everything from "your a slave driver" to "this is child abuse"...and your thinking of some story you can relay to them from your childhood about "you don't what what child abuse is" or "When I was a child"
Your man in the field on a johne deere...he might very well be on a johne deere but he ain't the marlboro man all well groomed and smelling of some manly cologne...more like 'essense of prespiration' and you instruct him to the shower before giving you that big hug or kiss...
And this isn't even mentioning the critters that get sick and you spend days nursing a sick goat kid only to have spent 100's of dollars on meds and vet bills onl
y to have it die...or the chicks that are so cute and doing good to all of a sudden begin dropping like flies...or the pregnant doe(goat) that dies during birth and you are left bottle feeding triplets...Or when there is 3 feet or more snow on the ground and temp is subzero and you have a cow down or a goat down or the chickens get pneumonia...
And if you are still having visions of the "Pioneer Woman" dancing in your head...get over it...that ain't real livin' folks...After a hard day on a self-reliant farm you will feel very grateful for a bowl of beans, cornbread and some fried green maters and yellow squash from the garden...
