HOMEGROWN Life: Why Homesteaders Do What We Do

Reader Contribution by Farm Aid And Homegrown.Org
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This post originally appeared on HOMEGROWN.org.

Sometimes, as I’m trudging down to the goat barn in the dark to carry out my twice-daily milking chore, wet from the rain and mud, I have to wonder why the hell I am doing this. Why the hell am I working full time during the week and spending all of my free time doing chores? Doing chores in the dark, in the rain, and perpetually muddy. I plant stuff on the weekends but have no idea until the following weekend if anything has germinated. Worse yet, I don’t know if I’ve successfully kept the slugs and snails at bay or whether everything has been destroyed.

This time of year, I always question this lifestyle. The weekends are the only time I get to see the goats, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, and garden during daylight hours. So all the big chores get crammed into the weekends. It seems that we work just so we can work some more.

A side effect of having animals? Urine, feces, and vomit no longer faze me. Hard work and lack of sleep are the rule rather than the exception. Stick my hand in chicken shit? No problem. Step barefoot in cat puke conveniently deposited right outside the bedroom door in the middle of the night? That’s life. Goat feed in our bed? Yep. Being the only person at the Halloween store with real blood on her boots? It’s happened. Medicating a goat every two hours for two days? Check.

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