Posted in Homestead or Bust
Once we made the decision to leave city life and move to rural homesteading life, I've never looked back. But that's not to say that there haven't been roller coaster moments and stretches that have humbled me. What a mild understatement. I've learned all too quickly that I don't have the market cornered on all things homesteady.
- I never imagined myself spending the better part of an afternoon chasing a chicken or an entire flock of chickens trying to get them where they needed to be - when all along if I had just left them alone......they would have gone there all on their own........duh!
- I never thought I would get into a week long battle with a snake who wanted to steal my eggs - not to mention eat my chicks......I learned the hard way why there are so many different kinds of fencing and livestock pen making mesh and more! Yes indeed.
- I learned that no matter how clean and organized one's home can be, field mice love your home as much as you do and regardless of the better mousetrap - there will always be that one mouse the mousetrap doesn't quite "zap" and will drag that trap around in the attic (...at midnight...) for nights and nights and nights.
- Never in my wildest imagination would I have ever dreamed I would sweat (...err, make that perspire - [very long Scarlett "I"].....) during a summer's heatwave in order to build a chicken house and live with three smashed fingers until the project's end.
- And the following winter when a rain and high wind storm was ravaging the very chicken house that we perspired, toiled and smashed fingers over to complete - would I have ever imagined hanging onto its roof to save our chickens and their home? Never.
These are but a few, a mere handful, of the humbling experiences we've had during our first three years here at Jacobs Farm. Trust me - we have many more to come.......we'll be adding honey bees to our mix here come March!
What are some of your most humbling experiences having made the move to life in the country. Please take time to share your trials - good, bad and the funny, too! I often believe it is the humbling joys in life that make this chosen life of simplicity so worth while.
Have a great week!
Harriette
~Waving from the "still" soggy South~
Jacobs Academy: A Dirt Road Education
