Overwhelmed and underpaid

One of the things I've found with this homesteading life is that things don't always go the way you expect them. It's a good thing to be humbled by nature but it doesn't make the lesson any easier.

You see, I'm something of a recovering type-A personality, in that I like to be in control and have things go a certain way. But I also know that's unreasonable (and downright exhausting!) so I'm working at paring down my expectations and instead sitting back and accepting where life takes me. It's a recipe for simplicity and yet I'm finding nothing simple about it.

I knew there would be challenges raising animals here, especially those of the livestock variety (even though Oscar thinks he's a dog, he most certainly is not!) and no matter how many books I read, questions I ask and online forums I visit, the only way to learn is by doing.

I could have made the decision to start the doing after we'd been here for a while. To settle into to farm life first, to get through our first winter solo. But I didn't. Each one of these creatures came into our life for a reason and I made the decision to take them. (Whether it was the "right" is still up for debate.)

The learning started immediately. My first lesson in animal husbandry was that regardless of breed characteristics, each animal has its own unique and set personality. While humans tend to think they can bend nature to their will, to align with their expectations, it's just not the case. And I've got the bruises to prove it.

For example, the donkeys, who were "hired" to act as predator protection for our future herd of sheep and goats, like to terrorize the goat.

We got Oscar as a companion animal (because wethers are supposedly more docile than bucks), but he's taken to headbutting me* when he doesn't get what he wants (I think the donkeys are stressing him out.)

Gallagher came to live on our farm because he needed a forever home, we had an empty stall and I'd always dreamed of owning a horse. What's more, I find spending time with him as good as any therapy. Trouble is, he's fallen in love with Cinderella -- the donkey -- and throws a temper tantrum when he loses sight of her, especially when we put him in his stall. At the age of 18, you'd think he'd have a bit more sense. But he doesn't.

Then there's the aesthetics of the place. When we lived in the city, I used to be conscientious of what our house looked like, inside and out. Beds were always made, dishes clean, floors swept, everything in its place. But on a working farm, I've found I've just had to lower my expectations: there's just too much to do and simply not enough time to do it.

Take the barnyard, for example. The heavy snow is now thawing, and overnight everything has turned into a soggy, sloppy mess. No matter how much shoveling of poop and laying of straw I do, it's just not pretty. Let's just say our farm will never grace the cover of Harrowsmith Country Living.

Then there are the times when I find it hard to draw the line between being a responsible caretaker and being overwhelmed by barn chores. Regardless of how dead tired I am, how late I was up the night before or how much work I should be doing, there are creatures that depend on me to feed, water and keep them clean (that's in addition to my own two creatures who need me, but that's a whole other posting on "mummy guilt"!)

To be honest, I have really down moments when I think, "What the hell are we doing?", "We have no right to be here," "What do we know about anything?" and "I've gotten us in over our heads."

I can almost here people telling me, "I told you so" and "You rushed into things" and "Didn't you see this coming?" Perhaps.

But then I remind myself why we came here and what we're trying to get away from. Modern life is so often one of ease and convenience. Too tired to cook? Then pop a frozen dinner in the microwave. Preservatives and excess packaging, be damned!

And yet, this kind of work isn't convenient, it isn't glamorous and it's far from easy. Truth be told, it's exhausting. It's stressful feeling out of control and not knowing what we're doing 100% (or even 50%) of the time. But every day we're learning something new and each lesson, good or bad, is taking us one step closer to figuring out how to make this all work for us.

And every night, under a black sky filled with zillions of stars, I'm learning how to just look at our barn filled with so much life and living and think, "I wonder what tomorrow will bring?"

* Note to self: Goats are dehorned for a good reason.