Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Lessons learned this year,

  I have been thinking about the lessons I have learned about homesteading since we bought this place almost two years ago. Some were very subtle, others hit you right between the eyes letting you know what you did was a dumb idea!
 1. Labradors do not belong on homesteads that have chickens! We had to find a home for our chocolate
lab Hershey because she liked our chickens as much as we do. Labs are wonderful dogs but it is their nature to hunt birds and small animals.
2. Plant a garden 3 times more as you think you might need, that way you might get at least some of the produce that the bugs don't eat!
3.Homesteading and living in the country is hard work! I did know this really, I just get reminded a lot.
4. Two vehicles are a must,with one of them hopefully being a truck. You will always find something on craigslist or freecycle that you need a truck for, but then again you also find just how much feed, hay or wood you can put in your car when the seats lay down. Note: big goats do not fit in the back of a car!
5. Grass and weeds grow faster than you can mow!
6. During the winter, when you think they will never get the road plowed, walk down and look at the road. It might be that the roads are clear as a bell and it's your long snowed in driveway that is keeping you from getting out. The two winters that we have been here have been the worst in the area, my husband has to stay in town for several days during the worst snows and we now park at the end of the driveway when the weather gets bad.
7.Dogs like to bring you gifts of dead things!
8.It takes 2 to 3 times longer to build something than you think it might.
9.Friends and family don't come to visit very often because they think you live in the boondocks, even though you tell them that you live on a paved road and 30min. isn't that long of a drive. Gas prices might have something to do with it also, :)
10. That no matter how hard homesteading is, it is a wonderful life and you wouldn't change a thing! (ok, maybe more money to get things done faster)

Happy Homesteading and Blessed Be!     

1 comment:

Leeta said...

It's a fourty five minute drive for us, with a screaming toddler. When he stops with the screaming phase it might get easier. But he has started to really hate being in his seat, he even gives me problems just going to his school and back and he knows where we're going and he loves school.