Tough Decisions on the Farmstead

This week we had a bit of a scare with Scar the Goat.

Our Pretty Girl. #ScarTheGoat #farmstead #homestead #milkgoat #missouri #ozarks

A photo posted by Lorella & Chris (@planbeeorchardandfarm) on May 13, 2015 at 11:03am PDT

Like cows, goats are bred for either milk or meat. I want to have milk goats. Correction. I want to have goat's milk. And goat cheese. Especially goat cheese. In June of 2014 I purchased a doe kid with the intention of having her bred so I can milk her.  Scar the Goat is is a sweet little mix of kiko and nubian, so she's a meat/milk cross.
This fall I took her to a friend's farm to hang out with her boyfriend for a couple weeks. I didn't have her vet tested, and wasn't sure whether she was pregnant. We found out that she was when she miscarried earlier this week. A goat's pregnancy is 5 months, so she was mid term. It was quite sad.
We took care of Scar as best we could. I donned medical gloves and pulled the afterbirth and felt inside of her to see whether there was a twin that needed to be pulled. I couldn't tell.
We provided her with water, fresh bedding, and a heat lamp. We gave her vitamin shots and a special feed called Calf Manna. We put Apple Cider Vinegar in her water. Then we watched and waited. And we discussed our options.
Our farm animals are livestock, not pets. The cost of having a vet treat her would easily have cost more than twice what it cost to purchase her. Since Chris has left his city job and moved here full time our budget is extremely tight. We had to decide how much we would be willing to pay to save her life if infection set in or if indeed there was another baby inside her.
Farmers make really hard decisions like this on a daily basis.
I recently was part of a conversation with a farmer who had spent hundreds on a weak calf trying to restore it's health. He said, "I finally decided I couldn't spend anymore and the calf would have to either make it or not."
In both his case, and ours, there were happy endings; his calf lived, and Scar seems to be doing well. I'm still keeping a close eye on her.
Her buddy Timon is also sticking close.

Le goats. Settling in. #goats #countrylife #farmstead #weedeater #midwest #homestead #missouri #farming #farm #nigeriandwarf #goatsofinstagram

A photo posted by Lorella & Chris (@planbeeorchardandfarm) on Jul 26, 2015 at 10:29am PDT

But now I have some more decisions to make. Will I have her bred again? What are the risks of a second miscarriage? Do I need to make any changes to her environment or care? She won't be ready to breed again until fall, so I have some time to research and make a plan, but I certainly don't want to do anything to risk the health of one of our animals.
The loss of an animal is just one example of the types of hardships homesteaders and farmers face every day. Another friend of ours came home to a dead sow with eighteen dead piglets inside her. Not only does this take an emotional toll, especially after one has done his best to care for an animal, it affects the finances of the family as well. Those piglets would have grown up to provide food for his family, and the rest would have been sold and provided income. I don't think I fully understood how hard that would be when I decided to leave city life and be a farmer. We read and watch videos and attend workshops and ask mentors, but there are still times unexpected realities happen.
At Plan Bee Orchard and Farm we aspire to lead a more organic life with close ties to our food and land while providing quality produce and products for our consumers.
Being a small farm and keeping such "close ties" means we feel the pain of loss when we lose an animal, but it also means we celebrate all the more when an animal is saved.
Last year my mom had a calf that "was down". This means the animal is so sick that it can no longer stand. Often times it's impossible to bring an animal back to health after it's down. I had been busy working on our house build and mom was busy caring for my dad, and neither of us realized the calf was malnourished. I worked with the calf every day. I rubbed his muscles. I fed him a special diet. I got car straps under him so we could lift him and make him walk and exercise.
And to end on a happy note, here is his story:

Mom's Jedi Power: Teaching Contentment and Debt Free Principles, while Fighting the Entitlement Attitude on My Homestead

"From now on, the only words you may say when someone provides food for you are 'thank you'!! You will not complain! Do. You. Understand?" I spat out between gritted teeth at my young daughters.

It had happened again. Despite my best intentions at teaching and modeling gratitude, complaining had once again become the norm in our home.

This time, the time that pushed me over the edge of sanity towards a free-fall into the head spinning, flaming eyed beast of a mom, aka: the Dark Side, it was a complaint about which flavor oatmeal I was making for breakfast.

I snapped. 

"I am not required to feed you something different for breakfast every day. In fact, I could feed you the same breakfast, the same lunch, and the same dinner every day, and there is nothing anyone could do about it. I am only required to provide food. I only make something different because I get bored."

We had just read the Little House on the Prairie series, and so I continued, "Do you remember that winter Pa, Ma, Laura and her sisters were so hungry they ate hay? I bet they would have been glad to have  this oatmeal, or any oatmeal for that matter."

Then I went a step further; I took it global. 

"You've seen the pictures from my trip to India, haven't you? Have you seen the one of naked children washing their clothes in the gutter? Why do you suppose they are naked? Probably because they only have one set of clothes. And you feel the need to complain about breakfast?"

We have so much for which we are thankful, and yet, far too often we fall into the trap of being discontent. Whether you are eight, eighty-eight, or somewhere in between, it is all together too easy to have the same attitude as displayed by my child that morning: "I don't like that kind."

Discontentment will cause us to spend more than we should, to complain, and to be unhappy. 

So how do I combat that in myself and in my children?

Here are four things I do in my home that seem to help. 

*Practice Thankfulness and Contentment

I choose to be happy. I choose to be satisfied with what I have. It is a decision I make and strive to model and instill in my girls. We discuss thankfulness.

Each fall whenever we feel thankful we write it down and put it in the thankfulness jar and read them together periodically.

*Earn It

I am an adult. I work for my money. Then I buy what I want. That is how the world works. I don't get handed everything I want just because I want it. The same goes for our children. They work for us and are paid for jobs and have to save up for things they desire. Not only do they get a sense of accomplishment, but they have a better understanding of the value of a dollar.

Thing Two earned this trampoline at age nine. 

At only thirteen she bought her own horse.

*Discuss and Live Debt Free Principles

We don't use credit cards. We pay cash whenever possible. We talk about what it means to buy on credit or take out a loan or use a credit card. We do the math. We make suggestions like, "Why not pay yourself a car payment for a few years and then buy a car with cash instead of being tied to a car payment?" 

*Give

 It is amazing how discontent can be battled with one's own generosity. The Things and I have volunteered collecting food for the less fortunate. They spend time at the local nursing home talking with the elderly and work with the children in our church. We give of our time, money, and possessions. 

Thing One paid for half the trip to Nicaragua herself. Thanks to those of you who donated the rest to make the trip possible! While there she saw true poverty first hand and gained a greater understanding of just how wealthy we in America truly are.

What do you do to fight the entitlement attitude in your home? How are you teaching contentment? 

Perma-huh?

When Chris and I made the decision to leave the city and head to the farm, we only had a vague idea of what that would entail. We knew we wanted to grow and raise more of our own food.  We knew we wanted to do so with more organic and less conventional methods. But that's about it.

Then Chris discovered permaculture, which is a method of sustainable agriculture, derived from two root words: permanent and agriculture. According to wiki, permaculture is an integrated system of design ... that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also economic systems, land access strategies and legal systems for businesses and communities.

The basic tenants of permaculture are care of the earth, care of people, and return of surplus. You can read more about these at this permaculture ethics website, but in a nutshell, it's using the land in a manner that conserves rather than destroys, growing things in a responsible manner so that it is helpful and not harmful to people, and sharing the excess by returning nutrient to the soil and allowing livestock to graze surplus edibles in planted areas. 

Swale and Berm

Some of the practical applications we will include on our property are water catchment, swales and berms, and high density cropping systems. We live in an area that gets approximately 44 inches of rain annually. With the addition of gutters on buildings, tanks, and gravity fed irrigation hoses, we can water our crops with rain water, which will reduce the amount of water we draw from the well, and the amount of elecricity we use. Also, our orchard will be planted in berms with swales uphill of each. This design allows for maximum retention of water around the plants, thus reducing the amount of watering needed overall. High density cropping systems mandate planting other crops between the main crops. For example, in our orchard, we will have fruit trees, and between them, edible bushes, nitrogen fixers, herbs, and cover crops. This results in creating a challenging environment that uses competitive interactions and will increase greatly the suppression of weeds by the desired crop; the benefit to the permaculture farmer is less weeding and more harvesting in the same area through over planting desirables.  Of course, these are just a few examples of the numerous ways in which permaculture is beneficial. 

Many of these principals have been in use around the world for hundreds of years. Permaculture is the study and implementation of these practices. According to Bill Mollison, the father of permaculture,  "Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system."

I am extremely proud of Chris, because in addition to working full time he has completed the Permaculture Designer Certificate course with Geoff Lawton, and is nearly finished with his second, Permaethos under Josiah Wallingford, Jack Spirko, and Nick Ferguson. These consisted of a minimum of 72 hours of instruction time for each course, and many more hours of study and work. 

We look forward to sharing with you the design principals we incorporate into our permaculture farmstead going forward.

Hitch up your wagon!

Before I moved to Missouri, this was how I envisioned homesteading:

When Chris and I decided to leave the Los Angeles area, and move to the country, we had this crazy idea that we would like to support our family by growing and raising most of our own food, and by running agriculture based businesses from our own farm. This idea was inspired by friends of my cousin, whom we had never met, who left SoCal and moved to Colorado and are doing something similar. In so doing, we would be leading a more organic life, with close ties to our food and land, while providing quality produce and products for our consumers.

Turns out, it's a thing. And it has a name:

Homesteading.

The modern day homestead, sometimes called a farmstead, doesn't start out on a wagon at the sound of a gunshot. It starts when one decides to become more self-sufficient, and takes action towards that end. In our case, homesteading is a process. We are not attempting to go completely off grid from day one. While we will have our own well and septic system, we will rely on electricity from the power company at first. We will gradually build our orchard, kitchen garden, market garden, and increase our animal stock.

Our goal is to make fewer trips to town for supplies and to be able to depend on our own resources.

As we build zone by zone, we will keep you updated on the progress of our little homestead. It's an interesting journey from city life to country life. We are transforming the way we think about everything we consume as we try to live more simply. 

Have you made any decisions to become more self sufficient, simplify your life, or have a healthier lifestyle? What changes have you made? What challenges have you faced along the way? What would you like to know more about as we document our progress?