Raising Pigs and Cattle, review of first 3 years

[Farrier1987]

Yeah Happy, I know. If you look at the menu, I did suggest a second entre for just such as you, and Swiss steak is a good one for days like that. Holds well til the timing is right for the bunch to eat. Lots of people make lots of noise about eating them or not eating them. My own thinking is eat if you want, if not have some Swiss Steak or such and carry on.

And the deal was that all the neighbors helped, and next week it would be your turn to help at their place and so on. The good recollections are not about just one thing, but the visiting and working and joking and eating and knowing everyone pitched in as required. That's what is the wonderful part. Our world in general is losing those experiences, and I think we are poorer for it, but maybe the next generations will have their own memories of something else.

[Killerbunny]

Child protection would have fits now but when I visited the farm my cousins and I would make houses in the hay loft with tunnels through to them! On one occasion we met an angry Mama cat!

[Happy]

Child protection would have fits now but when I visited the farm my cousins and I would make houses in the hay loft with tunnels through to them! On one occasion we met an angry Mama cat!

KB that describes my childhood to a tee. I never had more fun than I did in the barn. Spying on the suddenly skinny barn cat to try to find her newborn litter, building forts, even walking the beams when the loft was empty and climbing the old metal ladder inside the empty silo to scare my mom by popping out the top of it to wave at her in the garden lol. I pity kids that never experience that.

[Farrier1987]

Me too. Fun in the barn. But I promised I would never tell.

[G Williams]

What a coincidence. Me too!

[Brebis]

Yes, have very fond memories of the same!
Did break my ankle jumping off the mow though but healed up and still had more fun in the barn...

[Dominion Link]

A good buddy of mine made a generalization about the state of health of livestock. He was a third generation cattle farmer on the family farm near Port Perry and had been dealing with a sick cow for several weeks. He was growing frustrated at the difficulty with getting the cow sorted and made the observation that cows and horses can have lingering illness that may take weeks or months to resolve or succumb to, whereas, generally speaking, poultry, sheep and pigs tended to come in two states of health- alive or dead.

[scottishpet]

Love this post, there is so much useful information to those of us new to homesteading. The “movement” if you will, often romanticizes the experience and the effort. But when sh*t happens was it still worth it? So glad to read that it was. 30 years ago I worked in Manitoba as a large animal vet tech. Which is not a great ringing endorsement for homesteading, as much of what I did back then I want nothing to do with now. Making the right choices for a small farm is a vastly different enterprise than earning a living as a dairy farmer and dealing with the milk marketing boards and quotas. So while I know that I am not at all squeamish to stuff my hand up the backside of a cow, the rest of it is not necessarily transferable or applicable. I love gleaning the nuggets of wisdom given by those who are dealing with real life daily! Thanks guys for sharing the “real”!