by Sarah Latimer, Survival Blog:
THE URGENT DRIVES OUT THE MERELY IMPORTANT ON A HOMESTEAD
Maintenance is of critical importance. If you do not maintain the fencing, for example, you may find yourself chasing animals down a country road. That seems to happen often around these here parts. Someone’s horses or cows are always out. Dogs abound. I have a neighbor who brings their pregnant cows to the adjacent acreage to calve. I only had to track my neighbors down once to let them know a cow was out. The cow was peacefully grazing in the graveyard nearby! They have since repaired the fencing.
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Thankfully, there are no nearby bulls that want to bother my dairy girls. I’ve only had to chase pigs once down the road and that was because a gate was left open by some hired help. I had to have a couple of new fences put in and a couple of new gates. In a Spring storm, a large tree fell down next to my bigger barn and thankfully not on top of that barn. I would’ve cried a river if the barn roof had caved in. I still need to get a tree trimmer out here to clear out that area. Those trees provide wonderful shade but some are old and should be cut down. I have a long, gravel, driveway. After a few storms with torrential rains, my driveway pretty much washed out and now it’s filled with ruts. A couple of storms last Spring ripped up the ground cover in my garden, twice. Thankfully, no tornadoes touched down here, but did in a nearby town and the damage was horrible. No matter where you live, weather is a big deal and it will determine your workload and budget.
On a homestead, it’s not just the house maintenance that has to be kept up with. It’s the entire farm – fences, gates, roads, buildings. Think about it. So when you go shopping for that homestead, look at the land and buildings with a very critical eye.
I don’t consider cleaning up after pooping animals maintenance. LOL. I consider it a daily chore. Wherever there are animals, there is manure. If you rotationally graze the animals, as I try to do, and don’t keep them on a “dry lot” or stalled, the land pretty much heals itself. The manure acts as a fertilizer. But, there are times when the animals must be stalled or contained. You have to keep on top of those situations or your animals’ health will suffer. Animals aren’t meant to lay in their own piles – not even pigs. If you’ve ever shoveled out a barn by hand you come to understand why tractors are nice to have. I do not have one. If you have a lot of land, you have to mow, weed whack, cut down trees, and clear the land on a regular basis. After over two years on this land, I have discovered what types of things need to be done, and when, and I hire out the heavy work a few times a year. Estimate your costs for large equipment – can you afford that? Before buying that tractor, see if hiring out the work is cheaper in the long run. It might be.
There are SHTF moments on a farm. And when those moments arise, everything gets dropped to attend to the emergency. I have not had any catastrophic emergencies on the farm, but a few close calls with the dairy cows. When you live in the country it can be difficult to get a vet out to your farm, so you learn and learn quick. I have a small medical kit for animals that needs resupply before winter. Especially since I will have a winter calf and piglets born here. I have eyes on every single animal every day. I have learned to assess their status by just observing. You can’t just throw all the animals out into a field and hope for the best. You must spend time with them, look them over nose to tail – are they limping, eating, pooping, looking lethargic, clear-eyed, getting thin or too fat, runny nose, feel too warm? It’s almost like keeping watch over children. I have learned to check on every animal every day by incorporating it into daily chore time, and often during a “last check” in the evening walkabout. I know now what normal farm sounds are. Is that cow bawling because she’s in heat or is she stuck? That kind of thing. My dogs are my partners here. Their hearing is so good that they too have learned what a normal sound is and alert when something is not right. God bless the farm dogs.
I plan everything out, but the animals do not read the memos.
PLANNING AND QUICK THINKING
As a SHTF example, although not devastating, it required quick thinking and actions. I had purchased a breeding group of pigs, after purchasing two feeder pigs that I liked very much. For the breeding group, I was told that the sows were pregnant and would birth on such and such a date. As I was out doing chores, I noticed that one sow was definitely not bred since she and the boar had a thing going on. I wrote that date down since I’m sure she is bred now. I also noticed that the other sow had slowed down quite a bit, taking extra naps, and was developing a large udder, a month in advance of her supposed due date. Oh man, I wasn’t ready for piglets yet! My steer was scheduled to be picked up for his butcher date, on the same day I noticed the sow’s condition. And to top it off, the boar and his girlfriend had leaned so hard against a wall of their shelter that the whole thing was about to collapse. Think, think, think… Which thing do I fix first???
Well, getting a sow who might birth very soon into her “birthing suite” was the first priority. Thankfully, she knows her name and will follow me anywhere with promise of a treat. It’s not quite that simple though. I had to clean out a barn stall, lay down fresh bedding, and lots of it so she could nest, bring in a 30 gallon water trough, some fresh hay, a feed pan, strung out hundreds of feet of hoses to the barn. Then I moved her. But that was the stall I was going to corral my steer into so it was easy for him to be picked up. Fortunately, I had another stall cleaned out and prepared for one of my dairy girls who is due to calve this winter. (Note: Prepare everything in advance). So, the steer was coaxed into that stall with a grain treat, some fresh hay, and clean water. My neighbors, who are wonderful people, picked him up in their trailer since they also had some steers going to the processor on the same day. But, oh wait… I looked at the weather forecast and we were due to have below freezing temperatures (In October!). A reading of 25 F degrees in October just doesn’t happen here. It was actually 22 degrees on November 2nd.
THINK, THINK, THINK…
To make a long story short, I have no electricity or water in my larger barn, so a hard freeze wrecks the plan of having a sow in that barn. All the water hoses that are strung out to that barn will freeze. And, the sow dumped her entire water trough over her first night in the barn. I quickly refilled her trough before the freeze. After the steer was picked up, I started on the shed barn that is closer to the house and closer to water. The cats and kittens were moved to another area, the shed barn had to be cleaned out, fresh bedding, hay, water trough, feed pan, electric fencing set up for her grazing area. All this had to be done before the storm arrived and temperatures dropped. Maybe I sound over dramatic, but that’s just too much work in a 24 hour period – at least for me. But I got it done anyway! And that, my friends, is why I look like something the cat dragged in. LOL.
