Struggles With Failure

If you have been living life for any matter of time, you have probably failed at something. It’s a part of life that really never gets easier, but it’s part of growing and becoming better. On the homestead, struggles with failure can be even harder and maybe more discouraging. When animals die or gardens fail, it’s hard to want to get back in the game. But I think that once we overcome the failure, we can look back at the growth we’ve had. And the education that comes from failure is more valuable than any knowledge gleaned from a book.

Struggles With Failure On The Farm

2023 has been a hell of a year for us on Steel Raven Farms, both good and bad. We had a strong breeding year and the girls gave us a fair amount of milk. The kitchen garden was installed and became my refuge. Jared built the greenhouse, though it’s not quite finished yet. But the bad things? Those were some doozies.

Failure In The Big Garden

We started 2023 with about 10,000 sq ft of garden space in the big garden. My visions were huge! I imagined row after row of tomatoes, peppers and squash. Perfect walkways that led to a sitting area for us to hang out. Snacking on green beans and peas that grew in abundance. Losing melons to the foliage, only to find them at the perfect ripeness to enjoy as an after dinner treat….

That’s not what I got… At all.

Due to some health issues that started right at planting time, I ended up not getting the gardens planted the way I had envisioned, really I only planted about 25% of what I had planned. Because of soil compaction, our pepper crop suffered tremendously. Thanks to chickens, we lost our entire tomato crop and subsequent replantings. The potatoes didn’t have a chance, either. That entire 10,000 sq ft, grew one edible tomato that rotted on the window sill.

But that kitchen garden produced for us!

Failure With The Chicks

January through March was one of the wettest and coldest we’ve had. We had bought 100 meat birds, 25 turkey poults, and about 60 new laying chicks. We brooded the chicks in the shed with three heat lamps and plenty of bedding. Out of the first shipment of chicks 160+, we lost about 75.

Because of the cold and damp conditions, we couldn’t keep the turkeys alive. Every single turkey died. We just couldn’t get their care dialed in. We tried everything and nothing mattered. The vision of a freezer full of meat was gone in the blink of an eye.

The wasted money was nauseating.

Failure With May Kids

There are many things we have learned the hard way on this farm. I tend to be hardheaded and stubborn, but once I learn that lesson the hard way, I never forget it. Every lesson I have learned from the goats, was learned the hard way.

The biggest lesson that I have learned is that we absolutely cannot, ever, breed from December to March. A goat’s gestation is 5ish months or 145-165 days. That means that a breeding date in December is normally born in May. Or a date in March is born in August. On my little slice of heaven, that is a death sentence for goat kids.

Every single kid born after mid May, and has stayed on our property, has died.

I knew that when Choco Taco and Eden were born, I had to get them off my property as soon as possible. I knew that they would be safe on another farm, but for some reason, our parasite problem explodes from June to August. No matter what we do, we cannot stop them. We’ve tried putting down lime or DE, free ranging, medicating, being proactive, etc and it just doesn’t matter.

Every single kid that is born at ANY other time, is perfectly healthy. We’ve got kids that we’ve held back that were born at the end of April and they are completely healthy. Kids that were born in September are totally fine. A kid that is born in May- August, but sent to another farm is just fine too. But once May hits, and the kid stays on this farm, it’s game over.

Overcoming Struggles With Failure

It’s never easy to deal with failure, especially when you are talking about loss of life and money. But those lessons are invaluable when it comes to education and knowledge. You will rarely make the same mistakes again after you have failed spectacularly. But struggling with failure on the homestead is actually a driving force to do better.

Overcoming Failures In The Garden

There is absolutely nothing, short of permanent disability, that will keep my out of my gardens. Even then, I’m sure Jared will still take me out there. There are a ton of things that we can do to overcome the failures in the gardens.

The first is those damn chickens are going to be put in a run. This is not just for their protection, but also my sanity…which will also help their survival rate. The next thing that we are going to do is install better fencing and gates that the goats can’t get through….hopefully.

We also built a greenhouse to place seedlings so that we won’t have issues with Blu trying to destroy them. This will also give us even more space to start more seeds.

Finally, we are going to be building soil like crazy. We are starting with raised beds on the sloped side of the garden and then building “in ground” raised beds. This will allow us to have beds that are in ground but also raised to help build up the soil as much as possible and reduce erosion.

Overcoming Failure With Chicks

This one is probably the easiest. We are not purchasing ANY new chicks this year. We will be purchasing some new ducks and a couple of geese, but no new chickens. The idea is that we want to weed out the chickens that are escape artists first. Then once we have figured out who will actually stay in the run, we will get new chicks that will hopefully learn from the older chickens.

We are also hoping that the new chicks will “bond” with the ducks and geese and not want to leave them. We’ll see.

Our meat chicken order will be place in June, this will reduce the chances of a cold, wet spring taking them out. Also, that will have us butchering in October, which will be much more comfortable for EVERYONE.

Overcoming Failure With Goat Kids

Overcoming failure with goats is never a one time thing. In fact, goats will try to unalive themselves constantly. But in order for our kids to be as healthy as possible, we will never breed for summer kids. The risk is simply too high.

Another thing that has to be mentioned here is communication. 2023 is the first year that it was fully understood WHY I didn’t want the boys in with the girls over winter. I’ve begged and pleaded before, but no one fully understood why it was imperative that the bucks not get put with the does from December to March.

This is fully understood by all parties now.

Others in the family were concerned that the bucks would get too cold if left outside during the winter. It took a lot of convincing (for me too) that they would be just fine in their shack, which is more than enough protection for them in the winter.

Because this is so fully understood, we shouldn’t have to deal with breeding during these months. Now, it could still happen because goats are goats. But it won’t be because we put them in the barn together.

Struggles With Failure

Dealing with failure on the homestead can be heartbreaking. To be honest, homesteading, at first, is trial by fire because so many of us grew up without someone to teach us how to do things. We don’t know how to garden, until we do it. We don’t know how to care for livestock, until we do it.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do is to struggle and fail. Because when we come out the other side? We are stronger, more resilient, and more capable than we ever thought possible.