Endurance
The greatest tool in the new or aspiring homesteader’s shed is an awareness that the journey on which they’re about to embark is anything but an easy one.
It’s not all abundant harvest baskets & bowls of freshly churned butter. It’s not all beautifully scored & golden-crusted sourdough loaves, misty sunrises, and rainbow-colored eggs. Though it may have those things from time to time, the road you’ve chosen to travel will be more mud and manure and death than you’d like to imagine in your fresh optimism right now.
Our homestead has had the typical ups and downs, bad crops followed good, predators tormented our flocks, fruit trees died, were replanted and they died again. We just ended a six-year streak of not being able to raise a single turkey.
But no facet of our homestead has been as challenging - or as rewarding - as owning a family cow.
The “ideal” dual-purpose family cow was spotted one afternoon while dreaming of butter and browsing on Craigslist. We knew this was our next step but we weren’t quite ready to bring her home. No worries. She was bred but calving was still half a year away. We had plenty of time to get ready for that first foamy pail, right?
Wrong.
We awoke the next morning to find her udder swollen, aching for the relief the calves in the field had given her the day before. She wasn’t dry, nor, as it turns out, was she bred. Very quickly we learned about getting that milk out, breeding her, butchering the bull we had to buy for the aforementioned breeding, processing all the milk, cheesemaking, and the birth & care of a calf all within nine very short months.
So much for plenty of time.
We learned that this “ideal” breed does not, in fact, eat less than a dairy breed. Our pasture wasn’t adequate. Cream was nearly non-existent. In hindsight, she may not have been healthy. (I never once saw her drink water.) With joy over the abundant grass we could provide our girl, we planned a move a couple of months before her third calf born on our farm was to arrive. But the timing didn’t work out and we had to transport her a week before the due date. She calved the next day. And died the following one. Leaving us to unload a house from the moving truck, bury a cow, and learn to hand-raise a calf all in the same day.
Eight years later and we are just now finally realizing our dream of year-round milk and dairy independence with Heidi & Indie who, if managed properly, produce just enough milk & cream to include all of our cheese, butter, and ice cream needs.
I’m a stubborn, bullheaded woman. My husband laughs and shakes his head when he sees me pull out a blanket I knit for the third time because I don’t like the way the pattern worked out. Yes, the whole blanket. I’m not one to quit when I come up against an obstacle. When I’ve set my mind to something, when I believe it’s something God has called me to do, I don’t tend to give up.
More often than not, this is one of my greatest faults but the more temperate among us may have seen those obstacles as a calling to move on.
No, the homesteading journey is not an easy one and you must be prepared for that reality if you want to make your dream of so-called “self-sufficiency” come true.
Is this discouraging? Am I heartless for sharing a truth?
I think not, because I do so with a pure heart in the earnest desire to see you thrive in your new lifestyle. Yes, lifestyle, because this isn’t just about making sure there is wholesome food on the table, though that’s part of it. It’s so much more than overcoming dependencies on outside sources of production.
“Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.”
― Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food
I would add they may conserve humanity.
I believe, in decades to come, we will learn the greatest value to be found in this endeavor is the actual life-living realities in what we do each day. All of the intrinsic sensations built into an agrarian way of life permeate our souls and give our humanity a sweet richness that simply will never, ever be found in an anti-reality-verse.
“The technocracy promises many things. Life isn’t one of them.” 1
Not to confuse the conservation of humanity with the salvation of the soul, but therein lies another rub for should it not be the Christian who reminds the world of the intertwined nature of body and soul while we still have breath? Should it not be the Christian who is ever connected with their God through the physical manifestations of His goodness here on earth? Should it not be the Christian most zealous for maintaining a God-honoring stewardship of soil and the flesh that will one day become soil, as well as the soul? But what a gulf has been created with a modern theology that fragments what God has made one while we’re on earth - so long as we steward the one, we can neglect the other. Big Theology has unwittingly colluded with Big Ag & Big Pharma and relegated our bodies to a cheap commodity. Now Big Tech is here to compete and we’re standing on shifting sand and losing ground.
Perhaps, Christians will rally for the fight but I suspect it will be the agrarians leading the way back to what is real and good and true.
We will remind the world of what it is to be human, to live in connection & harmony with God’s Creation. And, yes, that will involve producing the food that sustains a human body.
So I share that there will be much hardship and toil so you are prepared. Brace yourself for the struggles you will face, the lessons you will learn. That, too, is part of being human. I want you to be ready for all these challenges. The world needs you to be, even if it doesn’t know it yet. Write down what you observe and learn, commit yourself to do better next time, but do not lose heart. Wipe the sweat, bandage the wound, lace the bootstraps tighter, but do not give up. The world will need those of us who “touch grass,” as the youngsters like to say, even more when the facade slips away and the shallow emptiness of what is coming reveals itself. Recognize the false romanticism you see on other’s Instafarms for what it is, do not let it discourage you. Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither were the fragments of their picture-perfect homestead they show, and neither will yours. When you stumble, move forward, when you fall, rise up. Put one foot before the other and do the next thing.
As time goes on, things will get easier. Chores will become routine, your muscles will recall what you ask of them, you’ll recognize signs of disease in your plants earlier, illness in your livestock. You’ll know just why the bread didn’t rise, the butter didn’t come. With time the path will be smoother to walk, if only you keep going. The satisfaction you’ll reap as a result of your perseverance will be immeasurable. And just may plant the seeds that will be the invaluable reclamation of humanity and connection with the earth and its Creator for our posterity.
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
https://www.thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com/post/the-war-against-reality
I was beginning to loose heart. Thank you for the huge shot of encouragement! I loved so so many things in this article, especially the sentence starting with Big Theology!!! The art and the literary quotes, it is all so rich. Beautifully and Eloquently done! I’ll be reading this again and again!!