Savage

 Farming is savage.  It is not for the faint of heart.  I have seen and experienced things that I'll never forget and I also will never share.  Not just the deaths, but the heartbreak.  Mercy killings that came too late. Injury and illness that pushed me to the edge of losing my sanity.  It's rain that won't come, or rain that won't stop. It's watching the nest boxes for that first egg day after day only to realize a snakes been eating them. It's watching that first ripe tomato get eaten by a rabbit (or the chickens).  It's rubbing a newborn goat hoping for eyes to flutter open.  It's your animals aging, and slowly, becoming a shadow of who they were.  It's mastitis, and spilled milk. Grotesque injuries that you know will not heal.  It's breaking ice with frozen fingers, and hoping it warms up so there won't be any frostbite.  It's getting the wrong screw, then dropping it, then having to trudge back to find another.  It's splinters, knocking your head on that low piece of wood, and tripping over animals that will not move.  It's grief. It's sadness. It's hard.  Pinterest, and facebook, and your local influencer will wear frilly dresses, with clean hands, and sprinkle fancy feed out for their flock. While you slip and slide in mud hoping the price of feed doesn't rise.  It isn't clean, or sterile, and you'll look at poop and butts a lot.  It isn't romantic, and it isn't simple.  It may be simple in concept, "I'll get goats for milk", but now you have to raise it, feed it, breed it, milk it, realize you have to train it to be milked, get warm sticky milk spilled all over you every day until both you and the goat figure it out.  Then you'll reach peak lactation and she will get mastitis or an injury or she will die and leave you bereft.  That is farming.

So why do I do it?  Because of this.

Because of these moments.

Because of the miracles I get to witness.  For every death there is birth. For every tragedy there is a miracle. For every dark day there is sun.  There is love. This is love. And although some days or some seasons eat me up, I remember moments like these.

And they keep me coming back.

I’m trying to write this blog without pretending things are easier or prettier than they are. I explain more about that choice in my first post, for anyone who wants to read it.