The Hopeful Homesteader

Tag: hobby farm

  • And then there were sheep…

    I am not entirely sure where the idea of needing sheep for the farm really started, all I know is that once I had that idea, I was dead set on it. So much so that I used Penny’s cuteness to my advantage to persuade Brent that we absolutely needed to have them. I didn’t even really care what kind of sheep we got and did very little research into which ones would be ideal for our climate and farm size, I just knew I wanted some. I liked the idea of seeing little lambs running around, even though I am not a big fan of eating lamb and generally only buy it once a year when I am making my annual batch of tourtière meat. Whatever the motivation, I was dead set on getting some sheep and we lucked out that our neighbour down the road happened to be selling some lambs which we put a deposit down at the beginning of April, and we got to pick them up last week. Finally, we had my sheep, although technically they are the girls’ sheep as they were part of their Easter presents. So now, we have Snowy and Fluffy.

    The process of picking them up seemed much simpler than when Brent picked up our calf Buttercup which was about an hour and a half away, all on the highway. This was just going to be a 30 second drive down our dirt road, much simpler. This time around, all four of us came to pick up the new additions. The girls were excited to be getting their sheep but also excited to be going back to our neighbour’s farm. They had been once before to visit the sheep and thought that it was the coolest place. They have donkeys, pigs, sheep, several cows, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and turkeys. When we went to visit the sheep the first time, they had just gotten their chicks in and had piglets as well and the girls were so excited. This time, Penny was initially disappointed that the chicks were no longer small and, in the barn, until she saw that there were 3 calves all under a week old in there instead. Suddenly, she didn’t miss the chicks anymore. We finally tore the girls away from all the other animals and went to get the lambs. I will say that I felt a little sad taking the two lambs away from their moms, especially when I heard the ewes baaing, but as soon as they were given some food they stopped, and I felt less guilty. Brent felt pretty confident about getting the lambs into the trailer as they were only about 25-30lbs, and he had gotten Buttercup in when she was about 85lbs. However, Buttercup was much more docile. When he put the trailer gate down and popped Fluffy in there, she immediately ran out. This led to the funny sight of Brent trying to catch this little ball of fluff. It became apparent that we would need to have the trailer gate closed and pass the lambs to Brent. This also meant that I would have to hold the lamb and pass it to him, something I never thought I would be doing. When I held Fluffy, I just couldn’t get over how soft and fluffy her wool really was! Definitely one of the cooler things I have done since starting the hobby farm.

    Once we got home, it was time to unload the lambs. The problem was, they were still very wary of us. They knew we had just taken them from their usual surroundings, and they were not going to come easily. This of course provided me with another fun visual of Brent crouched down under the tarp of the trailer trying to grab these little lambs. He passed me the lambs one at a time and I brought them gently into the barn. We had locked Buttercup in her outdoor grazing area as I feared she might think the lambs were playmates and she would squish them seeing as she already tries to mount our two golden retrievers. Once they got settled in, we started figuring out what we would do for sleeping arrangements in the barn. When we first got Buttercup, Brent had made a little sleeping stall out of old pallets, and we were still putting her there at night for bed. We concluded that the sheep would now have that area as Buttercup is getting considerably bigger, and she would sleep in the open area of the barn. The additional upside to this is that I no longer had to try and herd her into her little sleeping stall at night which often was a challenge. After sorting that out, Brent got to building the sheep an outdoor area of their own. This was slightly more challenging than when he built Buttercup’s outdoor area because a) there was no door on the side of the barn that their stall was on and b) the pasture on the back side of the barn had a lot more stuff on it from Brent’s jobs and the previous owner of the house. I was pretty amazed at how quickly Brent moved the old lumber and random items that had accumulated over the past couple years and then marvelled at him once again building an outdoor pen using stuff he already had around the yard. This is yet again another advantage of having a carpenter husband, he always has extra materials. I had been complaining for two years about the piles of chain link fence he was saving as I was convinced it was trash because we were never going to put chain link in our yard…It is a good thing he didn’t listen to my nagging because now we have an outside pen for the sheep and for Buttercup, and it didn’t cost us a thing. The only issue with the design is that Brent had to use of the many doors he has stored up from renovation houses and had to cut it down to size. This means there is no easily accessible handle to close it, so when I was trying to close the door quickly last night before the lambs ran out again, I accidentally slammed the door on my pinky finger which meant I spent last night with an ice pack and ibuprofen hoping that the swelling would go down.

    The thing the girls were unprepared for, was the fact that the sheep would be scared of them. When we bought Buttercup, she immediately let the girls hug her and pet her. The lambs, however, were not so accommodating. As soon as the girls would get close, the lambs would run in the other direction. All they wanted was to be able to cuddle their fluffy lambs and the lambs were terrified of them. Cece has more patience and has been getting closer and closer to them by being very still and slowly moving their grain tray closer to her so they can get used to her. Penny’s approach is to run at them and tell them it is fine, and she loves them. I felt pride that tonight I was able to pet Fluffy which is our brown one, for a couple seconds while she ate, before Snowy, the white one, got freaked out which then freaked out Fluffy. This brief interaction though made me confident that by the end of the month we should be able to pet them easily without them running away.

    It has only been a week with these little lambs, but I am so happy we have them. Brent might say too happy, as I am already talking about wanting to grow our little flock and was asking our neighbour how easy would it be to find a babydoll ram to breed with our lambs. She informed me that we would need to wait until the sheep are two years old before they can be bred. When the time comes, I do think I want to breed them with a babydoll ram to maintain that breed as much as possible because they have such nice wool and just the cutest little faces that always look like they are smiling. A little research into the breed taught me that they are generally pretty docile sheep, usually very friendly and up for being pet (fingers crossed) and that their wool is very soft and almost like cashmere. The articles I read said they were ideal as hair and meat sheep and best for small farms, cottages and petting zoos, so basically perfect for our little homestead. I would love to say that all those reasons factored into me buying these particular lambs, but it was just sheer luck as I didn’t even think to ask what breed they were until we had already purchased them. Having only had the sheep for a week, I can say with complete naïve confidence, that these are great animals to have around and I simply can’t wait to have more of them!

  • The joys of cow ownership…

    The last two weeks have been a bit of a blur because we had so many family things going on. May is known as the month of birthdays in our family. There are 8 birthdays in the month of May, and five of those birthdays fall between the 8th and the 13th. This year, we were celebrating my dad’s 70th birthday and we planned a surprise for him by having my sister fly in from Luxembourg as well as some of our aunts and uncles and one of our cousins. He was blown away and it was definitely worth it, but it meant that for the first two weeks of May, it was go go go with the kids having many late nights and us constantly prepping and cleaning the house for all the different family gatherings. As much fun as it was, I was really looking forward to a nice relaxing week last week. I had even planned for the girls to go to my mother-in-law’s for a day so that I could enjoy a day of doing nothing. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans for my week. The week started off with both girls sick, coughing, leaky noses, and Cece had a fever to really round it out. Now after 5 years as a Mom, two sick kids isn’t enough to wreck my week. In fact, often it means the girls need a day of resting and watching movies which is when I am able to get a lot of housework done. The real wrench in my blissfully carefree week, was our beloved Buttercup. I got a nice crash course this week about some of the less glamourous sides of having a cow. The stuff they don’t put on the Instagram reels where the women are walking around effortlessly in their handmade dresses as they tend to their perfect gardens and farm animals.

    For starters, Buttercup gets very impatient about getting her bowl of milk, which should be really fun when I start weaning her in the next couple weeks. There have been a few instances where she has been so excited about her milk that she knocks the bowl from my hands which leads to her getting milk all over the barn floor and sadly lapping it up before it soaks into the gravel. This is frustrating of course for her, but also for me as it generally ends up on my clothes as well. For those who have never smelt calf milk replacer, imagine a sort of sweet popcorn smell and that is pretty close to it. I never imagined that having a cow would actually increase the amount of clothes that I have to wash either from having the milk spilled on me, or her incessant need to chew my clothing. I now keep my flannel shacket as a barn shirt so that I am not constantly having to get changed every time I come back from the barn. Now I know the saying, no need to cry over spilled milk, but nowhere does it say no need to curse over spilled milk, as that has definitely happened.

    The milk mishaps aside, I felt like I was getting a good handle on taking care of Buttercup. Now that she drinks out of a bowl, it is significantly less work. She also has a larger outdoor area now and is generally pretty content just sunbathing and munching on her grass clippings that Brent puts in her pen from the lawnmower. She still enjoys a nice chin scratch and of course we have to keep her pen nice and tidy, which means raking the gravel when she pees and getting rid of the poop. Having had dogs now for almost 11 years, picking up poop was not a big deal for me. In fact, hers takes less time because it is generally just one and you just take the big shovel and throw it in the wheelbarrow. Simple. Or at least, it was simple, until last week when I had a very unfortunate mishap. One day, after I had shoveled her pen and was walking toward the gate and I tripped over a hose that was on the ground. I didn’t drop the shovel or hurt myself but it was enough force to send the poop flying off the shovel and onto the chain link gate. Anyone unaware, cows poop stinks, it is also very difficult to clean off a chain link gate as it gets in everywhere. I first attempted with baby wipes, feeling confident that if they can tackle the biggest blowouts my babies had they could tackle this. I was wrong. All it did was make the mess bigger. I thought about using the hose, but then realised that would make the entire barn wet and we were due for some colder temperatures. I finally came to the reluctant realisation that I needed to let it dry, before I would be able to clean it off. Which meant we had to deal with cow shit being on the gate for a couple days. Ah, the joys of farming.

    The poop fiasco however, was not to be my most challenging situation of the week. Brent was working long hours and even had to work late on the Saturday so I decided I would make a nice dinner for once he got home. I was going to make mashed potatoes, sausages with roasted peppers, gravy, peas and most importantly of all Yorkshire puddings. For those who have never made Yorkshire puddings, you need to get the muffin tins smoking hot in the oven before pouring the batter. I had timed everything out, and once my potatoes were boiling and my muffin tins were in the oven, I figured it was the perfect time to go and feed Buttercup quickly. The girls were watching a show, I mixed the milk and went out to feed her, which generally takes only 2 minutes…Buttercup had been in the barn all day because in the morning it had been snowing (thank you Manitoba spring), so when I opened the barn door I could tell she was eager to have the fresh air on her. The problem was that I was holding her giant bowl while trying to open the chain link gate, all while trying to get Brinkley back so that he wouldn’t make me spill the milk. This resulted in me opening the gate a smidge too wide and Buttercup busted out.

    Now, Buttercup has not been tagged yet, meaning if she were to run off down the road or to another property, we have no way of identifying her other than saying, hey that looks like our cow. So there I am, standing with this bowl of milk having a “holy shit what do I do now” moment. I put the milk down in the barn in the hopes that it would entice Buttercup to come back in, but she was not having it. Finally, she was free! Brinkley got her riled up because he finally had someone to run around with, and man did they book it. One thing I never realised, is how fast a calf is. I knew the girls were inside, my oven was on, and I needed to get this cow back in the barn. I swear anyone who has known me since before I lived in the country, would have probably paid to have seen me desperately trying to herd this calf back into the barn. I know that cows don’t like loud noises so I was trying to speak to her softly, and gently, but when you are running after a calf, sometimes your gentle voice starts to fade. I had almost gotten her into the barn, just in time for Brinkley to coming running up and sending them both on a sprint again. She went through the pumpkin patch, thankfully we haven’t planted anything yet, although she did scare some ground nesting birds. Then she was ripping around the play structure kicking up her legs like this was the greatest day ever. Once I finally got close enough to her I managed to pet her, and slowly lead her back over to the barn and get her in there with her milk before securely closing the gate. After checking the gate about 3 times, I closed the barn door and went back to the house, where the girls were none the wiser. My poor muffin tins however, were extremely smoky when I pulled them out and I was forced to open a bunch of windows and turn the fan on.

    I learned a few lessons this week. One, to make sure the path to the wheelbarrow is clear when cleaning out the cow pen. Two, make sure that you block the gate when you open it to get into the barn and three, cows are very fast. A bonus lesson learned is that no matter how many cute Instagram reels there are about owning cows, do not let that fool you into thinking that it doesn’t come with its own unique set of challenges. I am sure there will be many more and in two weeks we pick up our lambs, which will lead to a whole bunch of new experiences I am sure.

  • The benefits of melting down

    Last week when Brent brought home Buttercup, I was ecstatic. We had been talking about getting a cow for a while and really starting this hobby farm, homesteading adventure. Despite the somewhat abrupt nature of Buttercup’s arrival, it wasn’t like getting a cow was this big surprise or out of the plan, it was definitely something we had discussed at length and agreed it would happen this year. All that being said, when it actually became a reality, the excitement quickly wore off and panic, stress and an overwhelming sense of being in over my head replaced it. Suddenly it wasn’t some far off plan, or fun musing that Brent and I could talk about while looking at pictures of adorable cows without the actual work being put into raising it; it was real. All these real feelings resulted in me having a meltdown Thursday evening and most of Friday. Now perhaps to some this would be a sign that they made a mistake and that it isn’t the right path for them, but for me, once it was over, I realised it was exactly what I needed to fully embrace this new adventure. I personally believe that meltdowns are extremely beneficial, often happen when starting a new adventure and can really help clear the mind of all the doubt.

    I think everyone can agree that sometimes you just need to cry. Whatever the reason, every now and then, it is good to clear out the old tear ducts and really have a good cry. Whether it’s from watching a good movie, or maybe just a sappy one, finally letting yourself feel the pain of something you have been trying to overcome, or just out of sheer frustration, it can help you ultimately feel better. So, Thursday night, I did just that. I sat on our bed and just let the tears flow. I was crying out of fear about how having this cow was going to change our daily routines. I cried because I thought maybe I won’t actually be able to do this mentally or physically, after all, even a baby cow is still a large animal. Then I started crying thinking about people who maybe doubted that this was the right path for me and that I would discover I didn’t want this life and that made me cry even more. Eventually, I had to just turn on some Modern Family to lift up my spirits and I went to bed with many questions and doubts still circling around in my brain.

    Massive bag of milk replacer

    I woke up the next morning, hoping that I had gotten it all out of my system and that I would be able to face the day with nothing but optimism and sunshine. That quickly faded when I realised that I would need to get the girls dressed to come out and feed Buttercup in the morning. If I thought getting them out of the house normally was a challenge, trying to convince them when they first wake up to put a coat and boots on over their pjs to go to the barn was even harder. Then ensued the fighting over who would get to stir the milk replacer, who would get to hold the bottle, who would get to feed her, and all my zen positive vibes went right out the window. Spoiler, I ended up being the one feeding her as both girls got tired of holding the bottle after about 0.2 seconds. Each time my routines and everything I am used to have to change, that little doubt in the back of my mind comes racing forward ready to present all the reasons why what I had chose to do was a bad idea. This latest purchase of Buttercup was no exception. Suddenly, I was going to have to use bottles and milk replacer, which is essentially like cow formula, twice a day and keep this little baby cow alive and thriving for the next 5-7 weeks before it could fend for itself and live off of grazing our pastures. I needed to check on it a few times a day, clean her stall, make sure she was healthy, figure out how to get her back into her stall without being bucked. It all seemed like too much. I spent most of Friday frustrated and upset that I had chosen once again to shake things up just when we were finally getting into a rhythm. Why had I insisted that this be the year we get animals? Why didn’t I wait until both girls were in school full time before taking on this responsibility? All the negative thoughts running through my head, actually helped me acknowledge and deal with the doubt and stress of this new adventure. I had thrown myself into the idea of homesteading with such gusto that I had never given myself the chance to feel the nerves. The meltdown helped me to reset and remember what my ultimate goal was with this adventure. Once I was able to do that, things seemed more doable.

    It has been a week now since we got Buttercup, and I have fallen into a new routine. There are sacrifices of course, for example, she needs to be fed right before we have dinner. This has caused us to eat later than normal, which is not a big deal, but will also affect family gatherings while she is being bottle-fed as we will have to be at the house to feed her close to dinnertime meaning we will only get to our family dinners right in time to eat, whereas in the past we could come on our own schedule and visit before dinner. Another slight annoyance, Penny often doesn’t wake up until 8 in the mornings, but Buttercup needs to be fed around 7:00-7:30, meaning I have to wake Penny up to bring her with me when I go feed Buttercup. I have contemplated just letting her sleep while Cece and I feed Buttercup, but the barn is a good distance from the house and I don’t want Penny to wake up and be alone in the house and get scared. So, in the mornings I bring a rather cranky Penny with us to the barn, where she gets annoyed that I can’t hold her while I feed Buttercup. The evening feeds are much smoother. All in all, I am glad we got our cow despite the sacrifices that we currently have to make, and I am looking forward to the summer months here on the farm, particularly because Buttercup will then be out in the pasture and will be much lower maintenance!

  • The things you learn when trying to add livestock to your homestead…

    Because we live in Manitoba, spring takes a while to reach us. During the cold winter months, we turned our attention to acquiring animals for the spring. There are certain things I expected to learn when we started the endeavour into homesteading/hobby farming. For instance, I assumed I would learn a lot about the importance of proper fencing with animals, how to properly care for various farm animals, how to slaughter those animals humanely and where to go to process the meat. However, there were certain things that I did not expect to learn during this process, some which made me laugh and others that simply frustrated me to no end. Full disclosure, some of these discoveries will come as no surprise to anyone who has experience in hobby farming, but as a first-time homesteader, I was naively unaware about pretty much everything involved in the process.

    To start, I had the very foolish idea that it would be easy to find animals to add to our farm. I honestly assumed that I would simply type into Google “calf for sale near me” and that I would be able to find one relatively quickly for a reasonable price. Part of the reason I believed this was because last year when we were just starting to talk about getting animals in the near future, we had asked Brent’s cousin who has cattle, and he had told us that we should be able to find a calf pretty easily and that we shouldn’t pay more than $500 per calf. This seemed like a pretty decent deal for the amount of meat we would be able to get once it was fully grown. Unfortunately for us, we could not have predicted that cattle prices would skyrocket by the next year when we started looking for ours. When we started looking, we noticed that people now are asking $1000-$1500 per calf! Not only that, but there are way fewer people offering up bottle calves and people are clearly jumping at the chance to get them, thus justifying the price. As we continue looking, we are faced with the not so fun prospect of having to spend double what we had intended and then add on the fact that some of these cows are 2.5-3 hrs away from us. Brent remains confident he can find a cow for cheaper, despite the fact that when he posted an add on one of the cattle selling pages saying “$500 cash for a calf, will pick up today” most of the responses included people telling him he was dreaming or that he needed a time machine.

    Despite Brent’s confidence to be able to find a calf for a good price, we started discussing the idea of getting a yearling. For those unfamiliar with cow terminology a yearling is a cow between one and two years old that hasn’t had her first calf. This was disappointing to me because I had hoped to have the experience of a cute little cow that the girls and I would be able to feed with a bottle and bond with before the inevitable slaughtering time. Now, my mother questioned whether that would perhaps make it harder to kill and eat and that the girls might not be happy when their cow was gone. I would like to be clear that we have had full discussions with Cece about the process and explained that we want to make sure that the meat we are eating was treated well before it was killed and didn’t come from a feedlot. Penny is still too young to really understand so I am sure we will have some tears there for sure. This led to some new discoveries when we were looking at older cows, either male or female because at this point, we aren’t as picky. The funniest discovery I made was how the male cows that were up for auction were detailed in their write up. They always mention the birth weight, what breeds their parents were and then, if they are being sold as potential breeders, they list their scrotal circumference…The first time I saw this I couldn’t help but laugh. I was just not at all prepared for the idea that it would be something to even consider. This also led me to questioning who has the unfortunate job of having to measure something like that? Also are buyers actually going to get out a measuring tape to confirm that it is accurate? I am assuming that seeing as it is listed on many of the breeder bull write ups that it is something that is often considered when purchasing a bull, but I think I can confidently say that it will never be on our checklist when purchasing any future cattle.

    With cattle seeming more and more expensive and in short supply, I decided to turn my attention to my animal of choice, as well as Penny’s, sheep. In my mind, they are so cute and fluffy. I have seen several Instagram reels about curious and rambunctious sheep, most notably the little black-face sheep. Obviously, I was curious about whether or not we could get some black face sheep and quickly discovered that they were called Valais Blacknose sheep. In my mind, this name is deceiving because it isn’t just their noses that are black, but alas, that is their name. I had seen some ads for other breeds of sheep, and they all seemed to be asking between $80-$150 per lamb. This seemed extremely reasonable, especially after seeing the prices for cows. I figured, if regular sheep were $150, then a special cute breed like the Valais, would probably be maybe $300. Oh man was I wrong! On the Valais Blacknose site that sells out of Manitoba, they were asking $35,000 for one of their rams! And yes, I checked the numbers several times to make sure I read it right, and no I did not mess up on my decimal point typing this out. I could not wrap my head around how someone, would willingly pay that much money for a sheep. Now I am sure, if I looked around and did more searching, I could find some for slightly less, but still the idea of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a sheep just blew my mind. Thankfully, one of our neighbours down the road has some pregnant ewes and we are on standby for some lambs.

    Finally, I discovered that there is a wide range of animals that fall under the “livestock Manitoba” search on Kijiji. I found many people selling rabbits, which I know the girls would love to have, but Brent and I have agreed it will never happen. We told the girls that they technically have a pet bunny that we see in our front yard all the time. To make it feel more like their own pet, we told them to name the bunny, so we now say hi to Dandelion most mornings as she or he, really who knows, eats their breakfast in the morning. I made the mistake of letting the girls look with me through the ads once and they saw that someone was selling ostrich eggs for hatching and included pictures of the fully grown ostriches. This created terror in Cece and Penny got upset when I said we absolutely could not buy an ostrich. The variety of birds available is astonishing, and also unsettling for me as someone who really dislikes birds. The girls wanted all of them. That was until they saw the goats, dwarf goats, mini horses, mini donkeys and at one point a mini highland cow. That last one was the hardest for me to say no to, because I would love to have a highland cow, mini or full-sized. We even looked up some mini highlands at one point, and they were hardly better than the Valais sheep. They wanted $25,000 for one mini cow…I did eventually find a more reasonably priced site that was asking only $3500 per calf, but still a lot to pay for a pet.

    Despite all these high-priced animals and scarcity of calves, this has not deterred us one bit from wanting to start our farm. Brent has purchased the fencing; we’ve been mapping out our acreage and I have spent many nights reading about what is required to raise bottle-fed lambs. I am still excited to get to raise some animals and get to teach my girls how to take care of them as well. I am confident that at some point in the future, when I am much more knowledgeable about farming, I will look back at these days when I was naïve and laugh about my shock and surprise with the details of purchasing animals. But for now, I will always laugh at the idea of some poor worker whose job it is to measure the scrotal circumference of the bulls going up for auction.

  • My decision to become a stay-at-home mom…

    From the moment we decided that I would stay home with the girls instead of returning to work as a high school teacher, I knew there would be some people who were going to question my decision. I also expected some people to assume that it was Brent’s idea, as it was his idea originally for us to move out to the country. The truth is, I wanted to stay home long before we moved out here. When Cece was born, I had tried to think of ways that I could work it out so that I wouldn’t have to go back to work. Unfortunately, at the time, Brent was just starting his own carpentry company, and it simply wasn’t feasible. So, once we had Penny and we had bought our forever home, I knew it was my moment to convince Brent I should stay home with the girls. I spent many evenings trying to figure out the best way to present my arguments and convince him.

    It started with me dropping hints about how long the drive to and from my mom’s house would be and how much gas that would be using. He suggested that I look at daycares around the town or near the girls’ future school…swing and a miss. It did help my case however, that the daycare attached to their future school had a 5-year waiting period. To which my response was, well after 5 years they will be in school so doesn’t that make the waiting list rather useless? Then I started bringing up more often how it would be really tough to juggle the workload while still being present with the girls, which he agreed with and said the girls were the top priority and he would start running some numbers to see if we could make it work. This was my golden opportunity, my chance to seal the deal and make sure that he would agree that the best option was for me to stay home. I made up a budget for what we would need each month to make it possible, but I wasn’t going to leave it all up to the numbers. Oh no, I had a bigger bargaining chip up my sleeve, one that I knew couldn’t fail me…food.

    As I was home with the girls, and Brent was working, I naturally made dinners during the week. Seeing as I was home all day, there was nothing preventing me from really having fun with it as I LOVE cooking and baking. Being home meant that some weeknights we had a full roast chicken dinner just because I felt like it. He would often come home to fresh baked goods because it was my way to destress while the girls napped. As they say, the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Although, in this case it would be more the best way to convince your man to take on all the financial obligations and let you stay home and be with your kids is through his stomach, but it really doesn’t have the same ring to it.

    Now I am not sure if it was in fact my amazing feats of baking and cooking that sealed the deal, but right before Penny’s 1st birthday, we made the official decision that I would stay home and I sent in my resignation letter feeling completely sure of myself. Completely sure of myself until the next day when I started panicking that I had given up a good paying job that I liked to stay at home and eventually get into hobby farming, something that I had no experience with. It all seemed extremely daunting to me, and I questioned whether or not I would be any good at it, something I sometimes still wonder, but it was hands down the best decision I have ever made.

    When I first started thinking about staying home with the girls, I thought about all the positives. I wouldn’t have a set time that we had to wake up at, I could plan out the days the way I wanted, I wouldn’t need to wear work clothes, I would have concentrated uninterrupted time with my daughters, and I would be able to become a master at hobby farming. First off, it is true I don’t have a set wake up time. Cece enjoys keeping me on my toes about when she will wake up, although it is generally around 1:30 am where she comes into my bed because she cannot stand to sleep in her bed any longer. The way she describes it, you would think her bed was this horrifically uncomfortable bed in a scary dark room, instead of the reality which is a twin bed with tons of stuffed toys, comfy pillows and a sound machine that doubles as a night light that plays soft music. So, my mornings start with Cece in my bed, and then waiting for the sound of Penny coming out of her room usually around 7:30 am. She meanders into my room, generally holding about 3-4 stuffed toys, looking completely unimpressed that she is awake.

    As for planning out my days, Cece is never one to let me forget that wonderful task and asks me first thing in the morning: “What day is it?” Once I answer her, she responds with “What do we do on this day?” Without fail, every single day. The appeal of planning out my days in whatever way I wanted, quickly faded when I realised how tiring it is to give a plan of each day to a 4-year-old every morning. Particularly when that 4-year-old wants each day to be a “special” day and has zero qualms about telling you that your plan sounds boring. Now, in her defense, some days are boring. The days when I need to wash all the bedding, or do some deep cleaning around the house, I agree, boring. The plus side is that she also happens to find things that some would find mundane as very exciting. Both girls get excited whenever we must go to the Post Office. Simple tasks like going to get groceries is fun for them because they like to help me out and put things in the cart. Although now that Cece is older there are a lot more scheduled things that I have to plan around, rather than just choosing what I feel like doing that day. She is in preschool and gymnastics which takes up time and next year when she starts kindergarten, a schedule will be even more set in stone.

    I will admit, not having to wear work clothes is one thing that actually did stay true, and although I know there are some moms out there who still get dressed up and do their hair and make up every day when they are staying home with their kids, and honestly kudos to those moms for managing that, I am so happy to get to wear comfy clothing all day. Now this is not to say that I wear my pajamas all day, far from it, but I enjoy not needing to worry about whether my clothes are professional enough. I rock a crewneck sweater and leggings or jeans most days. Now that the girls are older, it is certainly easier to find the time to shower, do my hair, even diffuse it (anyone with long curly hair will know what an incredible feat that is). I don’t find that I really wear much makeup anymore because I just don’t feel the need. The other day I put on mascara and Cece asked me why I was making myself “all fancy”. Then, of course, Penny wanted lip-gloss to be fancy as well.

    As for the uninterrupted time with the girls, now that I am home all the time, I feel like there are always a million things to get done. We are home much more often now, which means that toys get taken out all day, meaning cleaning up the chaos piles is a daily task. I am not about to tell my kids that they can’t play or make messes with their toys, but having huge messes around the house also stresses me out. Believe me, I wish I could simply live in the chaos and not care, but I can’t, so I tend to be like a little cleaning bot that follows them. P loves helping me clean, she thinks unloading and loading the dishwasher is one of the best activities around, but my wonderful Cece prefers to jump from one game to the next with little thought of the mess. Having this time with the girls, however, has allowed me to be here with them for every new development. I never missed a single milestone with Penny, and it felt so wonderful. I get to be a part of all their games and see the girls playing together which melts my heart until one of them decides the other one isn’t playing properly and they both start yelling or crying.

    Finally, as for mastering my hobbies and becoming a knowledgeable hobby farmer, that has yet to be determined. I have certainly had much more time for baking, which I absolutely love. I have had the time to make soft pretzels, bagels, breads, cakes, cookies, muffins and it fills me with joy seeing the girls and Brent enjoy them. Becoming a homesteader though, is a bit trickier. I have taken out books from the library about gardening, pig, cow, sheep and goat farming. But I feel like reading about them still will not prepare me for when we get our first cow or sheep. The process of even just looking for cow and sheep to buy is daunting: how much should we be paying for a bottle-fed calf? Should we get one that is already weaned, but would that be more expensive? How much should we pay for a lamb, and should we get a male and a female so we can grow our flock or just buy new lambs each year? I foresee this being a trial-and-error process, and I suspect it might come along with many tears. But just as I was sure of being a stay-at-home mom, I am sure I want to try homesteading, and I hope it will also become one of the best decisions I have ever made.