Being self-sufficient and living of the country are often overly romanticized.
I definitely don’t want to discourage anyone, but -get real! Step off the TV soaps and dreams in your own head to the drama of the frustrating reality.
Empty the cesspool to fertilize your soil
Ladle out the smelly pig - or goat stables,... shovel the manure on your wheelbarrow
Stinking smoke from a non-functionating stove fills the house and your lungs
Rain and thunderstorms ruin your hay
A fungus or disease destroys you harvest or winter stock
A disease makes (part of) your (poultry…) livestock unusable sick or dead
The killing and slaughter of a screaming and crying rabbit or pig, or the sad eyeing sheep or goat, looking in your eyes when you’re going tot kill them
The all over again and again fight against rampant weeds everywhere
Mice and rats eat more of your silage than they leave for your own use
Not to eradicate disease clubroot in your cabbage
Stillborn lambs. And two days later again the same thing...
Parent animals or young animals that parish
A fox that slays you coop
Your wine that turns out to be poison
You coming home mid winter and the house is freezing cold because the heater is extinct. But you should have to shower and change in a hurry. If the water is not frozen
The tasty ham that’s hanging on the ceiling to dry.. oeps, it appears to smell, so you no longer dare to eat it
In the eyes of many people you're not a self- provider, but a silly, naive layabout
A sowing of which only 2% appears to germinate and grow
Long, hard, and a lot of heavy work. As long as there is daylight. And even with moonlight. Every day.
You get heat stroke, or other disease, the day you should harvest. Or sow. Or plow.
A rat drowning in your water well and spoiling it
Snails that devour your garden
A flock of starlings plunder you cherries
Wasps eating most of your pears and plums
Dryness. Pasture, garden and field shrivel
Injured, or having a hernia, but the animals still need daily feeding, water, milking
Harvesting potatoes and notice that there are only a few small tubers to find. And they are half rotten
Due to lack of time you no longer find the germinated corn between the weeds
With open blisters on your hands still need to continue mowing, digging or haying
Try to catch out broken sheep or goats, that every time are too quick for you
Not getting enough money for your goods, fruits and animals to pay the electricity, gas and taxes
After an evening calculating the cost of your investment in land, infrastructure, looking over your equipment and own hours of work you even did not count; you absolutely do not understand why everything in a warehouse is so shamefully cheap: a kilo of potatoes or meat, a egg, a bottle of milk, beans, bread... You absolutely can’t make it for the same price yourself
I’ve had my part.
But it is satisfying. If you're happy with it. And frustrating...
I only want to put it in a realistic perspective. And encourage rather than discourage. Everything you try with good vision, intention and setting is a step in the right direction. Doing so, we can become better, together with our environment.
The good old days stem from a bad memory. (Robert Benchley)
The good old days is the time when our ancestors had a bad time. (C. Buddingh)
The good old days you see in the right perspective when the power is shut down for a long while. (paraphrase Joann Thomas)