I want to chat with ya’ll about something we don’t usually talk about and that’s failures.
We use our social media platforms, vidoes, and blogs to mostly show off the beauty in our lives and there is nothing wrong with that. Although, I think we could really form some wonderful relationships and perspectives online if we are vulnerable and shared some of our failures too. Sharing our failures is also an opportunity to pass knowledge on from one to another, and boy, wouldn’t it be nice not to repeat someone else’s mistakes?
We had a bunch of failures on the homestead this year, from livestock to farming, we lost a lot. It was our first year on the homestead so I am not beating myself up too badly, but I could have done without losing baby chicks, without Gunnar, our Great Pyrenees, being in pain, and without hurting our pocketbook so badly.
Here is the cool thing about failures though. You may have to endure failure but what you do with those experiences after they’ve passed is totally up to you.
I decided to create a video listing our top five biggest homesteading failures of 2019 and I want to share them with you so that you can learn from my mistakes and not repeat them. Because even the cotton farmer only gets the opportunity to have maybe 50 harvests, that’s all. That’s only 50 times you get to try something you're passionate about and possibly rely on solely as an income or food. Isn’t that crazy?
Think about how many times you tried to crawl before you walked. Think about how many times you tried to speak before you spoke a word correctly. This adventure that were on of growing things is so limited. This makes it even more important to have community and to surround ourselves with those who will share their failures with us and help us get through our own failures so we can all come out the other side better for it- to be better at homesteading, farming, gardening, and raising livestock.
Blossom end root, not enough of a problems this year to call it a failure, but a reminder that we did have more than five mistakes on the homestead this year.
I want to share these 5 homesteading failures with you, and before you think I only had five mistakes- I didn’t. I am only listing the TOP FIVE failures on the homestead from this year. Homesteading is not an exact science, or maybe it is, but each place is going to be a constant experiment because everything to each place is unique from soil types, water, climate, weather, and even equipment.
Even though we had failures on the homestead this year, we still had much to be grateful for as well.
My garden had a lot of losses this year. I replanted several times and still had a pretty poor harvest. I am having a hard time even calling myself a homesteader right now because we hardly have anything to show for our farming efforts this year. We got three jars of pickles after replanting cucumbers 5 times, 5 TIMES. Let that soak in. Ha. So would could I have done differently?
Planted later. The night temps were still dipping below 55 when we planted, which is just too low for cucumbers, or any seed or seeding meant for summer growing.
I could have protected my seedlings against bugs and critters. Next year, I am going to put netting up over my cucumbers, something was finding them quite delicious.
Started more seedlings indoors. I started over 500 seeds indoors but, since my growing season is so short on this new homestead, I think I am going to have to plant even more next year.
This is just one example of what we could have done to prevent failures on our homestead and we want ya’ll to have the chance to learn from our mistakes, so please watch our newest video below to see what else we failed at on the homestead this year.
Be sure to like the video, subscribe, and then tell us about any failures you experienced on your own homestead, farm, or garden.
