Farm Life

That picture was posted on Facebook the other day and it spoke very strongly to me.

(Photo credits to Oak Apple Farm on Facebook)

Look at it.

Let it sink in.

This is my life now.

I am getting to know it all too well.

Some days it is my sanctuary from the world.

Quite frankly, some days it hurts like hell.

When I was a kid, I lived on a farm. Back then, I didn't have to deal with the adult stuff that I get to now. I got to be a kid and just play all day and love on my baby pigs and my baby cows and ride my dirt bike and play in the corn crib. The more years we spent there, the more adult stuff I witnessed. We had a fox get in and kill our ducks. My Dad cut a chickens head off and it was running around the yard without a head. I would shoot my BB gun into a tall Pine tree and one day a bird fell out. I had killed it. I had gotten a baby chick once. Just one. I don't even remember where I got it. It died. I know now that you cannot get just one chick. I used to go all kinds of fun places with my dad when I was young. One day, he took me with him to the slaughterhouse. I'm sure I begged to go with him and then I got to learn where my piggies and cows went when they grew up. Ugh. I couldn't eat dinner after that. And, I got in trouble for not eating my dinner and had to sit at the table for hours until my mom and dad got sick of me sitting there refusing to eat my piggy or cow. 

The farm we have now isn't a raise animals and eat them kinda farm. I don't have the stomach for that. That doesn't mean that since we have lived here we haven't seen our fair share of death and heartache. Some days it feels like more than our fair share. We are an animal rescuing, animal advocating, animals rock more than people, kind of family. We walk our piggies in the yard and get strange looks from our neighbors. We talk to our goats when they talk to us. We walk around the pasture leaving carrot trails for the horses to follow. We sit with chickens and kiss em too. We have barn cats that follow us all over like they are dogs. Our animals are our life here. It's the whole reason we wanted a farm. So we could have all the animals we want and love em every day!!

That doesn't stop the sadness and death from creeping in and crushing us on occasion. We have barn cats that just show up here. None of them fixed, so we fix them. Many of them either old or not well. We have lots of chickens and we will go out and everyone is fine and then we will go back out three hours later and we have a sick chicken or an old chicken that is nearing the end. This doesn't happen every day, and in the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn't happen a lot. It just seems like when it does happen, it happens in waves and it feels like that wave is pushing you down and you can't get back up. We do everything we can, but sometimes it isn't enough and that sucks. We want to keep all our animals with us forever, alive and happy. That isn't reality though. And, on a farm with lots of animals, it can happen more than the average. Every single time it happens, it takes a piece of your heart away. This last time it happened, the most frequent time, I found myself, for the first time in my life, saying I can't do it anymore. I can't get any more animals because they will just die one day. I am still at that point today, to be honest. This year has been tough and it's only three weeks into it. It has been back to back to back losses these three weeks and my strength has seriously been tested, my heart has been broken.

I blog about loss and grief often. It's not like I want to. I'd love to have a happy happy, joy joy, fun fun, blog. I guess that isn't meant to be. Sorry. I write about my life and about what's real and often about what's tough to write about. I write about things in my head that I need to get out. I write about things in hopes that maybe someone else can relate and not feel so alone. Death has always been my biggest downfall, my biggest fear. I absolutely hated it as a kid and I would avoid it and run from it. After losing my horse suddenly in 2012, and in 2010 being told I was going to lose my baby it was just a matter of time as to when it would happen, to losing my old dogs and cats when they were 12 and 19 years old, to losing stray cats that just showed up in our life and we had grown to love them, to losing a chicken who seemed to have been unwell from the very start of her life and I hoped I could be her savior, you would think that it would get easier. Well, it doesn't. So, if I seem quiet or withdrawn, just give me my space. Give me time to sort it all out in my head. Give me time to get back to wanting to bring home another animal or ten. Give me time to get back to ME. In the meantime, give your animals extra love and hugs for me.

Farm life is amazing.

I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

I am at peace among all of my animals.

It's just hard some days.....

Farming teaches you how to be totally responsible and completely powerless.

No truer words have been said.

Til next time,