2025 was a difficult year to get through. By the end of the year, I was not enjoying any of it. In fact, I wanted to quit (do I feel this way at the end of every year?). You have to laugh and find your sense of humor or you won’t make it through anything that is slightly difficult. There were so many things that went wrong, so I had to sit down and list accomplishments to remind myself that a lot of things went right. And once reminded of all the good, I can face the next year in good spirits. I can categorize things into Acts of God that will happen no matter what, Some Mistakes I made, Learning Experiences, and Successful Achievements.
Acts of God
We had a wild weather year, lots of tornado threats with rain and flooding for most of the first half of the year. The barn flooded over and over making it impossible to do anything until the weather changed its mind. The barn and surrounding areas were not fully remediated until November when the ground had dried up long enough to work on it. Winds knocked down trees; fences had to be repaired, but thankfully no buildings were damaged.
I’m not fond of mud and neither are the cows. One cow got hoof rot and had to be treated by the vet. I had a couple of tons of sand hauled in to various locations on the farm where cows congregated, to keep their feet in better condition (around the water troughs and the milking area). I moved the hay ring to the top of a hill to keep the cows from standing in drenched, muddy, soil. The long driveway washed out numerous times, but after having gravel hauled in to repair it, I decided it was just going to be a bumpy ride for the rest of the year because it kept washing out. The positive side of all that rain is that there was copious grass for the cows – beautiful, fresh, lush grass that kept them happy from April through October.
I had a health failure in April requiring hospitalization. I “sprung a leak” – internal bleeding. , I could call for help and a literal posse of family and neighbors arrived to care for me, the farm, and to milk the cows. The doctors were good and fixed me up quickly, although a blood transfusion was required. The remaining issues from that are anemia. It appears that recovery is going to take some time. I am thankful and grateful for all the help, even though I asked the Lord: “Why?”. I guess as we get older, our bodies start to fail, even if we exercise, eat good, and try to live a healthy, productive, life. It’s good to remember that we are just sojourners on this earth, and that Heaven and Eternity await.
Some Mistakes
The primary “mistake” I made was expecting way too much of myself. I am, by nature, an overachiever. I like to plan out the year in January, and it’s usually entirely unrealistic. I’m trying to change that about myself.
The good news is that no animals died on my watch (with one exception). The sad joke or saying is, “If you have livestock, at some point you will have dead stock”. I am much better, emotionally, with accepting that reality. I can spot a potential illness from quite a distance now, and react quickly so that an animal does not die due to my lack of experience or neglect. I want to sleep at night knowing I did everything I could for every animal on the farm.
I made a few small mistakes that led to small injuries. More than once, I misjudged the strength of an animal, my lack of strength, not being careful enough, or not wearing appropriate protection (i.e., heavy work gloves). That mistake resulted in scrapes, bruises, and puncture wounds that I was able to treat at home. No broken bones, though. In the past, I may have raced to an Urgent Care facility for stitches and antibiotics, but now, I’m like “Eh, not so bad”. I do use hydrogen peroxide and triple antibiotic ointment frequently, and keep lots of bandages on hand.
I have too many livestock guardian dogs who don’t all get along and have to be separated. Two or three, for my size farm, is plenty, and I have 5. I had 6, but one of my dogs attacked me and had to be put down. That was a sad day, and I sustained injuries, but I learned more about pack behavior and hierarchy, resource guarding, and training. I have entirely too many barn cats because I failed to get all the cats fixed on time.
I failed to rotate food storage and some things went bad or stale. I didn’t allow time to put food up by canning or dehydrating, so a lot went into the freezers, and the rest fed the chickens. You could say that wasn’t such a bad thing.
I didn’t allow much time for self-care or housekeeping, and it shows.
Other than those things, I can’t say that I made a lot of mistakes this past year. The good news is that a lot of things were accomplished, even though my expectations were ridiculous, and I would get frustrated when things weren’t completed on time. I have zero mice, snakes, or possum issues due to the cats. Not a single predator got on this farm due to the dogs, and that’s a huge plus. There are roving packs of coyotes here (and roving packs of loose dogs), and not one got on this farm. I didn’t lose a single chicken this past year after losing a number of entire flocks in previous years. One of my LGDs especially loves guarding the calves. I heard from a friend who is on a much larger farm, that as soon as one of her calves was born, a pack of ravenous coyotes slipped under the electric fence, grabbed the calf, pulled it through, and ate it before she found it. What a horrible experience, and a lot of lessons in that.
Learning Experiences
I have learned so much, and am better at managing a farm today than I was years ago. Primarily because I tried everything, all at once, learned fast, and made a lot of mistakes along the way – not that I’m recommending that!
I finally learned how to butcher chickens and it wasn’t nearly as horrible as I had imagined. I didn’t faint or throw up as I gutted the birds, one by one. The coyote problem had to be solved first, and I had a lot of help on butchering day.
I closed my raw milk herd share after determining that supplying good milk to people outside of the family was too much work for me. Good raw milk is very much in demand, but dealing with the public is very draining and has its own pitfalls. There are very few people who understand the mechanics of running a farm, and have no idea how valuable the farmer’s time is. Visiting someone’s farm for fresh food, by appointment only, is not like shopping at Trader Joe’s. I can’t wait around for hours for Susie Q to show up to pick up her fresh milk and eggs. The alternative is selling goods via a Farmer’s Market, but that is a tremendous time commitment that I can’t make. So, I have let that aspect go. I’m sure selling off the farm works for many people, but it doesn’t work for me. My focus was wide, and is now narrowing, or I should say, I’m refocusing.
I learned a lot about raised bed gardening, which is really quite different than planting in the ground. I have to make a lot of tweaks for the next gardening season. I am deciding if I want to concentrate on “storage crops”, such as garlic, potatoes, onions, carrots, etc., or if I want to try for the full seasonal gardening approach again. I learned that the squash bugs are a force and can take out half the garden very quickly if I’m not on top of it.
I learned that getting dairy cows bred back is somewhat of a science when you don’t have a bull on the property. All are pregnant now, which is a great relief, but it was a lot of work, and I needed to understand each cow’s heat cycle – they are not all the same. I found “estrus patches” to be a wonderful tool in determining the right timing for artificial insemination. I had planned, or hoped, for them to all calve around the same time. As it stands now, calving starts in April and will continue into August this year. That’s probably a blessing in disguise.
Oh!!! As I sat here writing this, and looked out the window, I could see that one of the heifers has come back into heat. So, she is not pregnant after all. She’s been “serviced” via artificial insemination five times. So, either I call the A.I. tech again, or call one of my neighbors who has a bull, sell her, or off she goes to Freezer Camp. These are the kinds of decisions I have learned to make. When you invest a lot in a heifer or cow and she fails to conceive, fails to milk well, fails to breed back, hard decisions have to be made. I never enjoy making those decisions.
I learned how to raise bottle calves. Believe it or not, I have never done that before. I prefer to leave calves on their moms, then sell them at the appropriate time. But this past year, I could sell highly sought-after heifer calves, and then turn around and purchase less desirable dairy bull calves, steer them, bottle feed them, and raise them for beef. I’m not sure I’ll do that again, but it worked.
The biggest learning experience is to not stack the deck quite so high, because when things go wrong, they really go wrong. This coming year is going to be a little slower, even if that means selling a couple of dairy cows to lighten the workload.
Successful Achievements
There were also a lot of successes! Even though I felt constantly behind schedule, and terminally stressed out and exhausted, I learned a lot and accomplished a lot. I spent a lot of money, but I look at it as setting up the farm for future success.
The first was completing the raised bed garden. I have about 20 raised beds now, filled with barn compost and topped with a purchased compost that served me very well. A second orchard of mostly fruit trees, and berry bushes, were planted in the same area. Not every planting was a success, but most were. The large chicken run got a new 8ft high fence with a dig-proof perimeter. A large dog house and run were built to help keep livestock guardian dogs separated. The barn was finally, fully, remediated, and the surrounding area graded and built up to avoid future flooding (hopefully).
Fences were fixed and overall the farm was maintained well, which is an ongoing effort. I enjoyed a successful calving season which yielded two beautiful heifer calves who sold for a great price. The bottle calves are scheduled for butcher in the Fall and they are all healthy and happy. 21 big, juicy, meat birds are in the freezer. I was able to obtain a used truck and trailer so I can haul cattle myself rather than rely on someone else. Despite my health issues, milking season was a great success (with help). There were no sick cows, no mastitis, no milk fever. I was able to have a new, desperately needed, HVAC system installed for the farmhouse.
Looking forward
2026 is my year to scale back now that good systems are in place. That might include selling a couple of cows, but we’ll see. I don’t need my high-production milk cow if I don’t have the need for that volume of milk anymore (she gives 10-12 gallons of milk each day). I can ignore gardening for a year and just buy from my Amish neighbors if I so choose. Everything has to make good financial sense, and everything has to be manageable without me crashing and burning.
I’m still trying to determine what “self-sufficiency” looks like. In the absence of a large family to work this farm, what can I realistically do by myself with some hired help? Where can I partner with fellow homesteaders and farmers to trade goods and services rather than try to do it all? The only new thing planned on the farm is to attempt to raise some production white turkeys for the freezer. I have heard they are difficult to raise, so we’ll see. My neighbor has offered to help me butcher in exchange for some turkeys. There are neighboring homesteads that raise turkeys each year, but the cost to purchase an organically raised turkey can be $100-200 for each bird. I should at least try to raise some myself.
All in all, I realize that this small farm is a blessing from God. I can do as much or as little as I am able without throwing the baby out with the bath water, or run screaming from the building. Balance. My primary goal in 2026 is to find that balance, rein in my spirit animal, and take time to enjoy this beautiful place.