I've always been a homesteader for as long as I can remember. From my experiences, one great lesson I learnt is that you don’t have to wait until you have a lot of land before you start farming. Our earth is blessed with a lot of resources, and one of them is the availability of lands and crops. Everything might not be going well in my country, but one thing we are still enjoying is that our crops grow well. Over the years, I've learnt so many lessons in my homesteading journey, and one of the greatest of them all is that you don’t need to wait till you have acres of land before you start something. This is also applicable to all other aspects of life- you don’t need to wait for the big things to happen before you start something, little things matter.
My homesteading journey started over ten years ago and the memories are still fresh. My dad wasn't concerned about anything related to farming, and although my mom had an interest in it, her schedule didn't allow much time. I remember when my mom was on leave and one of her friends introduced her to broiler chicks. At first, my mom was skeptical about buying the broiler chicks, but somehow, her friend managed to convince her. We didn't want to go overboard, so we started with just 10 chicks. I remember we bought them in March and raised them until December, right in time for Christmas. It was fun and nice to enjoy devouring chicken with my siblings during the holiday season. We even shared some with our relatives and friends, as we didn't have plans for commercial chicken farming.
Another valuable lesson I have learnt as a homesteader is that you have to be resilient and be able to take risks. Taking risks is part of the journey, and not only do you learn from them, but they also make you stronger. The greatest risk I have ever taken as a homesteader was when I bought 20 broilers chickens. My mom had already resumed work at that time, and she didn't have time to take care of the chickens due to her busy schedule. I was in charge of taking care of them. ing about young chicks is that they require attention. Optimum attention. You need to be careful how you feed them, the kind of water you give them, and so on.
Everything was going alright and I was proud that I was taking care of the chickens without my mom’s help. Everything was going alright until something disastrous happened. Things took a turn for the worse when the chicks started dying one after the other. At first, I wasn't sure what went wrong. We tried changing the environment, cleaning the cage, and doing everything we could to save them, but nothing seemed to help. After a few days, all 20 chicks were gone. It was devastating.
Now, here’s the lesson: Just because we lost the chickens didn't stop us from continuing with the journey. Although the experience was really sad and painful, I learned that it is important to be resilient. Being resilient is incredibly important. Life is full of challenges and setbacks, but it's how we respond to them that truly matters. When we're resilient, we bounce back stronger, learn from our failures, and keep moving forward. We realized that the mistake we made was giving the chicks the necessary drugs and injections. With the next set of chicks we bought, we made sure to do everything right, and they all survived until the following December.
Note; All images in this post are mine.
This is my submission to the Inleo prompt suggestion for the month of May. The topic is: Where does your food come from? Are you in touch with the source or just get it pre-packed? Do you have a garden?
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