EVERYTHING WE'VE QUIT Homesteading... WHY 

You guys have no idea how much i needed to hear this. We sign the contract to sell our homestead this week, and it is so easy to feel like a failure instead of realizing this needs to happen due to the season we are in. It doesn't mean we won't ever get to come back to it, but due to health issues and family growing, this is what needs to happen in this season. It is a bittersweet heartache.

Oh goodness, you made my day! What a sweet surprise; thank you! Guess I have to keep going and NOT quit...RU-vid at least lol I often think back to your 100 day video challenge and wince...you have grit! I dont know how you do it. Thanks again, you all are an inspiration. ❤

People should evaluate what works and what doesn't work for them so they don't waste effort. "Click bait" thumbnail 🤣. You definitely have a lot of experience with a variety of livestock. ♥

One thing I thought while watching this was all the side quests I needed to drop. Learned how make fruit wines. Way more super boozy plum wine than any person would want to drink. The carboy and supplies took up massive space and collected dust. Homemade apple cider vinegar? Corroded through the faucet of its container and made a super sticky mess. Cheese-making. Homemade ricotta IS really good. I really didn't need those goat cheese strainers. Steam-juicing...tried it once and sold the juicer. All of those were really good skills to learn but just aren't a real part of my life. So, what DO we do? Chickens. Huge garden. Preserving food in ways we'll eat it. We're improving our hay field. Basic home herbal remedies like face cream, salves, teas, tinctures, etc. Those things have all stuck. Combine with some locally purchased meat, it's enough! After a multi-year property build, it's now about dialing in what we really want/need and editing everything else out rather than adding more.

Such an important video, thanks for covering this! I used to make hard cheeses, then baby #2 came around. I also sold a cow every time I had a baby. 😆 We sold our first goat Grace because she was a terrible mother and obnoxious as hell. I think people outside of homesteading might see quitting is failure. Folks in the community though know quitting something is often a sign of wisdom. It’s always a big comfort to me during this busy time of baby raising, not right now doesn’t mean never. Just not right now. ❤

Well if you parted ways with your goat before a couple of months, then you needed to probably give her more time to settle in and for her system to get balanced. And feed her the kind of feed that you like that makes the milk sweet. Their milk taste terrible right after they relocate because their body is under so much stress. I've never had the milk go right to tasting good after relocating. 3 weeks is what I've experienced is when I noticed the change to better. For goats anyway. But I totally respect y'all's reasoning, we can't be reasonable or resourceful if we are hanging on to every animal that isn't producing or serving us in some way

I quit almost everything this year due to being pregnant, giving birth and looking after a baby. My husband and oldest daughter took on most of the milk cow chores. I gave up on my garden after planting it - some of it survived, mostly the weeds. I quit making cheese and feeling like i needed to be productive every day. And yesterday we had to quit having our once amazing dog; he had become increasingly territorial and food aggressive towards other animals and then yesterday he attacked and bit one of our children, who happened to be walking towards the house where he had a bone. 😢 We also quit chickens last fall because ours had a disease that kept flaring up every winter. Eventually we'll get chickens again. And a dog. But for now, we quit a lot of things.

I had to quit my horse! Broke my heart, but he was a semi-lame rescue that was literally terrorizing my beef cattle. Not enough space to house them seperately. Although sad, it was the best course for us. We also had two distinct breeds of goats, and ended up selling the entire Boer herd, as we realized we aren't fans of goat meat! We still have the Alpine dairy goats, but birthed too many males (5/7!!!) so they'll be going to freezer camp if we don't find any buyers. Life on the farm! Thanks for sharing 🙂

Congratulations on baby #7! I just had baby #5. I'm living my homesteading dreams through y'all ❤ We don't have time for even a small garden right now, but I enjoy watching everything y'all are doing on your homestead 😊

Fantastic episode. Thank you for this thought provoking, and well thought out content.

I feel the same about rabbits. But my dogs love them, so I keep them around for dog food & treats 😅

Seasons of life change. We need to be realistic and reevaluate. That is the responsible homesteader.

Rabbit is our favorite but only after since learning to make the meat drier by cooking on the pit longer. Kunekune take longer to grow out but eat less daily and meat is exquisite. Meat, bacon and lard. It also helps that they can eat the acorns during the fall which makes the meat even sweeter. Goat milk from mini LaManacha is very good. Sweet and fattier than regular lamancha because of the Nigerian side of them. We make ice cream, cheese and drink the milk and make kefir. We milk once per day and most of our goats have been long milkers without drying up. Around 3 plus years on most unless we rebreed them sooner which can help them to produce more volume over time. The ones we don’t keep are cabrito and the fat is tallow. We had like 5 ducks but family overall were not fans of the meat and eggs as a whole. Didn’t keep those but hadn’t set up a big area for them thank goodness since we were only dabbling in the idea of keeping them. That area ended up more garden space. Learning to grow high producing and some winter storable food over the last 5 years is now allowing us to make large impacts on the feed bill. Be very careful about what you quit and never trust the store to have your needs especially these days. “Quitting”, unless extenuating circumstances doesn’t necessarily mean longevity. We’ve had issues but worked around them. 11 years in and have kept 5 of our 6 animal investments and it’s paid us back immensely. Plus the store food is no where near the quality you can produce from a homestead.

I just quit milking one of my cows. We had a baby 6 weeks ago and then he was in the hospital with an infection last week. This cow has had mastitis issues and it took us a while to breed her back and honestly I’ve been asking my cow forum for “permission” to dry her off for months. We weren’t even drinking her milk so all the work was just for pig food. Everyone’s advice was that it would be best to keep milking her…she could lose the calf being early bred and a dry open cow is a headache, she could put on fat and have metabolic issues, she has mastitis issues and they could get worse….in the end though it was dry off this cow or get rid of all our cows because it’s just been too much. Trying to coordinate everything while in the hospital was the last straw. We dry treated her and dried her off and accepted the fact that come calving- things might not go well, but we just had to quit. You said in one of your videos once that when you add a new baby you’ve got to get rid of something else on the homestead and my husband always brings that up. 6 babies later on our homestead, that always works out to be the truth. Even if we try to fight it eventually we have to face the facts!

My dad's beef, the best ever. My love of lamb is not from eating lambs at grandmas because the never ate lamb but raised them. I love jersey milk and the amazing ice-cream. I am the farmer/rancher daughter. That said, my kids have a sanctuary and would never eat any of the home raised food. I am failure. remembering the camel 🍳🍔

Thanks for telling people it’s okay to quit ❤

We try to produce enough from one protein source in 1 year that we have enough for two years. Then we’re essentially managing only half of the protein sources at a time, but still have all the variety. For example, will raise 100 meat chickens one year and then take the next year off since they freeze well and can up well two years. In the chicken “off years” we’ll raise enough pigs to meet 2 years of our pork needs and so on. 😊

Thank you. I m going through some life changes and I needed to hear this. I m the seed

This was an absolutely amazing video! ❤

I have a lowline angus bull who likes to fight my saplings and water spiggots. Also tried to rub on my AC unit. Had to fence off all those things and run electric to keep him away. He and his steer son are soon to be freezer bait. Keep my 2 cows and find them another bull later.

We have gone through this as well! Rabbits Chickens Now we are selling our ducks and geese So far the only thing that has really stuck with us is goats and I’m okay with that! I think it’s important to try out different animals/food sources and I think it’s very responsible to decide that certain things don’t work for you and to let them go! It makes the animals life and your life much easier ❤

I needed to hear this! People are so judgemental when getting, selling and trying new things that fit better. We had goats (weathers) for pets and land clearing and then a few years we sold them to travel w our family. Now we’re back but looking at dairy goats and the comments are so annoying!

We agree 💯%! We’ve had to make some of those decisions and some were easier than others. ❤

THIS is the content I've missed! And I will never have goats again unless I no longer am trying to grow a garden or orchard lol.

The titles in the video should stand longer.. long enough to be able to read, when you don't know there is a text coming..

Ducks: never again lol. Geese too for that matter.

Its Your homestead, you got to find what fits for You. I hate breeding Pigs, city boy husband's idea and I have to take care of them. Now I have 2 Tamworth cross pigs over 600lbs that need to go in my freezer because they haven't even been breeding in the last year. Hopefully the weather turns cooler here in FL for us to process before one of them just keels over...

Thanks for all the content as of late. 🙂 I'd just like to share a thought on all the jokes about camels, because a lot of people (not talking about you, but people in general) seem to think camels are "exotics" just because they're rare in the west. Same with water buffalo, yak, llamas, and sometimes even donkeys and others, are considered "exotic". But in reality, they've been domesticated for just as long as "normal" animals like horses and cattle, and they all come from far-off lands (horses from the Central Asian steppe, chickens from India, turkeys from America aren't considered exotic in Europe, cats from North Africa, sheep and goats from the Middle East, and so on). So camels, llamas and alpacas from Arabia/North Africa, China/Mongolia and Peru/Chile, and domesticated for 4000-6000 years really aren't "exotic" at all, just rare outside of their countries of origin. 🙃 I'm a big fan of camelids and I think if the vikings had got to Peru and found llamas, they would have thrived here in Scandinavia and been a very popular animal in Europe. And donkeys are also seriously underrated as pets and work animals in the west.

Yep, we always need to reevaluate what's working or not and is it worth it to continue or do I want to deal with it anymore.

My buck keeps destroying fences and anything else he can get to 😂 todays auction day. Don’t be talking me into this now 🤣🤣 Also: fencing 😂

The Camel journey was so cool but challenging. When you did it you did it for live and that makes it special ❤. Great info for folks who have trouble with it👍. JO JO IN VT 💞

I've had all those animals except camels. But the pic of the cow, the halter was on wrong.

When I was a child we had a dairy goat. I loved her so much but her milk was horrible because of the weeds she ate. I recently have had goat milk from a local dairy and it was delicious. Our family have had multiple breeds of goats since then, but only for meat, and they are always escape artists and hard on fencing. Have always had house cows, of various breeds. I loved a nice Jersey. Camels are never a good idea! Neither are Emus!!!

"If you don't like the product, just stop producing it." Super basic logic, but we all do need to hear it. 😂

Привет из России,смотрю вас уже давно,вы молодцы, счастья вам❤

I tend to do sugaring every other year. That way we look forwards to it, but it’s nice to take a winter off and say-not this year!

I eat lot of time rabbits in Cuba and we like it...

I would try the product elsewhere before investing in the infrastructure, feed, and new animals.

Great video

We too quit rabbits. I mostly let the garden go this year as well, but the time off has me charging full steam ahead on our Fall veggies!😊

GMO corn to coca-cola. Ha! I love it. Mmmmm…Monsanto flavored carbonated caramel coloring. 😂😂

Beautiful Highland cattle.

Having trouble quitting goats? Try our new goat gum or goat patch.

Negative comment. Positive comment. Another positive.

you should have Bastion camel instead of having a Dromedary

Great points!.. What works for some doesnt work for others and how each farm does it varies on how it works for you... So glad to see you back and that baby bump! We are going to quit pheasants this year. Been raising them for a few years but they just don't have the turn around nor interest to sell.

Horses. I love them. They drove me crazy. They jumped 5 foot fences. Ate and ate a ton. Cost of shoes. Veterinary, worming, fence repairs, etc, etc, etc. very expensive. I had horses for 50 years. Sold nine horses in 2021. I miss the beauty of horses I don’t miss all the other things. Selling them was a good quit

While I have not quit yet, I'm unhappy with bantam chickens. They slip out of my fencing and spend daytime over at the neighbor's property, then return at nighttime to the coop with the standard-sized hens. I thought we would eat the bantam eggs while selling the medium brown eggs from our standard-sized hens, but we are having trouble finding the secret nests in the neighbor's woodland. I'm not keeping the bantams forever. The funny sideline to this is that the bantam roosters don't like to bend down to get through the fence, so they don't leave daily (they sometimes fly over the fence to check on the bantam hens).

We changed from chicken to rabbits. We love the taste of rabbits more than chicken but the reason we changed was because we can raise them for free on our property and must buy feed for our chickens. Try everything and see what works for your individual circumstance.

I kinda feel that way about quail; though they're easy to raise, you do get so little meat off of them. The only problem is, I live in the suburbs, where we're limited on what kinds of homestead animals we're allowed to have. Gotta admit that quail are a great animal for a small space.

So happy ❤ that y'all aren't quitting RU-vid Nora homesteading (: what a shock it would be to all of you.

Thanks for the video. I'm in New Zealand. I needed to hear this today. I've been struggling with trying to run and feed everything on our property. It never occurred to me. Instead of buying more feed fir our sheep.. why the hell not just sell a few. Penny dropped and it all made sense the penny dropped. On many levels. Thank you ❤

I think it’s just a matter of having a negligent amount of money 😂 when money isn’t an issue ppl do whatever

Sure people decide to not raise some Animals. That is your right and privilege. Some animals are just not a good fit for some situations and families. From.whatvwe seen you are winners !! No Doubt !! Blow off the naysayers. Your doing Very Well. Then Braved Alaska !?? You all are Tough. Don't let no one tell you no different. 😁😁

I love it! We change all the time!

👍

Rabbit meat has an acrid taste to me, and chickens are much easier.

Dude you need to try duck eggs again. Or maybe an elephant.

This was such a good video! Thank you for sharing all of this. It was very validating. We felt like failures when hawks ate our free range chickens, we didn’t like rabbit meat, and we needed to get rid of the animals on our homestead to take care of my mother-in-law when she was dying along with homeschooling our kids. I felt like we failed a little bit, but we also made room in our schedules for a once in a lifetime opportunity to invest in our family, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

I thought you got goats because you can't do dairy. Why did you get the buffalo. Have you looked into what causes the pandemic that starts with a c. Has changed all our pancreatic differences.

Medbeds are coming!!!

Goats and especially horses! If you can afford the pet, great. But I think people underestimate the time and cost of a horse.

I love you!!!!

Animal that came to mind ….. Husband 😂😂

Our goat is going to camp this winter. Might not make it to the freezer because we are having a party.

Maybe binge Doug and Stacy.

We all need to focus on the more important things, and keep our lives simple…Matt 6:33

Thought you guys were actually quitting the full homestead way of life. Relieved to know you're not, but a bit click baity if idare to say. I understand the first point of rabbits well. I raised three liters one year and butchered 21 in one day. Too much. Too much emotion. I wound up giving it all away so at least it wasn't wasted, but I'll never do rabbits again. In future videos it would be nice if your saying you're quitting a certain venture, and not homesteading in general. I found that misleading, amd frankly, a tad bit annoying. Sorry. I do love you guys. You inspire me to do more.