My current home doesn't have a verandah or even a porch but I dream of owning a little farmette again, with a verandah overlooking chickens, goats and gardens. Absolute heaven!

WHO TO TRUST

Gone for a few days for Hubby's dad's funeral. Made arrangements for someone to stay here, to care for the livestock, and someone else to milk the goats.

Came home to find the people responsible for the feeding and watering of the livestock did only a half-assed job. These people have alpaca, dogs and cats, and they'd helped us out before but this time, they forgot to feed the goats their hay. No hay at all in 3 days. If you knew goats, you know that they need at least forage if they don't have hay.

They got so hungry that they figured out how to escape, ate most of my garden (squash, strawberries, blueberries and corn), got into the chicken food (so the chickens practically starved too) and were found a couple of properties away.

Furious doesn't begin to cover it!

Guess we can never all be gone again at the same time.

Left a few summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers plants. Hope to nurse the other plants back from mere stems.

It's not just that I lost food that I was going to put away for us to eat this Winter. I mean, that's part of being self-sufficient, right? Growing your own food so we can eat year-round? Like our ancestors did. But it's also that my poor goats and chickens feel like **I** deserted them. That **I** abandoned them.

At least we know who we CAN'T trust now.

2 comments:

--jim said...

We've gone through the same process for our little ranch...but we've been lucky with the results so far.

It helped that we've 'filled in' for others who have had to bug out for a couple of days for what ever reason - so that helped us prep the folks helping us.

Check-lists - phone lists on the 'fridge and in the shed..etc...

And a good walk-through showing exactly what we expected for a routine probably didn't hurt.

Hope you can get things settled - let the 'possibles' of inheritance drift off (you weren't planning on that resource for your future anyway...let others greed consume them - not you) and get healed-up after this loss.

Vee said...

Thank you for the kind words. Something to think about. The thoughts... drifting around.