Homesteading is NOT always Sunshine and Roses.....

It is with a heavy heart I come to write this this morning, dear readers.

This morning when I went out to do rabbit chores, I found the garage door wide open, and seven of our nine baby rabbits (grow outs) dead in their cage. 

It was a horrific sight, and especially for someone who knows that losing that many could, in a certain situation, affect whether or not your family eats meat for a month.

When you are a homesteader, whether in a small manner or a large give-it-your-all manner, there will be awesome and wonderful moments that reaffirm for you WHY you do what you do.

But there will also be moments that you just want to sit in the middle of the garage/barn/shed floor and cry your eyes out because the loss is overwhelming.

I know that before I used to do all the different things we do here, that I had a rather rosy view of raising animals, gardening, canning, etc etc etc. 

I forgot that those animals will need to be fed and watered and doctored when it is -30* with a full-blown prairie blizzard going on.

I did not realize that you can put your heart and soul into raising tomatoes for your family, only to have a mold virus strike your plants and you have to choose between using chemicals in a last ditch effort to save it, or face not having spaghetti sauce and anything tomato based for the year. And then not even have that save the tomato crop.

I conveniently chose not to think about how a single storm of flash flooding can impact everything you have stored and saved on the shelf of your pantry, and wipe out a month of canning in a single swoop, leaving you without food that you were depending on to get you through winter.

And really, I could go on and on.

Is the life and path that we have chosen totally worth it?

Yes.

Is it full of highs and lows, pain and happiness?

Yes.

And frankly, taking a step towards being more self-sufficient is something absolutely everyone should be doing right now, in whatever way you can do it. If you can't raise your own meat, find someone who can do it for you, or learn to can and stock up. If you can't garden on your own, find someone who will share their produce with you, or a good farmer's market, or hit the sales and stock up,.

But there IS one thing that you can grab hold of right now that does not depend on anything that you DO, and that is a head full of knowledge on how to do certain things, fix things, heal things, etc.

And that, my friends, is priceless, and unperishable.

Here is to hoping for a much better day tomorrow for the Welcoming House family.

Blessings to you and yours, 

~Heather

PS--an update---we found one of the male buns still barely alive and moving in his cage, after being traumatized. At the time of publishing, he was moving around slowly, and had drank some water. We are praying he survives, because he will become part of our breeders in the rabbitry and live a good, long healthy life full of all the wonderful things we can give him.

So, if God cares about the sparrows, we know he cares about rabbits.

Please pray for the little male rabbit, and also for my Littles, who are all struggling with seeing such destruction out of the blue.