Giving Up Is the Only Sure Way to Fail

“Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” Gena Showalter wrote that. I don’t really know who she is, because I live under a rock. But she has a point, and that idea is what’s been getting us through the past few months.

As a whole, this year has been rough for our little homestead. When I started writing a couple years ago, I was hoping our journey wouldn’t be one of those “don’t do what we did” stories. Joke’s on me, that’s what my entire blog is about!

Year-to-date Disaster Recap

The garden this year was an utter fiasco. I really should have just skipped it entirely, but I’m stubborn and thought I could handle a garden, a newborn, recovery from a difficult pregnancy, three other kids, and a bunch of animals all on my own. Ha. Out the door with the garden went all my plans to preserve and freeze some home-grown veggies.

The corn didn’t do well, either, because Calvin ended up traveling for work over the summer and wasn’t here to tend to it.

Then there’s been all the animal drama. Our mess of pig breeding. Navigating difficult births and dead piglets. And I didn’t post about it when it happened, but something killed every single one of our meat birds a few weeks ago. We have no idea what happened to them.

It has just felt like one thing after another with our animals. I completely understand why some people just have a garden and no animals at all.

Reevaluate

Many of our morning-coffee conversations lately have been about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Most days I love the homestead life. There are some moments when I wish we had a “normal” life, but those typically don’t last long.

So since we’re committed to this way of living, Calvin and I are just trying to stay strong and remember our long-term goals. How we want to raise our kids. What we want our homestead to look and feel like in a year, five years, ten years.

Carry On

Moving forward, we’re focusing on what has already been successful, and what provides the best return for our time and effort. Our current goal is to zero in on our favorite things- the pigs, gardening, our home life as a family, and slowly but surely improving our property. We’ve already started taking little steps toward success over the last couple weeks. I’m counting everything as small wins, and trying to stay positive.

We found another boar, and brought him home to be our new breeder. As soon as Ethel’s piglets are weaned, he’ll be put in with our sows.

We’ve taken some preorders for pork already, which is exciting. We had to buy a few piglets to fill the orders, but if our next breeding venture goes well, maybe this will be the last time we need to do that.

Even though we missed the summer canning boom, we’re jumping right in with some fall and winter canning. Just over the weekend we worked together and processed 29 jars of applesauce and 17 jars of cranberry sauce.

Calvin has jumped on the sourdough bread making wagon, and it’s looking like he’s going to be an expert at it in no time.

In Conclusion

So here we are. Not giving up. Never admitting defeat. (Well, “admitting but not taking it to heart” is more accurate. We are human after all.)

If you’ve stuck with our crazy homesteading journey for any length of time, hopefully our story isn’t getting depressing, boring or predictable. Thank you for reading, and remember to check out Iveyshire on Instagram @iveyshireblog!

Have a wonderful day, y’all.

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