How Covid Shifted Me To The Homestead Path
Why we started gardening, getting chickens, and getting weird.
We all remember March of 2020. Right?
Everything was going swimmingly. I was about to turn 33 (a number I had been looking forward to my whole life so I could brag that I was now Larry Bird’s number), Elizabeth was hitting her stride at work, my older two kids were in first grade in public school and Pre-K at a local church, Benny was excited to turn 3 and our Preemie twins were growing and we were finally comfortable having them out in public around others. Then…well you know.
I remember stopping home on what would become my last day of being at school for the year to pick up a few things at Krogers. I had heard that for some reason toilet paper had been hard to get ahold of and if there is one thing a family of 7 needs is 2 ply softness. Walking through the aisles, it felt like a scene from a movie. People were panicking. Their carts were full to the brim, and the shelves were emptying by the minute. I was lucky and found 3 packages of toilet paper hiding behind some paper towels. Someone had no doubt tried to hide these for later. I stocked up on some essentials (Doritos, Coke, Tito’s, and Salsa) and headed home.
Little did I know it would be the last time I leave the house for nearly 2 months.
If I’m being honest, the pandemic lockdowns were kinda awesome for my little family. Yes we missed seeing our parents, grandparents, and friends but we found a new rhythm for our lives. The kids got curious in stories from mine and Elizabeth’s childhood. We had all the time we wanted to cook together, work on projects like making hideouts in the woods, and spent lots of time playing in the water of the creek behind Grandma Carolyn’s house. Life slowed down and I never wanted it to speed up.
As parents, Elizabeth and I had to learn how to break bad news with love and facts and try not scare our children. Birthday parties and other traditions with others outside our home had to be put on hold. In this, our kids did not become damaged or wilt. Rather, they became resilient, thankful, and cooperative.
For weeks, I couldn’t get the visualization of being at Krogers that last time out of my mind. How did we get here? How was it possible that there were food shortages? Many people were desperately trying to get their hands on hand sanitizer and N95 masks, we were just trying to find things like meat, flour, sugar, and even yeast! We usually use about 5 gallons of milk a week and the stores were limiting us to 2 gallons. I understand the rationale of the rations, but I did not like it. I wasn’t mad at Krogers, Meijer, or Wal-Mart. I was mad at myself.
How was it possible that in 3 generations my ancestors went from providing 95% of all their daily living needs such as food, clothing, entertainment, and housing. to my current situation where I couldn’t make butter, sew a button on pants, or get food from an animal if my life depended on it?
My Grandpa Carl Day had an amazing garden in his back yard. It did not provide all the food they ate in a week, but it was a huge supplement to their diet. I have precious memories of him tilling up the garden with his Troy Built Horse rear tine tiller and planting with his Earth Way Seeder (both of which I possess now). On the other side of my family, I have Kodak pictures of Grandpa Wayne Coley tending to his herd of Hereford cows, stories from my dad Rusty about raising hogs, and the old chicken coop on the farm still stands. Were any of those skills somewhere inside of me?
I spent a lot of time on YouTube watching videos about small scale farming. Everything from folks trying to be weekend gardeners, to others who desired to be fully self-relient from the current food system. The beauty of YouTube is you can learn from everyone. Some were raising their own chicks, pigs, and cows and even processing the animals themselves. Soon I could feel the desire and knowledge start to grow. I could do some of this, and soon thereafter Elizabeth corrected me...We could do some of this.
The power of being in sync with the goals of your partner cannot be understated. An ancient proverb of wisdom I found in a fortune cookie one time said, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The more we discussed trying new habits and exploring becoming more resilient from the global food supply chain the closer we became.
First we started with planting a garden. During the first few weeks of the pandemic, we used plastic cups, potting soil, and some seeds and started them in our window. The kids had a blast getting their hands dirty and starting these seed.
We then broke ground on a garden in our front yard in an unused portion of our 1.2 acres. I used my Grandpa Carl’s tiller and for several days criss crossed the ground going deeper and deeper with each pass. Carl also used a book called Earth Way’s Joy of Gardening By Dick Raymond. We read the book and made our first garden plan. The book called for using wide rows that were also raised.
That first year we learned a lot more than we harvested. I struggled to differentiate between a plant and a weed ( and there were lots of weeds). We were able to have a few meals from the garden we planted, but one of the things we discovered we loved was growing our own pumpkins. We have continued growing pie pumpkins and carving pumpkins to this day.
Year two wasn’t much better. The animals ate most of what grew above ground, and the dead soil prevented much from growing below ground. A few evenings of YouTube and we discovered some ideas such as mulching, crop rotation, and mulching to help us in the future. We did not even attempt a garden last year or this year so far because we decided on the move to the farm and we knew we just simply would not have the time to dedicate to it. But we have big plans for the future!
After gardening, came the desire to get in to animals and it all started with the gateway drug of chickens! During the start of the pandemic, chickens were hard to find and very expensive. I guess everyone was freaking out a bit. But Providentially a neighbor was getting rid of their flock, coop, and supplies and we got our first 12 chickens.
We fell in love right away with chickens! They are easy to maintain, are cheap to feed, and produce eggs daily. It wasn’t long before we were adding chickens to the flock. We found another friend who was tired of his flock so we added those 10 with ours. Then as a gift, Elizabeth’s parents ordered chickens for the kids from a hatchery. They were fascinated with the idea of chicks coming through the mail and setting up a brooder.
However, with animals comes the reality of life and death. This past year we have had a horrible time with racoons. One night we got home and the trailer we were using for our chicks brooder (a brooder is a space with heat lamps, constant feed and water, and totally protected for chicks until 5-6ish weeks old.) had been penetrated by a racoon and killed every chick we had. The kids were devastated.
All summer long we dealt with an influx of predators. We lost about half of our flock until we built our eggmobile.
Sometimes it’s not a predator that does the killing, sometimes we have to do it. I remember on several occasions chickens were sick or suffering from old age and I would take Elliott out to dispatch them humanely. He is a very tender hearted boy, but accepted that this was a fact of life. We have had several very good conversations about life and death about not just chickens, but how we as humans have a body and a soul and this opens the door to talk about our faith.
Last summer, we raised our very first batch of turkeys. Henry showed one in 4H and we grew two more for our family. In August (the hottest day of the year) we processed the turkeys and some unnecessary roosters. The kids really took it! I made a point before we started to say prayer of thanksgiving for these gifts that God had given us. Then told my children a quote I had recently heard that I wanted to be our motto for growing our own meat.
“Animals deserve a good life, a good death, a good knife, and a good chef.”
This treats the animals with respect and helps keep in perspective their and our proper roles in life.
In addition to starting to grow and raise our foods, Elizabeth took it upon herself to develop more skills in the kitchen. She has learned how to make bread (she made all the bread products we consumed in 2022), cook most everything from scratch, and is dabbling in skills like making butter and other useful things.
So what is our plan? Are we trying to be nuts and live off the grid? Are we going to not trust the government, raise and drink unpasteurized milk, and forgo modern medicine in lieu of a mixture of maize mash and essential oils?
No. Probably not…
Recently we were traveling from a day in Indianapolis back home and I said to Elizabeth, “I don’t want people to think we are weird or anything, but I’m excited to see what all we can do for ourselves at the farm.” Elizabeth replied, “Ohh, I’m ready to get weird!”
For me it is not about being self-sufficient. It is about being more resilient and less reliant on others for things I can do myself. As of this writing, apparently there is a major egg shortage and people are paying top dollar for eggs and chickens. They are panicking!
I’m not. I wasn’t even aware there was a shortage. That is what “getting weird” means to me.
If you are not in a position to try to grow your own plants or raise animals, I welcome you to live vicariously through us!
Get Weird…
Noah
I’m not crying you’re crying 😭. I’m so jealous of your land that you’re able to share with your kids. I loved the childhood I had playing in creeks and woods and want to give that to Wrenley some day. I also am so touched about the way you’re teaching your kids about life and death. They are going to be so much better equipped to handle it when it hits hard later on in life (hopefully much much later in life). You guys have to be the modern day Bluey parents and you can’t tell me otherwise.
First, you are a fantastic writer. Second, I'm in awe and love what you are doing and how this will affect your children. It will teach them so much and make you a closer family. I believe your faith will shine through as well and you will raise faithful kids. What a wonderful example! Thank you for sharing so much of the story. It almost (my mom's afraid of birds and it sort of rubbed off on me) made me want to get a chicken! LOL I congratulate you and Elizabeth for being a team and for all that you have already learned in this process. I'll keep reading....