Living on a farm offers so many benefits. But for every benefit there is always a hardship.
Farming teaches your children responsibility with helping them learn how to plant, hunt, cook, and can their own food. They learn many tricks of the trade for getting the right vegetables to grow along with making a little money selling those things at a roadside stand.
The Boy and his friend after a hockey game playing with the chicks
Caring for animals is a huge responsibility. It teaches compassion, love, nurturing, along with the commitment to the well being of the animal and loss. There are sacrifices to be made such as leaving a birthday party early to get home to feed the animals. Many other times you race home because the weather has changed and those animals need to be brought in.
This weekend was a very hard lesson at our farm and that was learning to understand that no matter how responsible you are, things still happen that are hard to accept.
We purchased 6 baby chickens about 7 weeks ago to compensate for 4 of our older girls who will soon stop laying eggs and live out their golden years with us. The kids hand selected each baby. We have had them living in a huge bin in our basement until old enough to go outside. Over the past 7 weeks they have held them, cleaned them, taken care of them and loved them.
Putting the babies from their travel bin into the outside house for the day
Yesterday was the day we decided they had outgrown their bin and were ready to move into the “baby” chicken coop and pasture. This is a special area for the babies to grow into a full size chicken. There is fencing that is 6 feet high on one side and 4 feet on the other. There is also a baby gate before the 4 foot fencing. Long story short, 2 of the babies are gone. After being out there for 2 hours we went in for 20 minutes and came back out to find one of the babies outside of the fencing dead and one is missing. The other 4 are ok. The kids are devastated!
We have come up with 1000 theories on what happened but may never fully know. UGH….so hard to accept!
As much as I want to grieve, I have to be strong for the kids who were still having tears slide down their cheeks getting ready for school today. Sometimes the farm life is harder than you imagine!
chase n chance ranch 