[This post seems like it’s rambling, because it is. Homesteading isn’t always linear. Sometimes it’s not cyclic either. Sometimes it’s just random shit happening when it happens.]
External events forced my hand and I’m in homestead maintenance mode. I’ve gone from my default “make food so if the dipshits in DC starve us all I can smugly eat bacon” to “repair stuff on a budget of not much using whatever scrap materials I can scrounge”. Frankly, I needed a “maintenance year” anyway. I didn’t want to do it while society was mid-flush. I planned to ride it out a bit longer. I guess the universe had other plans.
I knew this was coming. I’ve been coasting a bit and have lost ground with maintenance. The extreme winter consumed my firewood supply, the wet spring did a job on planned tractor work, and “decline” (call it what you want, times ain’t normal) turned the dial to eleven with farm expenses.
This year it was also impossible to get feeder pigs. Well that’s not 100% true. I might, if I put forth extraordinary effort, track down a few rare and hard to find, bigger than normal, feeder pigs. They would cost triple or quadruple the normal price! Or, I could finance a Lamborghini. Both make about the same fiscal sense.
I won’t overpay for livestock! Coupled with “supply chain something something it’s definitely Putin’s fault” effects on the feed supply; I’d lose my shirt. Livestock must make sense. They’re not pets.
So that’s that; no pigs this year. Such a shame. I’d happily raise a bare minimum of family food even if it was at a small loss (just to make sure I’ve got a personal bacon supply) but there’s issues with that that might not be apparent if you haven’t tried it. Homesteading is inefficient anyway so there’s not much wiggle room. If you drop to a scale too small it has huge drawbacks. The labor of one pig (which would be a financial loss but tasty) is super inefficient compared to my usual run of 3-7 of them.
They’re social critters. It’s wise to take that into account. A handful of pigs will amuse themselves like Millennials browsing social media. A group of them under my benevolent care will sit around being happy without causing much fuss right until I promise them free college tuition and put them on a trailer bound for slaughter… also much like what has happened to Millennials.
One pig alone is a very different situation. A solo pig tends to think too much. Some get grumpy. Some become lovable pets that get in your way when you’re trying to mow the lawn. Some turn into Tom Sawyer and go exploring. The point is that one critter becomes a bigger hassle than a handful that will amuse themselves jointly.
Upon reflection I sense the root of modern society’s aversion to people who just want to be left alone. Not to sound too brutal but it’s a thing done in society to humans in recent times. A kid’s schooling now incorporates an endless succession of group projects. Everyone in the group gets a B. A kid’s schooling in the past often had a single kid working through a homework assignment or essay all on their own. One kid gets an A. Another kid gets a C.
Can you sense the kind of human that emerges from both paths? Which upbringing makes a human who’s more likely to get on a cattle car? Is it the same path that makes one human more likely to put another human on the cattle car? Remember 2020! The Government didn’t need to air drop Karen into the grocery store to monitor mask compliance. Karen was already there and trained to enjoy the role. Squawking about “other people’s behavior” filled a void that had been molded into her life. Same goes for the HR department that pushed the vaccine in ways only removed in scale but not direction from Nuremberg. “Get the shot or you’re fired”, that’s oddly construed as “voluntary consent” to a creature raised in a group project world.
Forgive me; one ponders the underbelly of humanity when they pay attention to the cycle of life. Sometimes society has a dark core but you only see after a lonely day of quietly shoveling pig shit.
Enough of that line of thinking. I might get banned for wrongthink!
Back to the subject matter, three pigs isn’t triple the work of one; it’s half. You heard it here first!
That’s just one little factoid in the world of experience that comes from walking the walk. Your average Mother Earth News reading / NPR listening hippie won’t know this truth because they’re more about signaling intent than accomplishing a goal. It’s why you should ignore dipshits fresh out of college that want to instruct about “sustainable living”. The world is filled with fuckers who’ve spent their whole life absorbing ideas from teachers instead of doing things in real life. Never listen to anyone tell you about homesteading unless they drive a truck and it has some rust on it.
I was uncertain what to do about the pig situation. Fate gave me a nudge. Thanks fate!
A barn collapsed. It collapsed across the pig fence. Mother nature isn’t subtle! I accepted the clue (that had been delivered with a sledge) and planned a year of construction.
Don’t freak out. I had naught but incredibly creaky infrastructure and I knew this day would come. What can I say? You don’t lightly drop big money on new barns just so a critter can shit on a freshly poured slab. Also homesteading is as unglamorous as being a medieval peasant but it works. I’ve been limping along as best I can. This year gravity won and therefore it’s time to fix stuff. Well played physics.
The good news is I’ve already done well. I’ve managed to produce considerable amounts of food over many years using infrastructure somewhere between “shack” and “hovel”. (They’re pigs and chickens, they don’t need a luxury accommodations.) The bad news is I’m out of the game in 2022. Meh, I’ve probably made more food for society than 99.8% of humanity in 2022. That’s not so bad.
I’m a little skittish counting on food from grocery stores but don’t worry, there’s always hunting and I’ll put in a small garden. Plus, I still have some chickens.
Also, I’m told that everything is fine with the food supply because we’ve got top men managing the economy. Any president who got the highest vote count in history surely can keep the grocery stores filled. After all, every single president before him had it well in hand. He can’t be worse than all of them. Right?
In the meantime, I’ve stacked a cord of wood!
Hat tip to Daily Timewaster for the inspiring image. My firewood is in a shitty little shed. It looks nothing like this glorious photo. But it doesn’t matter. It’ll heat my house just as well and I did the stacking myself. That’s what it’s all about!