haters?

[FarmerD]

im just curious what everyone else experience with family/friends/friendly strangers has been when you talk about the crazy stuff you're doing or plan to do. im in the south, so its a cultural norm to want to move out onto some acreage in the country, but when you start talking details it gets hairy. i catch grief from the least likely people when i talk of doing things for sustainable reasons or that im investigating a certain kind of cow.

for example (and this is one of many i could share concerning my dad) ...... my dad got visibly angry when i told him that the wife and i went upstate to look at dexter cattle for the farm. he thought we should get jerseys, and that was that. by the time i go look at anything for our farm, ive devoured any and every resource i can find on the subject. so i have good reason to go see this cow or that one and not this one. he would hear none of it! same goes for chickens..... or why am i not raising trophy deer for the rich hunters? its crazy. in fact, neither him nor my mom have been out since. its like im disowned because i dont want to recreate the homestead of his past.

but its not just him. my mother-in-law is the same. normally she is the sweetest most supportive person i know, but i know she's still upset we arent after goats. she had her heart set on giving us our first goats, and now weve crushed her dream i guess.

not to mention, my dad was crushed when i wouldnt open up the land for him and his friends to freely hunt.

i could go on and on. just curious if anyone else experienced this?

 

[rhoda_bruce]

This is going to sound realy wild, but my mother has a close relative that just so happens to be one of the wealthiest people in the country (no joke) and when Momma died, her cousin came to her wake and funeral. She, of course, knew me because we used to live very close when I was little. So she asked me about how Momma died and when I gave the story, it required me telling her how I discovered Momma to be sick, that she wanted soup, but the Chinese restraunt was closed and I told her I had an old rooster in the sink, that I had put to defrost, but DH hadn't tended to it and it was still there, so I would cook her a soup and Momma tells me 'If its an old rooster, you need to cook him a long time....and don't cook him like Mawmaw and Grandpa (I think she had forgotten her parents were both dead), because they always cook the rice until its done and it continues to swell up until you have a pot of rice!!!", so I let Momma tell me how to cook the old rooster, but I put every healing herb I had in my cabinet and I name off all the spices I put in the soup .....and cousin stops me and asks me if I'm serious about the old rooster and how did I know he was old and I say because I raised him and my records indicated he was almost 3 years old and he had spurs, etc.....and in the meantime, my daughter and sister are on each a side of me, smiling because they see what I am saying and they see our cousin's reaction, so this goes on and on and another cousin is also in the conversation and they ask me how I kill them and mention that their grandmother (my great-grand) used to wring necks, but I tell them I am not good at that and the meat taste funny to me if they killed like that anyways, so I just slit their throats and my cousin looked like, The Mirror Cracked. She put her hand to her own throat and her eyes bulged. And one thing led to another and we spoke of the orchard and I mentioned that I am feeding lots of raccoons because of the orchard, but need to set traps or send hunters in and she asked me what I did with the coons after I catch them and I simply tell her, "I serve it over rice." and she is completely freaked and she asks me if I kill them the same as I do the chickens and I tell her, "Of course not. That would be dangerous. They are too wild and I'd get bitten or scratched....we shoot them, skin them and cut up in pieces. The thing about them that bothers me the most is that they have little hands." My sister and daughter are having a hard time not laughing and when the cousins look to them, they just nod their heads, agreeing thats how we do it. So there she stands, wearing the most enormous pearls you can imagine, Wilma Flinstone's mother wearing, and she finds out I make laundry detergent, line dry my clothes, make herbal medicine, tend bees, slaughter and plant vegs. It was priceless. I could almost imagine Momma laughing at the whole incident.

 

[FarmerD]

Yeah the whole thing amuses me. It's like a running joke especially around holiday time. I guess in this community, anyone that thinks of a farm as anything except a big corn or cotton field is just a hippie..... The kind with dreds, earth names, and guitars. Now I keep my mouth shut unless i get probed, and then i give out minimal info. i usually find that most people are just feigning interest anyhow. i fully expected the off hand stuff like "as soon as you get that pond dug and stocked, let me know and ill come help you fish it"

any of you guys and gals that have bought raw ag land will know how difficult and expensive it is to find and finance. you would think people close to you that witness all this would understand that your plans might not included their plans. but in my case you'd be wrong. i was all excited when we finally closed. i called my dad to let him know. within a week, he was beating my door down to let him and his hunting buddies "come help". i know my dad, and i knew that offer came with strings attached. i tried repeatedly to lay out what we wanted to do, and how turning my place into his personal hunting club was going to work out for me. he didnt give up. after a while i relented and his buddy and he showed up one saturday with a bush hog to "help". they spent the morning mowing paths to places they wanted to put hunting stands and what not and left. for the next month or so he kept after me about letting them hunt, which i was against. its not that im against hunting, but if i turn them loose, i know ill have hunting blinds and golf cart/4wheeler paths everywhere..... not to mention ill never be able to stop it. this situation caused me much personal anguish. i regretted even telling him that i had the land and that i wanted to farm. i guess at some point he figured out i wasnt going to give in and gave up. now i never hear from him nor see him unless its xmas/easter/mothers day/thanksgiving. it was at a subsequent holiday afternoon where he nearly exploded over the cow thing. needless to say its a strained relationship. fortunately i really dont care. i have reasons for the things i want to do, and while i dont mind outside suggestions, i guarantee ive done more research than the peeps making the suggestions.

the one that surprised me was the mother-in-law goat thing. she's always interested in what we are doing and what the next thing is. she soaks up talks about hollistic management, permaculture, biodynamics, etc. but for some reason, she has this thing for goats, so i guess we should too. i know when we get our first bred heifer that she will be smitten..... especially when that first calf comes. but for now, i can feel the tension anytime cows or goats come up.

the whole thing is insane. i catch crap about my natural building stuff..... aka the "dirt house" with its dirt plaster and dirt floors. the solar power thing is a problem for my brother-in-law that works at the nuclear plant. the composting toilet is a problem for everyone. my step father-in-law gets ill if i rent earth moving equip and dont borrow his 10,000 hour backhoe that leaks hydraulic fluid faster than it burns Diesel. he would also expect me to pay for repairs if it dies while im in the operators seat..... like buying the worst lottery ticket ever. i could go on and on. i cant believe you guys dont have people like this around! maybe i am a hippie and just dont realize that everyone is trying to help save me from the crazy hippie mistakes that hippies make...... maybe i need to grow some dreds and learn to play the guitar. oh!, and i need a "earth" name too. maybe "dirty sanchez"???

 

[baymule]

My family just thinks I'm nuts. I have always been different from the rest of them. DH and I just bought a house on 8 acres and we are so excited to be moving. But no one in the family acts like your family does to you. My family might think I got switched at the hospital, but they love me and support what DH and I are doing. My DH will be 70 in a few weeks and I will be 60 shortly after. It is beyond fabulous that you and your wife are realizing your dream while you are still young enough to chart the course for the rest of your life.

About the naysayers, just shrug them off. It's you and your wife's life, not your family's. Sounds like your MIL is the most rational out of the bunch, just make sure she gets a good long look into the beautiful eyes of your first calf. She will fall in love and maybe you can get her a goat later on. It seems that everyone else has their own agenda and thinks that you should adhere to their version of what's right for them, not you.

DH and I had bought 16 acres and people hit us up to hunt on it, put their horses on it, and on and on. Really? My feeling is they should go buy their own, make the payments and then they can do whatever they want on it, and I pretty much told 'em so. Sooooo suddenly you're my friend?

People can only run over you if you let them. Whether family or friends, if they act that hateful to you and your dreams, to heck with them. Dirt house? I bet you aren't making a $1000 monthly payment on it. And I bet you won't have a $600 utility bill either. So who's the smart one here?

Feel free to come vent any time. You can pick your friends but you're pretty much stuck with your family.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I remember being so poor that I didn't know I was going to do. I let DH go to work, and I turned off all electricity I could and opened up the house and started cleaning EVERYTHING. I found loose change in corners of the house, under the cushions of the sofa (which was a used gift), and I organized and organized everything. I didn't even have enough money to buy a single pack of cigarettes for DH (not that he should have smoked to begin with). I recall killing half grown roosters, so I could stop feeding them and have meat to eat. I gathered up some wild onions, made a roux and had chicken gumbo and later, I ran out of unwanted roos and made a gumbo, again with wild onions, but the closest thing I had to call meat was the boiled eggs I had floating in it. I could have done so much with just $10 dollars at that time and yet, I couldn't ask for help from anyone. I didn't have a job and they were hard to come by, so I would wake up at 4:00AM, dress in rags and head to the shrimp shed to break heads with the old Cajun ladies. I couldn't fill a bucket as fast as them though, but if I filled at least 3, I'd get close to $10 and my cousins would drop off my check to me. If I was desparate enough, I'd do that 2 or 3 times a week and get between $40 to %50 dollars. It was a pitiful check, but I could do so much with it.
Biscuits was the main bread DH and ate in the beginning. He'd go rabbit hunting with his brothers and father when they'd invite him and I'd get really mad if I'd find out he had given his kills to one of his brothers. One day I told him that if he shot a rabbit, he better come home with it. I told him, I'd clean it, but it was mine and he best give it to me or stay home and sure enough he came home with nothing and then told me he killed 2....but quickly told me we were invited to supper at his brother's house....whitebeans and rice with rabbit. Okay, that was better.
My first garden was amazing. God Himself, must have blessed it. I grew things that aren't even supposed to grow here that no one is successful with. I have tried, since then to grow some of that stuff and have failed. I started a compost bin that was made out of cypress logs from the ruins of my parent's log cabin (damaged from Juan). I apparently cut too deep when I was peeling potatoes and threw the peelings in and covered with grass clippings.....yep....I had planted potatoes. I knew what they were because I had picked them, all my life in Grandpa's garden. I planted English Peas, which no one believed would grow.....they did and how!!!! I almost couldn't fail. The long logs from the cabin were used to frame me up a flower bed around my house to make it pretty, but I was so seed crazy that I surrounded my house with white squash plants and I must have gained 20 Lbs that year, eating squash cake. Good thing I was so tall.
I remember wishing for just a glass of milk. Milk was hard for me to do without. I'd buy just enough to put in biscuits or fix coffee. The seniors I knew had stockpiles of non-fat dry milk and I would sometimes get a few boxes from my grandparents. That was nice, but still I couldn't bring myself to ask for anything.
I finally had worked hard enough to get enough nerve to approach a man in a position to give me a job and basically forced him to hire me.....at McDonalds. Once I had a regular, but small check coming in........well, you would have seen a huge amount of stuff going on, with no more money than I was making. DH found work also and even though we made less than all his brothers and my brother, we were the ones everyone came to for help....why??? Because we saved and scraped. We knew tricks to get by on our good looks and knowledge. What really hurt was having a few in our debt and then me getting pregnant and being taken off the nursing assistant schedule and DH getting fired.....having so many in our debt, but no one giving us back anything or if they did, hardly. When people are willing to work and I need help, I don't mind dealing with them, because I've been there and all my little tricks are free for the learning, if they willing to listen to me.

 

[FarmerD]

Lol! You're absolutely right. I'm just greatful that the wife and I are so in tune with each other. Just sharing the journey with her is worth the BS.

 

[wyoDreamer]

We had a great neighbor a little while back. A self-proclaimed redneck hippie. We had a lot of fun. Our redneck party invite was a shot from a 45 with a responding shotgun blast, then head over for beers.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

I think I'm the excentric that keeps everyone entertained.
I can relate to the origional post because my grandpa was an old school farmer and he had his ideas about what a garden was supposed to look like, which is nothing like what my garden looks like.....all raised beds and mulched to the max. Then Momma had certain ideas about when to replace the WHOLE flock, which I didn't consider feasible. If I had listened to her, I'd have sold off everything after their 2nd molt and completely replaced with day old babies....and then have to raise them to be 5 months old before I get a single egg. I don't think so. I used to listen to her, but I found that the decrease in production could be justified, if I give them cheaper/free food, let them forage here and there and it would be much more profitable that starting all over with an 80 dollar order, which would cost me another 15 every 2 weeks for a while, until I get them old enough to feed them whatever and still have to wait months for that first egg. I don't think she ever accepted some of my poultry ideas, but she did see that I insisted on making a profit, and when the lady that bought her incubators from her, decided to get out of chickens, and told her, she promptly told me and so I have a really big incubator and hatcher, so I feel I have that connection.
So many people just can't believe that I've already gone a whole month without a clothes dryer....by my own choice.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

In my case it's not so much that they are upset with WHAT I'm doing because no one in my family has enough experience to tell me otherwise. Except that one person who wanted to tell me he knew how to train a horse and he's never owned or spent time with a horse in his life. Geeze....

What they do object to is the time that I devote to it. I will freely admit that I've missed a family gathering occasionally because I need to be here for a kidding or an ill animal.

But - they never turn down fresh eggs or milk!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

As a former hippie and a person with an "earth" name let me be the first to say that I am NOT offended, lol. Part of our hippie badge of honor was to live and let live, lol. In fact my experience with hippie-ness was a defining part of my life.

It was the hippie faction in my high school that founded an ecology club. It is in part because of that portion of my past that I became an 'earth lover'. It fostered my desire to raise animals with respect and thankfulness for the sacrifice of their life for my hunger. It is also in part responsible for the earth-sparing organic gardening that I practice. It also crops up in my desire to pollute less and pick up litter on the side of the road and makes me just a little envious of your earth housing endeavors, your compost toilet and your solar power.

Maybe I should get a little more in touch with my hippie roots! By the way, the folks in my hippie circle of friends did not wear dreds and I can't play a guitar at all, lol!

Peace, bro!