Homesteading Fail

Homesteading can seem like a dream. Beautiful gardens, shelves of mason jars, & cute animals running around, who wouldn't love that? Well folks, homesteading isn't all sunny days and rainbows. Animals die, mother nature wreaks havoc, and sometimes (even with all the right preperations) plans fail. We have been homesteading for 5 years now and there have been so many failures....pigs in the yard at 3am...our cow jumped through a window...100 chickens hanging out in our neighbor's yard...goats on the deck...I could go on but I think you get the point. On January 6th, 2022 we experienced another failure. Our city was hit with the worst snow storm we've seen in 25 years. 3 feet of snow accumulated in a matter of hours which led to our 20x40ft hoop house to cave in. Luckily all of our animals survived and we learned a hard lesson in extra support. You see, as Henry Ford quoted, "Failure is only the oppurtunity to begin again more intelligently." Our hoop house was a fail, it didn't have enough support to accomodate the weight of the heavy snow but within that fail we can see the oppurtunity to fix and even imrove our current design and in the end we will turn this failure into a success. And let me tell you, there is no greater feeling than success after a failure. The sense of accomplishment and pride that you feel once all your hardwork finally pays off makes all of the failures worth it. This spring we will re-build and go into next winter more prepared and more intelligent than before.