Saving money on the Farm

A few months ago we decided to grow our farm family by purhasing a few pregnant ewes and a bottle fed dairy calf. We'd done our research, watched a zillion youtube videos, and talked to others with experience we could trust. It still felt like jumping into the fire but it's kinda how we roll around here. The one thing we lacked however, was a good way to transport them home.

Now we have an ole' beat up farm truck we affectionately refer to as Ruby, but we had nothing in the way of a livestock trailer to attach to her. The closest thing we have is an old 6'x10' cargo trailer. I quickly priced new livestock trailers and realized they were significantly out of our price range, so I looked at used. Yep, also out of our price range. Anyone local to borrow from? Nope, wildfire season with forced evacuations had them all in use. So what to do, what to do?

Well, we did what we always do and got creative and improvised. A bit of scrap lumber, some screws, fencing nails, and few cattle panels later, we had a nice little containment system to set inside our cargo trailer. One quite capable of hauling our small herd animals anywhere we needed to take them...and it worked at a tenth of the cost! Those animals are home with us now. For the last few months we've been patiently awaiting the arrival of our little lambs and just finished weaning our darling dairy calf Mabel. This money saving scenario happens to us all the time.

It goes without saying that homesteading/farm life can be an expensive endeavor. Atleast up front. You've got to have the infrastructure to care for the animals you raise. Feed costs are not inexpensive (and rising with our languishing economy). You need farm tools and implements to work the land. Your initial batches of seed will cost you. There's also the general maintenance and upkeep of your equipment, and a myriad of other things you won't even think to consider until you're forced to. You'll find yourself, as we have, counting pennies, tightening purse strings, and cutting costs whenever and wherever you can. There's a reason us homesteaders and farmers become jacks-of-all trades.

In the near future I'll share with you some very specific cost saving efforts we've utilized here on the farmstead. Things like fermenting our animal feed, our DIY greenhouse build, our efforts to raise our own broilers (meat chickens), our DIY goat stanchion build, and lots more. Until then, I'll be sitting here contemplating which kidney I have to sell to buy that new tractor I'm craving....nah....I'll just find a wrench and pull the leaky cylinder off our ancient one here on the farm. Then I'll spend my night watching youtube videos til I know how to rebuild it and fix the leak myself. Sigh...... ;)

Much love,

Jay and the rest of the Grounding Roots Farm gang ~