Life & Death on the Farm

When there are animals, there is life and sadly, sometimes there is death. 2020 has been our greatest year of loss thus far. A mink decimated a dozen turkey poults in Summer of 2019 and 49 hens in Early 2020, just when the hens were starting to lay. Trapper could not catch the critter and neither could we, so the mink still lives and we are patching up pens.

A year-old beef cow got a disease and died; Cornell University and the Vet sent us a big bill, but we still lost the cow. We cleaned up and disinfected the corral area and continue on.

Chris (a new venture!) came and set up pregnant sows in a prepared pen--11 piglets born the other week and now some dead as perhaps the mamma is lying on some piglets.

We've had animals die in previous years, but never as many as this year. Makes us wonder if we should order baby chicks, but we already ordered 100 pullet chicks for second week in March and will order broiler chicks in May for June butchering. We know that if we give up, nature will have won, death will have won, and we don't want to give up that easily. But it is discouraging!

Death can make us mourn and grieve, or sometimes we can get callous to drive away the feelings. When we don't have answers in life, we do have Someone to whom we can take our concerns and our feelings, and that brings us joy in living.

Should I share that the same month of all these deaths, our hot water heater died. Sometimes as we say "When it rains, it pours!"