Our Top Homesteading Fails | 1 Year on the Homestead!

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Honoring our 1 year anniversary of moving to our home last April, I thought it would be just hilarious to look back on all the things we probably should have done differently. Now that we are 1 year old homesteaders, we are older and wiser and can look back on these (stressful) moments and laugh. Hopefully these anecdotes can help other homesteaders, new or seasoned, from making the same mistakes we did.

1. Bringing home goats with no place to put said goats.

I feel like this is probably the #1 theme of my life. Taking home animals without any planning happens a lot for me. All my life. I’m not a very patient person and I also want what I want, when I want it. I’ve definitely gotten better about this, knowing the amount of stress it brings. But when we first moved in, I wanted ALL the animals.

Like the time we brought home 2 goats.

Did we have a place for the goats? No. They were going to go in our chicken run until we built a pen for them. So, I brought them home in the back of my car and put them into the chicken run. Well, the chicken run had a 5′ tall lattice fence. The goats promptly jumped over the fence without even touching it.

I never even considered goats would try so desperately to get out of a 5′ tall fence. Well, they were bottle fed, and the previous owner allowed them in her house (which I didn’t know when I took them). So every time the goats escaped, they ran up to the porch and PAWED at the door. They would scream and cry until I came out and sat with them.

I frantically called sellers off Craigslist ads offering goat panels and fencing and arranged for a guy to bring over a $700 goat corral. Could I afford a $700 goat corral? Not really. Did I know for a fact that it would keep the goats in? No. The fence guy ended up flaking anyways so I ended up not having to fork over the funds thankfully.

What the heck was I doing? I called the previous owner of the goat who surrendered them due to some family issues. She admitted she missed the goats dearly and happily took them back. I’ve never loaded goats into my car so quickly.

If we ever get goats again we will have proper fencing set up and look into goats that aren’t so acrobatic…

2. Don’t buy rando chickens off Craigslist.

This post also might just turn into why I hate Craigslist so much. I don’t think I’ve ever had a good Craigslist experience. But especially with anything animal related. Look, just don’t do it. Even if you think something is legit and the person makes it sound legit, theres a high chance it is very non-legit.

Like the time I found an ad for Ameraucana chicks. The ad specifically noted how these were “NOT easter eggers” and were “Pure Ameraucanas”. Ok, that a good sign, at least they knew the difference. Normally sellers will call them Ameraucanas but what you are really getting is a mixed breed chicken that lays a blue or green egg (commonly known as an Easter Egger). I texted the number to confirm these were, indeed, Ameraucanas and asked what color Ameraucanas they were. The gentleman stated “Wheaten Ameraucanas”. Wow he even knew a real Ameraucana color!

The post also had a pretty professional looking logo, they seemed like a newish farm in the area that was starting to sell chickens. I was pretty excited because if they ended up being cool people, I would have a new place to get my birds from.

So, I pulled up to the “farm” which was a slightly glorified junk yard. Ok, no judgment, maybe they were in the process of cleaning up the place. I asked to see the chicks and asked if they were sexed, to which he replied “Yes, all the chicks in this pen are pullets”. When he brought me over to the chicks I could tell immediately these were not pure Ameraucanas. I was crushed.

I had told him over the text I wanted 4 pullets, so he started boxing them up for me. I looked at all of the chicks trying desperately to determine if there was any way they were NOT Easter Eggers. They were Easter Eggers. I could just tell. They were all different colors and patterns. I was furious. But for whatever reason I handed the man my money and drove off.

Why didn’t I say something? Why did I accept these birds that were clearly NOT what the guy had told me? He was very specific in describing the chicks, so did he truly not know or was he totally scamming people? I will never know. And I will never buy birds from them again.

Oh, and to add insult to injury- 2 of the 4 were roosters. So much for ‘sexed’.

I still see their ads on Craigslist and I laugh every time I see them. I’m never buying chickens off Craigslist again. Besides the terrifying risk of bringing any number of chicken diseases into your flock (which I didn’t really understand in the beginning), I just feel like it’s very rare to find quality animals on Craigslist. I have major trust issues now LOL.

3. Don’t drill into your telephone line and water line in the same day.

We put up a really nice fence in our front yard. We needed our neighbor to help us drill the post holes with his tractor.

We knew roughly where our phone line and water line ran, but what were the chances of hitting a tiny skinny phone wire and a 1″ PVC pipe? Well, for us, it was a 100% chance to hit both back to back.

I was inside minding my own business, because the fence was Dusty’s glory and I wanted nothing to do with it. It was probably about 90 degrees outside too. They were finishing up outside with the tractor and Dusty runs in, “We hit the water line, I had to turn off the water, sorry!!!”. So naturally I just sat there and probably rolled my eyes.

Then, Dusty forgot they had to dig one more hole for the walk-in gate. And on the last post hole, when they thought they were finished, Dusty reported seeing a chunk of wire fly out of the hole as they were drilling. And sure enough, they drilled right on top of the phone line.

How we were able to hit 2 small targets in our acre-large front yard is basically a homestead miracle. We would never be able to repeat it. OR COULD WE?

Yesterday, as a 1 year anniversary activity of fence building failure, we dug more post holes. This time in the back pasture for a new animal enclosure. We managed to hit our septic drainage field in an area we didn’t even know it ran. So there you have it, we are really good at destroying pipes and wires.

4. Bobcats think chickens are really tasty.

If your ultimate homesteading plan is to free-range chickens (mine was), be prepared for maximum chicken death. That’s really dramatic, but literally everything wants to eat chickens. I wouldn’t keep chickens if I wasn’t able to free range them, and in the beginning I couldn’t. Which is why we had to scramble and build the front yard fence – not to keep the bobcats out, but to keep guard dogs in. (The guard dogs, Roy and Dale, were other animals we brought home before having a place for them, see? My life’s theme.)

If I were to start with chickens again, not knowing what horrid cats lurked on the property, I would start slow. I would let the chickens out during the day only when I could supervise them. I would observe. I would probably put up trail cams (these are great if you’re in the market) and check for any predator activity. We didn’t have an enclosed run to put the chickens in, only a small fenced area attached to their coop that opened up to the rest of the yard.

I probably would have kept them in this run with mesh over the top until I knew what predator issues we had and knew how I would approach those issues.

But being excited for chickens and not thinking a family of bobcats would regularly use our front yard as an all you can eat buffet, we lost probably 20-30 chickens over the span of a month or two while we got our sh** together.

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I think our biggest lesson learned is do a lot of planning before executing. Do research. Be prepared. If it’s building a garden, a fence, getting animals, or whatever homesteading project we want to start, we now do a ton of reading and ask others for their input before we run out and buy the supplies.

Sometimes its really hard to be patient and let these projects unfold at a reasonable pace, but it is so much less stressful to be prepared and to feel in control.

It was so hard moving into such an incredible house with land not to dive in head first and start 1000 projects at once. But this homesteading journey has really been a lesson in patience for me.

Dusty and I used to fight because I would want to do something or get an animal and he was the voice of reason that would ask me 1000 questions and tell me we had to wait. I would get so frustrated with him… “Why can’t we run out and get 3 pigs?!?! We can build them an enclosure next weekend!” Because in my head anything was possible. And all these projects are possible, but it’s much smarter to prepare and have everything ready ahead of time so you can feel confident.

We appreciate all our homesteading friends for being interested in our lifestyle and journey and helping us along the way by sharing their experience. Thank you for reading about some of our not-so-stellar experiences as homesteaders, and we are looking forward to many more years of adventures here.