Things They Tell You
The older I get, the more I realize that most of what I’ve been told or have read about raising animals wasn’t applicable in my situation — and, I bet, in many situations. Sometimes, the information is offered in a dogmatic way, perhaps to make it readily reproducible and easier to master than a more openminded approach. There’s also the one-size-fits-all syndrome, which makes book writing easy but falls short of helping folks adapt to variability and change. And when applying a fixed set of rules to your homesteading approach, frustration, fear, and even failure are likely to follow. For example, chicken keepers are encouraged to prevent their hens from going broody. Sure, you might not want more mixed-sex chicks running around, but anyone with a free-range setup is liable to…