Social media is full of homestead photos—the golden sunsets, baby animals, tidy barns, and smiling faces. And those moments are real. They’re beautiful. They’re worth celebrating.
But there’s another side of homesteading that doesn’t always make it into a perfectly framed picture.
The hard days.
The quiet losses.
The moments that remind you that when you choose this life, you choose all of it.
Losing livestock is never easy. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing this or how many animals you’ve cared for.
It hurts every time. In the beginning there are often tears, that heavy lump in your throat, the disbelief that something so alive yesterday is suddenly gone.
As time goes on, people sometimes assume you become heartless. That you stop caring. But that isn’t true at all.
You don’t care less—you just learn how to keep going.
You learn that sometimes you can do everything right. You can research, prepare, check, double-check, worry, and pray… and still lose an animal.
That’s one of the hardest truths of homesteading. Life doesn’t always bend to effort or intention.
Recently, we lost our Mr. White Goodmen.
He wasn’t the goat that came running for pets or scratched his head against your leg. In fact, he made it very clear that humans were more of an inconvenience than a source of affection. He’d give you that look—the one that said you were interrupting his important goat business—and move on with his day.
But he was a handsome buck. Strong. Striking. Exactly who he was meant to be.
And he will be missed.
Homesteading isn’t just about growth and abundance. It’s also about learning to hold gratitude and grief at the same time. About loving deeply, even when you know loss is part of the deal.
This is one of those days we don’t post cute pictures.
But it’s still part of our story.
Rest easy, Mr. White Goodmen. 🤍
#HomesteadLife #nevereasy #mjbackyardingwithkids #monday #havetosaygoodbye
Backyarding And Kids 
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