It’s nearly March and I am crawling to the finish line of winter! I was told to be productive inside the house over the winter; to avert the general misery of the winter season! This was good advice and I’ve distracted myself by working on a furniture flipping business. In my last few posts, I shared how my dreams of creating a ‘homestead’ were becoming limited to virtually impossible by our limited resources…money! So this led me down a track of praying and asking God “how can I help to bring in some revenue…somehow…to support this vision?!” and this is what has transpired. So here I am, led down this avenue of restoring good quality furniture back into something quite beautiful. Time will tell if this is going to fund a new flock of hens or colony of bees (if mine have transpired not to have survived the winter!).
One of my dreams is to own a dairy cow.My reasoning is, If it’s good enough for Jack and the Beanstalk, then it’s good enough for me?Minus the giant. And whilst we are on the subject of ancient British ways of life; why is it, I ask, that further back in English history, it was the rural poor who had the open fire, the cow, the chickens and the stone cottage in the countryside?? These days, we could only dream of having these so called ‘luxuries’?!
I did some maths once and worked out we spend about £1000 a year on dairy products. So over three years, you should get most of your money back, no?
But yes, yes, keeping a cow is not that simple, i hear you cry.
I know…
My family on the maternal side have always been farming folk. My great uncle started Longley Farm, which now produce the best yoghurts and cream you can buy. Great uncle Joseph and his brother brought in Jersey cattle to their farm which give the creamiest mink among the ‘bovine community’. They then benfitted greatly from producing their own milk and cream during the rationing period of the second world war. My two cousins once removed own their own cows and my next door neighbour is a retired dairy farmer. Yet, even with all these seasoned farmers around me, most people have a negative slant on keeping cows. They tell me that its just too tiring and laborious. You can’t go on holiday, you have to get up every day, twice a day, to milk. It would be too much!
For a normal person, this would discourage and make one throw down such an idea. Yet for some reason, these pleas are like a red rag to a bull.
I am not completely foolish though…I have prayed and asked the Lord to send someone to help me with this dream.
Enter my Dad…who keeps threatening, much to my Mums horror, to buy a cow?! Maybe he is inspired by Jeremy Clarkson? Who knows, but great minds do think alike! And my Dad did used to work in a dairy farm. Hmm, we shall see how it all unfolds!
Bye for now!