12/16/2025
This is truth: (copied from another page)
The Fight Is No Longer Everywhere at Once
Being a true stockman isn’t about never losing an animal.
It’s about standing in the middle of loss and still showing up with your sleeves rolled up.
For a long time, the fight was everywhere at once.
Every morning meant triage—who was down, who was fading, who needed saving right now. Babies too cold. Does crashing. Goats seizing. The kind of chaos that doesn’t let your nervous system rest because if you blink, someone dies.
And in the middle of that, there are names that stay with you.
Sweet pea.
Beef.
Ralphie.
If love alone could save them- we would never have a single loss.
There’s the littles that came too early, on nights it was too cold.
That’s the truth of it. No poetry can soften that fact.
I warmed their bodies anyway—because around here, you’re not dead until you’re warm and dead. I felt the buckling’s ears and legs, swollen from frostbite, and hoped he hadn’t suffered. I saw that the doeling never even made it out of her sack—gone before her mother could save her. And as brutal as that sounds, there was a strange mercy in not finding them alive. Because saving them would have meant days of fighting frostbite, infection, amputations, and hard decisions no one should have to make when their heart is already worn thin.
That’s a truth stockmen don’t say out loud often:
Sometimes the kindest thing is that the fight ends before it turns into another war.
A true stockman knows the smells.
There’s the normal smell of a barn.
And then there’s that smell—the septic smell. The one that tightens your chest before your brain catches up. The smell that says something inside is failing. You don’t need a textbook to recognize it. Your body knows.
Just like you know the sound of death cries.
Not panic. Not pain exactly.
But the quiet begging—to be held, to be close, to not be alone.
And so you sit with them.
You let your breathing slow until theirs does.
You tell them it’s okay to stop fighting.
That’s not weakness.
That’s responsibility.
People think strength is saving everything.
It isn’t.
Strength is loving them anyway.
From the day they’re born—or the day you bring them home—until the day they leave this earth. Strength is knowing when to fight like hell, and when to provide comfort and dignity because the fight has already been fought.
Right now, the farm is quieter.
Not empty—quiet.
The babies are close to the house.
The boers are contained where they can be seen at a glance.
The chaos is giving way to routine—heated water, full bellies, animals screaming for grain because they feel good, not because they’re dying.
For the first time in months, I’m not waking up to disaster.
And that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the ones I lost.
It means the fight is no longer everywhere at once.
Louise.
Brick.
Exodus.
You didn’t lose because you weren’t loved.
You were loved fiercely—right to the end.
And that is what it means to be a true stockman.
Sometimes… the support we need isn’t just ‘I need help, what’s the dose for… sometimes it’s knowing that we aren’t alone and this is a place where we can gather to support the ups and downs. I just feel like someone here needs to hear this today and know- there’s tough years and you’re not alone. You did the best you knew how, you’ll do better next time, and still getting that lump in your throat when you read a story like this and that one face comes vivid in your mind- doesn’t make you weak 💙
*copied from a goat emergency page because it’s too good to not share. I know this all too well*
