If You Have Livestock, You Will Have Deadstock | Jan 8, 2025 002
Welcome to another episode of the Farmstead Revival. I'm Janelle Anderson, and I'm joined by my cohost, Trudi Skedsvold, who happens to be my baby sister. So glad that you guys are joining us. Let's get into it. This week's episode is talking all about livestock, but basically on one part of it.
Janelle:It. And that is if you have livestock, you're going to have dead stock. And I think that's something that people need to know.
Trudi:And prepare themselves.
Janelle:Yeah. Either beforehand, or if you have livestock already on your farm, your homestead, this is just something that you are going to face and maybe you've already faced it. And if that's you, make sure that you leave us a comment either on our Instagram, send us an email because we'd love to talk about this with people. Because I think we glamorize what we're doing, and if we're raising our own food, if we're raising livestock here on our farms, and we don't talk necessarily about the bad stuff, the hard stuff.
Trudi:I believe I believe that, for people, it's almost like it's almost like you did something wrong if something dies. Like
Janelle:And, I mean, so let's just be honest. Sometimes, yes.
Trudi:Sometimes things do happen. Yes. But sometimes it's not your fault and stuff happens, or sometimes
Janelle:We know that with life. Right? With life, there has to also be death. And so at some point, you are going to deal with the death of animals that you have brought onto your farm. And so we're just gonna talk into that this time, at this time.
Janelle:So, Trudy, what what is a situation that you have faced with an animal if that you can remember that was just so poignant? But what did you learn from it and all of that kind of stuff?
Trudi:Well, I this actually brings to mind. We had we had brought a dairy cow, home. She was a Holstein cow. Her name was Ruby. We got her from a a lady that had a small dairy.
Trudi:She had 3 quarters. She had one that had gotten mastitis and then didn't work properly anymore. So she was a 3 teeter. That's what we call her. 3 quartered cow is.
Trudi:Well, we call her, I call her a 3 teeter. Okay. We can, we can name it whatever we want to name it.
Janelle:Okay. This, I'm just going to put this caveat in here. This is where Janelle will always be like technical and Trudy will just be like how normal people that farm just talk about stuff.
Trudi:Blunt to the point. So that's just the way that it is.
Janelle:So you had a 3 quarter cow.
Trudi:Okay. And so she ended up she was we ended up getting her bread and she no. She actually was bread when we got her. And so we ended up with May Daisy. We ended up with Daisy was her calf.
Trudi:She grew up and then we had gotten her bread and then we had her calf, which we then named Maisie. So, Daisy had Maisie.
Janelle:Wait and not be confusing.
Trudi:Yes. So Ruby had Daisy and Daisy had Maisie. So Daisy, ended up, she was up at the barn and, and I had seen her up at the barn and she was laying down and she was next to the barn. And so I looked at her and I was like, oh, you know, she was laying down, whatever. And so then I went and went and did my chores and all of the things and then the next day I guess it didn't really click in my head.
Trudi:And sometimes that's that's what's really sad is you can be prepared as much as you wanna be prepared. I'm a little bit more prepared now and I kind of pay a lot more attention because of the things that have happened in my life. You learn from those things and I think that's a good thing to learn. I saw her laying again and I just figured that she was just laying down.
Janelle:She, but I didn't different spot.
Trudi:She was in, she was into close to the same spot she was the day before, but it didn't click in my head. It didn't look, it didn't raise any alarms. It didn't look weird. So then the next day when I came back up there, I finally was like, you know, I've seen her here for 2 days. I don't understand what's going on.
Trudi:Like, why is she still, why is she favorite place to lay is right here? So I went over and I investigated and I realized that her leg, so on the barn doors on pole barns, they have a bar that keeps the doors from coming forward. Well, her leg had gotten in between the bar, so her back leg was stuck in that bar, so she couldn't get up. And so I then realized what was going on. I went and got Eric immediately.
Trudi:We worked to get her unstuck. We borrowed the neighbors. Well, first off, we got her unstuck. We brought her in the barn into the barn. We set her up.
Trudi:She she kept falling over. She couldn't sit herself up because she was leaning Yeah. Up against the barn. And so that point, she was obviously thirsty. We got her water.
Trudi:We got her food. We got her situated. We put a bail behind her so she wouldn't fall over, a square bill we had put behind her.
Janelle:So you had her so she would be sitting sternal. Right? So if you don't know what sternal means, it means, like, if you ever go see a cow out in a field that's, like, sitting there chewing its cud, that's called sternal. It's where their head is over the front of their chest, and they're just relaxed like that, laying correctly. Right.
Janelle:Not on
Trudi:their side. No. Because on their side means that they don't have a long time to lay on their side before they end up dying. Loading
Janelle:and Right.
Trudi:Absolutely. So we had called the neighbor. He had, the hip bars, I think is what it what is it? A hip lift? Hip lift, I think it is.
Trudi:Because he had had milk cows at one time. And so we borrowed that, and then we had used a frontal, lift too. So we lifted her up. And so what we would do is we would take care of her every day. So we go out there.
Trudi:She couldn't get up on her own. So we would go out there. We would lift her up. We'd feed and water her. Make sure she had food and water.
Trudi:And we would have her stand up for a certain amount of time. We would do a I think it was, like, twice or 3 times in a day just to make sure that she was getting up. Mhmm. And then we would lay her back down for the night. We put that bail behind her so she couldn't roll over and lay flat and then and, you know, have that happen to her.
Trudi:Unfortunately, she must have decided that she wanted to get up. And so one of I think we had her she was there for 2 like, a week. I think it was a week. It was a week that she was like that. I and I think that we just were really hoping that she would come out of it and she would be okay because, really, she hadn't hurt herself per se, but she just had been sitting in that one spot for so long.
Trudi:We came up and she must have tried to get up, and so she pushed that bail out of the way, and then she was laying flat exactly the way that we didn't want her to lay. So obviously, by that point, she was gone. And so that was a really hard thing to take in because we raised her from a baby all the way up to having her own baby. Thankfully, her mother had taken her baby so that we didn't have to, bottle feed her, but it just was a hard thing to learn. And I think we both me and Eric both learned from that point was
Janelle:What are some of the yeah. I was gonna say, what are some of the things that, like, now you know that we would
Trudi:Check, double check, and triple check because Yeah. It may look normal at first glance, and you may not notice that something's wrong. But I always every animal that's out there right now, every morning, I go and I look at every single animal. I look at their legs. I look at their sides.
Trudi:I look at their butts. And and there's a reason is because you just never know animals are animals. They're eventually going to get hurt. And when they do, you want to be on top of it and you want to be prepared to be able to take care of
Janelle:it. So observation is the first thing. So I always tell people that my best advice that I can give you, if you are going to have livestock, is get a bucket. And what that means is make sure that every day you don't per se need to take a bucket, but the thought is, is you go put a bucket out by where you are, where your livestock are, and you sit down and you observe them for not even just 5 minutes. I mean like 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes as long as you can spare to sit out there and just observe them and make sure that you are watching them.
Janelle:And also to go a step further with milk cows, I always tell people, especially when their cows are in milk, is that every day, even if you're not milking them, which we'll get into kind of stuff like that, but milk your cows every day, just so you know, but get your hands on your cow, on their udder, making sure that you're checking it, you're looking for signs. And so that is the first thing that we would tell people, right, Trudy, is that you need to be observing your animals closely every single day because that kind of observation is going to save you in the long run where you can intervene if you need to. But you'll catch things sooner and you can maybe right the ship that's already going down. But unfortunately, like you shared that Daisy ended up where she ended up dying is that in this lifestyle that we are living, is that if you have livestock, be prepared because you will always have dead stock at some point. And you can do everything right, and you can still have dead stock.
Janelle:You can do things wrong and have dead stock. There's many ways to get to dead stock, but it is just a part of this lifestyle, and it's one that we don't like. Like, I don't know anybody who's like, oh, man. I hope I have animals that die today. Nobody likes that.
Janelle:Or people,
Trudi:you know, sometimes people that don't live in the industry of animals or being around animals. I think that they they think that we're just we're just so hard and that it really doesn't bother us anymore.
Janelle:And to
Trudi:an to an extent, it it it's not as, I guess, traumatic, but it's still very sad. Like, it's an animal that had a life. It had a purpose, and and now it's gone. So, I mean, that's the that's my take on it.
Janelle:Do you think at some part, though, that us personally, like, we can say that it doesn't us as deeply as people maybe who are newer to this lifestyle, and I think it's
Trudi:because of how we grew up.
Janelle:Like we experience this from young ages. I've seen animals, whether they got to the end of their life, their purpose was to provide us with food for for our family, and we were part of that whole process, and so we saw it. Do you think that that's maybe why it doesn't I don't want to say it doesn't affect us because we're grateful, we're thankful, and if it happens where it's like an emergency and it's a bad, then Right.
Trudi:That's traumatic. Died. That's traumatic.
Janelle:I mean, it's still hard.
Trudi:Right.
Janelle:But do you think it doesn't affect us as much because we've we've been through it before with different animals?
Trudi:Absolutely. Because my kids are exactly the same way. They have been involved in in in a lot of things on the on the place even in North Dakota and stuff. So they've been around animals that have been sick. They've been around the animals that we've lost or we've had to put down.
Trudi:And so I think that them being involved in that actually prepares them for having to deal with that as in their adult life. I mean, I absolutely think that it is exactly like us growing up and having to deal with all of those things and figuring it out.
Janelle:Do you know, I remember when one of the things growing up is when mom had that horse and it wasn't dusky. So my mom had bought this horse, that was a sibling to another horse that we had called Socks and she bought it for Christmas. And so Christmas morning there was this horse with a big ribbon on it and a bow. It was like the cutest thing. And so she ended up eventually sending that horse off to get some training under it, and it came home.
Janelle:And that same weekend it came home, something ran it through barbed wire, and it cut up one of its tendons. And the vet had to come out, and it was
Trudi:and put
Janelle:it put
Trudi:it down.
Janelle:And ended up putting it down because the injury was so horrific. There was no coming back from it. But I remember watching my mom walk through that, and I'm not saying she handled it like she handled it in the way that she could have. She loved this animal. She invested in it, and it had just come back and it ended up going like down and having to be put down.
Janelle:And so I just, I remember being whatever age and that just like struck me as watching someone having to deal with an animal that there was not preventable. It was an accident that happened.
Trudi:Yeah. Absolutely. What
Janelle:would you go ahead.
Trudi:No. I was just gonna say, I think you, I think you don't remember correct correctly about socks because the man who bred dusky, which is the one that that was on was on his place, he actually gave socks Oh,
Janelle:he gave mom.
Trudi:Oh, yeah. To mom because she had lost dusky in the way that she lost. And so there was just a little bit of light at the end of that dark tunnel. So, I mean, I thought that was really cool. And we had socks.
Trudi:We had socks and I mean, my kids learned how to ride on socks. So I mean, we had her for years, so just wanted to put that up there.
Janelle:Let's talk about socks and flick up and all that. No,
Trudi:not right now. No. Horses will be a different whole thing.
Janelle:That could be a whole story. Okay. So what would you, what is your best piece of advice that you could give to someone who didn't grow up like we did, who didn't experience that full life cycle of an animal and dealing with it, is there a piece of advice that you could offer them to help them be prepared for that? Or is it just understanding that it's going to happen?
Trudi:I think, understanding that the animal has a purpose of of either feeding your family or, bringing joy. Bringing joy. Bringing joy. I mean, yeah. Absolutely.
Trudi:But we also, as caretakers of these animals who who are under our care and can't take care of themselves, we also have to think of the hard things and doing what's right. And so we don't wanna let them suffer and and have to be with that. I think that, I think that I would say sometimes you maybe disconnect yourself just a little bit because it is hard. But you you have to realize that it's I don't know how to explain it. It's just it's a way of life.
Trudi:Like, they have to you have to take the responsibility of this animal's in your care, and you have to be able to do the hard things. And so if you're not capable of doing that, then animals probably aren't for you. I I mean, that's the nicest way to say it. If you can't if you can't do the hard stuff, if you can't do the hard stuff, then you probably should not enter into that to begin with.
Janelle:Yeah. Yep. So we had, this past year in 2024, we had a pregnant cow that something happened, couldn't have prevented it. She went down, she ended up busting her hip. We didn't know for sure if she did.
Janelle:And she was just within a couple of days of calving and she ended up calving on her own, pushing this baby out. And we had to make that decision to put her down because we had tried to lift we had lifted her like you, you guys did as well because just so you know, a down cow, if you do not get it up within a certain amount of hours, you are more than likely going to have a dead cow. And so just so you guys know that it's it's really It's
Trudi:all that it's all that gravity and weight on their intestines and stuff. It's a lot.
Janelle:If they weigh a little bit less, you have a better chance of them being able to get up even after a prolonged time being down, but the heavier they are, it does. It just it weighs on them, and they're not laying correctly and all the other things going on. Anyway, we ended up having to make the decision because this cow was not going to recover to actually, put her down. And we also had to make the decision because we hadn't given her any kind of medicine at that point that, that we wouldn't have wanted to consume, that our best way to do this was to also not waste that cow. And we ended up processing her ourselves here on the farm.
Janelle:And so that was a really difficult decision. We had to weigh all the pros and all the cons of even processing her ourselves, or did we just dispatch her and then dispose of her body somewhere?
Trudi:And in that circumstances, it it's it's a lot of quick decisions. You have to make decisions quickly because Yep. It can go either way quickly.
Janelle:And you don't want the animal to suffer. No. So we had tried, you know, she had had that calf. We had milked her out for at least a day, like, on the ground, getting the colostrum out for the calf, bottle feeding the calf. And we just had to come to the decision that she was not going to recover and that we needed to do what was best for her, which was to end her suffering.
Janelle:But in that, like, we learned a lot of things. Not only did we process our first cow ourselves here on our farm, we, we learned those invaluable skills. But we it's also a teaching moment. We get to talk to people about that, that we had to come to a point of culling this cow. And that also leads us to the next point, which is stewarding well these, these animals and being able to make those hard decisions.
Janelle:I have a quote that I like to say to people all the time and it's not readily loved or received, but it's breed the best, eat the rest. And one of the reasons I say that is because not every single animal that you bring home should be a breeding animal and should stay on your farm. And with that caveat is we do not pass on problem animals to other people either. Like that's something that I want to just stress so importantly that sometimes we need to call an animal because they don't fit, their behavior is bad. Maybe they have some really bad traits that we don't pass be passed on.
Janelle:And so, yeah, you have to prepare yourself for that.
Trudi:I back in North Dakota, when we had our bison herd, we would so when we first started, there was, there was a few bison cows. They would eat you for lunch if they were given the chance. And for them to be able to do that, like, I mean, you have to be careful with bison and to begin with, but they were they would eat you for lunch. And so we ended up culling those cows. We ended up culling them after they calved.
Trudi:We had their calves, but none of them turned out to be like that. So, I mean, under that circumstance, you you can you can guess that their care their characteristics of aggression aggression are going to to turn out the way that you think they're going to. But sometimes I don't think that they do. So I would say that sometimes me and Janelle don't agree on 100% of everything. I I say, like, breeding breeding confirmation and stuff like that.
Trudi:Absolutely. I would say do not let them carry on. If they're if they have something that's wrong with their breeding or care like, their confirmation, I would say absolutely get rid of them. But I feel like their attitude in the way that they are, I would say that sometimes it's learned. So if some For sure.
Janelle:If they're not handled necessarily think that you should just cull a calf that's born out of a nasty cow. Like, she better be a bad mom. She better not have very good milk. She better have a blind quarter, like lots of other reasons.
Trudi:She she gives them second chances.
Janelle:I don't give cows that are
Trudi:No, no, no, no. Calves, calves. You give second chance.
Janelle:There's definitely something, but there are things that we can talk in an episode about that for me are just no bueno will not keep that cow or whatever. But
Trudi:no, I will, I will, I will say that we, we have called cows for confirmation and just mothering if they didn't take their calf or whatever else happens. So I totally 100% agree with that.
Janelle:But Yeah. Nasty cows are a good reason to call. They're not worth keeping. No. Even getting hurt.
Trudi:And especially if you have small, or if you have children on your place that are either doing chores or around that I would definitely get rid of them ASAP because you don't want any part of that.
Janelle:No, no. I think, cows are responsible for 30 percent of the deaths that happen on farms. And so you gotta be careful. They're big, big animals. And so I always say that temperament is my first thing that I look for in, if we're talking cattle.
Janelle:And if, if they are not good temperament, they go. Like we didn't used to be like that. We used to keep cows that were nasty because they raised a really nice calf or they were great mothers, all the things of reasons to keep them. Now we are smaller. We are moving these cows every single day.
Janelle:Our, our kids are by our side with it. It is not worth it. So if you are in a smaller farm, a homestead, I don't care actually, if you're on a big ranch, like protect yourself, protect your family. Like I would have a very hard time forgiving myself if I had a cow here that was nasty, and I kept her because she raised a nice calf.
Trudi:And it doesn't even just pertain to someone. Right. And it doesn't even just pertain to cows. It can come to pigs. It can come I mean, obviously chickens are totally different stories.
Janelle:Well, no roosters.
Trudi:Roosters. Okay.
Janelle:You got a fab rooster.
Trudi:Right. But any animal in aspect, I mean, you just, you just need to know when to get rid of them. When is when is enough and shouldn't take much to understand when is enough.
Janelle:Yeah. So I also think another thing that actually I've had quite a few conversations with people, who, again, didn't maybe have our background, didn't, weren't raised up with animals and all of the things that you deal with with that, that really struggle with, processing the animal when it comes time. Not that an accident happened, but they, like, they're raising it for a meat source and it comes time to process that animal and have a really hard time doing that.
Trudi:I will, I will say that I there's a couple of times in my life. I am one of those people that go out and they befriend every single animal that they meet.
Janelle:So here, here, we got to just break in. My sister is an animal whisperer. My husband is also an animal whisperer. I just want you to know that, but my sister is that also, like, I don't know of a single animal where she's not been able to at least have,
Trudi:I think with cat one time
Janelle:that you didn't have a
Trudi:Chloe. Remember Jenny's cat slapped me in the bed in the head would attack me every time I walked by. But that was the only animal.
Janelle:She was an animal whisper minus Chloe.
Trudi:Yeah. Okay. One animal. But no, I will say that I I really enjoy just being around the animals. So, I mean, back in North Dakota, I would tame all of the bison calves that were in our feedlot.
Trudi:Like, I would go down and I would feed them grass and tame them. I'm not gonna lie that that absolutely helps sorting 100%. We didn't have to worry about them eating us for breakfast. I mean, they were a lot calmer because they were used to me being up there. And then, then now here we have all of these animals that are super tame.
Trudi:And I mean, granted, I just picked up a horse from the auction that's not super tame and tries to bite me, but that's a different story. He he obviously was not taken care of. And then you're gonna have those circumstances too where you have an animal that you pick up that doesn't have a kind background of humans and the understanding that you are there to help or to be helpful. Like, I Yeah. You're gonna find that.
Janelle:So could you offer any advice? I mean, I this is where it's really hard because we are coming from such a different background, but people just really sometimes have a hard time processing their animals when it comes time to it. I I And since you you're I would say that you are a little bit more of a, softhearted towards animals than I am. No. I didn't mean that.
Janelle:There's nothing wrong with it, but I I want you to speak into this, what you would do if you came to that point where you couldn't process it yourself because, like, that's not something that I normally struggle with. And so I
Trudi:So stories. I mean, this is what we are all about is telling stories from our life that that coincides with what we're talking about. So I had this bison bull that I absolutely loved. I named him Buddy the bull because he I would call him I remember Buddy. And he would come running and I would give him grain and he was like this massive bull.
Trudi:He was prob he actually was like £2,000. He was huge. It came the day where Buddy wouldn't stay in anymore. He was jumping out of the fences. He was going wherever the heck Buddy wanted to go.
Trudi:It was just not a good thing. And so we ended up having to make the decision to call him. We we we never shot the bison bulls or bison ourselves. We would call our neighbor. And so our neighbor
Janelle:Okay. Another word for that would be dispatch. Dispatching. Remember Janelle's technical terms, Trudy's Sorry. No.
Janelle:You don't have to be sorry. I think that this is what makes this interesting. Like we have 2 different perspectives and 2 different ways that we talk about things. Go ahead.
Trudi:Yeah. Janelle So
Janelle:the neighbor
Trudi:Janelle's more formal. Okay. Let's see.
Janelle:The neighbor came over.
Trudi:The neighbor, he would come over, and he would he would, take care of them for us. So and he came, and he took care of Buddy. And that was just I couldn't be up there for that one. I couldn't because I had spent a lot of time with him and it was just hard. I will say that there I had been up there for plenty of other ones.
Trudi:I never actually helped them skin any of the bison calves. I will say Eric would help with that. And then we recorded them and I would bring them into the butcher shop. But that was a, that was a hard one. I mean, there is certain circumstances where I believe that I just couldn't do it, but there has been, there has been times where I've had to do it.
Trudi:I was Yeah. The only option and I had to do it. And you just kinda
Janelle:Yeah. So you would suggest that if you have to outsource it.
Trudi:Mhmm. Absolutely. Out yourself.
Janelle:If you're struggling with it, outsource it. So what would you say to someone who was going to outsource it and they're struggling to even, like, make the appointment? To ask?
Trudi:Don't be ashamed. I mean, we we did say in the beginning that if you're not able to do it yourself, then maybe you shouldn't take on the responsibility of having the animals. But if you have a good community where you can ask for help and get that person to help you. I mean, most of the times, you don't take care of them out out in the field. I mean, most of the times, you bring them into the butcher shop, and then they, they dispatch themselves.
Janelle:That actually brings up a really good point is that I, I think one of the ways that will help you if you are struggling to process one is I have a friend who very much was struggling to make the date for a steer that her and her husband were raising, to be processed. And it took her a long time to get to the point to make that appointment. But the reason that she felt so good about it, I think after the fact is they ended up using a mobile They're not everywhere, but if you can find someone that can come to your property, like Trudy said, and can help you process that animal, or you are there with it, it it makes you feel honestly, I feel so much better knowing that this animal didn't have to go in a trailer to an unfamiliar place. And it is okay that that happens. Like, you do that.
Trudi:I had to walk Austin's 4 h steer. Elves. Yeah. Yeah. I had to walk that steer into the butcher shop, and I felt terrible.
Janelle:Yes. So no.
Trudi:I absolutely. If you can get them to come to you, I feel like there's less stress on the animal. I feel like the I mean, all of that all of that probably is not good, I would say, for the animal.
Janelle:There's adrenaline, and that can be into the meat. We can talk about a time where we know where that happens. Uh-huh. Absolutely. A bit.
Janelle:Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So don't be afraid to do something like that. And I I'm gonna give her a shout out.
Janelle:I won't say her name, but I think what's so encouraging to me is that I know that she got to a place where she could make that appointment and have that mobile butcher come there. But I watched her get the, the leaf, the leaf, fat off of this, this steer that they had harvested there. And I just thought it was so incredible that she got to the point where she was in there. She was putting her hands on this deer that she had raised, and she was harvesting it. And that was an act of respect by her being able to do that.
Janelle:So even making yourself get to that point where yes, it's hard, but like knowing you are respecting that animal by using it completely. I think that was just the coolest thing for me to see.
Trudi:Yeah. And caring for it all the way up into that point until that point, I think, is a big deal. And having yep. Absolutely. Having respect for that animal.
Janelle:Here is the part of the podcast where Trudy and I ask each other a question,
Trudi:and it doesn't have
Janelle:to be with farm related. It can be any question in the world, and they have to answer it. We don't tell each other what the question is before, so this is, like, off the cuff. And it's really interesting to see what each other says. Do you wanna go first this time?
Trudi:Yeah. Absolutely. K. Because I am the baby, and so I get to go first.
Janelle:Yeah. Yeah. Baby problems.
Trudi:Okay. I just had the question in my head and now I don't have it anymore. Oh my God. Hold on. Hold on.
Trudi:Okay. Got it. I got it. I got it. Okay.
Trudi:What is your least favorite animal interaction that you have ever had?
Janelle:So we were, when we were growing up, we went to go visit our grandparents one summer and they took us to a petting zoo, which is really funny because we were living on a farm, but they took us to a petting zoo. And so you could go in there and we were in with the goats, Right? And I was petting this baby goat and they're so cute. Baby goats are like adorable. And anyway, all of a sudden this mom, her the baby's mom decided to come run at me and she had horns and she went through my legs to get to her baby and scraped up my legs.
Janelle:And so that interaction was probably one of my least favorite that I've ever had.
Trudi:Oh my gosh. That sounds terrible.
Janelle:And I love goats, but I kinda don't like them because I think that, I think that soured me a little bit.
Trudi:I don't blame you.
Janelle:Yeah. All right. So next question is for you. And what's the one thing that you are most proud of achieving?
Trudi:Oh gosh.
Janelle:Or what is one No.
Trudi:I I got I got it.
Janelle:Oh, okay.
Trudi:One thing I'm super proud of is that my kids I have raised my kids the way that I have raised them. I feel like they have a good sense of the world and kind of what it it has to offer, and they choose to not always accept all of the things that they're offering. I think that raising them on raising them the way that we have has made them I mean, we homeschooled them. So, I mean, they they learned a lot more from us in living on the place than they would have in school. I mean, I I think that's a big thing, and I just really am happy to be able to kind of mold them into the adult that they are or turning into be.
Trudi:I mean, Austin's almost 14. So, I mean, you kinda are starting to see all of those things that you put into them coming out and just developing. And I think it's a it's an I'm very proud of it. I'm not saying that I did all the work myself, obviously, because Eric is a good father as well. So it wasn't just me.
Trudi:But I I do I do believe that our kids are kind of like my kids are my biggest achievement, and seeing how they turn out and how they may end up is gonna be an amazing thing to see.
Janelle:That's awesome. Love that. That was a good one. All right. Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of the farmstead revival.
Janelle:Make sure that you follow us on whatever streaming source that you are listening to us through as well as find us over on Instagram, the farmstead revival. If you have any questions that you would like us to answer, please pop those in a DM. Email us at, hello at janelle@thehaven.com. Eventually, we'll get a an email for this podcast, but we're so grateful that you gave us your ears and your time, and we hope that you found value in this. We'll see you next week as we drop a new episode.
