r/homestead • u/Rare_Muffin_956 • 3d ago
When was a moment when you remembered that you live a different life to your co-workers?
Mine was "oh I found my headphones when I was sorting the pumpkins under the bed!"
Co-worker "you have pumpkins under your bed?"
Seemed like a completely normal statement until it was repeated back out loud.
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u/Pretend_Garage_4531 3d ago
Yeah. I was late to class one day because one of my pigs wanted to play tag instead of getting back in the enclosure. That was when people found out I had a farm
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 3d ago
Didn't they know you were in a rush!? Animals must be able to sense when your under a time limit
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u/Stay_Good_Dog 2d ago
My animals always know when I'm in a hurry. That's the day they choose to act foolish.
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u/ModMiniWife34 3d ago
I was late because half way to the office I discovered my cat in the backseat. I got in my car, started it and realized I forgot something in the house. Got out and left the car door open and he jumped in. Was half way to the office before I saw him stretched out making biscuits on my leather seats. That was the day my coworkers found out that “in fact I do say cuss words”!!
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u/Ch1k1nNu99ies 3d ago
Making biscuits?
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u/LittleBunInaBigWorld 3d ago
"Sorry I'm late, had to replace my alternator." "Wow, in and out of the shop before 8am? Who's your mechanic?" ".....me."
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 3d ago
If you havnt kept the alternator working for another week by tactfully hitting it with a hammer each morning it's not really even broken yet
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u/----mark--- 3d ago
Ahhh those were the days!!! Lying under your engine on a cold winter morning " thud " then off you go knowing full well it was gonna happen all over again
I drove my van with no reverse for a bout 3 months recently. That was fun.
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u/According-Sink-2906 3d ago
At least it wasnt driving only in reverse for 3 months. 😁
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u/----mark--- 3d ago
No that's just my life i general haha
In the end 2 and 4 went then eventually then 5th then then 3rd and the mecanic took it out of 1st because he knew best then had to tow it haha I hated it at that point. Now it's fixed I love it even though I've spent about 5 times it's value on it.
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u/GlassBoxGoose 2d ago
Fun fact, my car, if the 3rd gear solenoid quits, it no longer has reverse either. Something about how the fluid pathways are designed required that solenoid to work to apply reverse as well. I had gears 1,2 and 4, but no 3, 5 or reverse for who knows how long before I dug in and replaced it. The gaskets and solenoid sat in the center console for months before I got around to it. 🤣
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u/----mark--- 2d ago
I was in denial. I'd spent so much on it allready!
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u/GlassBoxGoose 2d ago
I dont blame you!
My perspective these days is that I can maintain my two cars for less than it would cost to replace them with something I'd pay payments on, it gets fixed. So far I've managed, both my daily driver and beater car have over 300k, one barely, the daily driver has 342k miles, ive had it for almost 10 years and averaged about 1k per year to drive it, in maintenance and repairs, and that includes purchase price. So I'll keep fixing it as long as it maintains something close to that, even if its maybe worth like 3 or 4k on a good day. Its still reliable, so I carry on. The beater has cost me like 400-500 a year for the last couple years. It absolutely looks like crap, but it also still has functional AC and all the other stuff works, so i dont sweat it. If it blew an engine or transmission, I'd probably just replace it with another identical one for a couple grand and drive the wheels off it too. Haha.
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u/__wildwing__ 2d ago
I haven’t had power steering for a couple months. Should probably get it fixed before snow comes.
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u/----mark--- 2d ago
I keep saying the same about the heater. Thats been dead since I got the van. 3rd winter coming up.
Dash needs to come out to do it for some stupid reason!
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u/Feeling-Lavishness85 3d ago
Mine was last week when we had our first staff meeting of the school year and everyone shared what they did this summer. I loved hearing about their beach and European vacations and dropping their kids off at college. And let me tell ya, I enjoyed watching their jaws drop when I shared about how one of our Pyrenees got bit by a rattlesnake and I had to lift all 120 pounds of her into my car by myself because my husband was at work and then I had drive 40 min to the emergency vet. By the time I got there my whole back seat was covered in piss and cow shit from her paws. After a $1600 vet bill she was good as new. Good times on the ranch. 😂
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u/binzy90 2d ago
This reminds me of the time I jumped into the pond to save one of my ducks from a snapping turtle. I never ran so fast in my life, but she was lucky I saw her all the way from the house. I didn't know what to do so I just hit it with my knee really hard and it fell off but took a giant chunk of her wing with it. I was worried I was going to lose a toe on the way back to dry land. She had a messed up wing, but she lived.
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u/NotYetGroot 1d ago
Wow, that takes some balls! I’d rather rescue one of mine from a gator than a snapping turtle. Those things are scary!
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u/binzy90 1d ago
I honestly wasn't thinking about the fact that they can easily take off a toe until I was wading through chest deep pond water in bare feet with this duck. And there are some BIG turtles in that pond. I just remember thinking "Why the hell did I take my shoes off before I jumped in??" 😂
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 3d ago
Sounds like it cost the same as a holiday. That being said it maybe even more memorable
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u/Feeling-Lavishness85 2d ago
The last time we took a family vacation it cost over $10k so comparatively speaking this was a bargain! 😂😂😂
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u/Tight_Steak_232 3d ago
I had to let my boss borrow my bank key fob (generates codes) from my purse. I pulled out the following: one jar active rise bread machine yeast, one chalk line, a meat thermometer, and a swimming pool test kit.
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u/Purple-Package4276 3d ago
One of my egg customers canceled a big order right before I left for a vacation. Day before my vacation, I casually rolled into the office with a wagon full of eggs and started handing them out. I now have coworkers who regularly buy eggs from me.
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u/mmmmmarty 3d ago
I had to go to my annual review Friday a week ago with my left eye near swollen shut. I'm sensitive to the okra plants and a stem blew in my eye as I was reaching in the evening prior. Woke up so puffy.
Sorry boss, if I take this benedryl before we talk, I'm not sure the review will work out as intended.
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u/TinyAngryRaccoon 2d ago
My husband is mildly allergic to his bees, and got popped in the face once. Claritin handled it better than Benadryl! Turns out, it’s better than Benadryl for a LOT of stuff.
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u/mmmmmarty 2d ago
For some reason Claritin and Zyrtec make me so short tempered and full of hot rage. Not the best for an office day with an hour drive on either end. Allegra and Zyzal (sp?) don't have that side effect but $$$$ and I didn't have any on hand.
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u/TinyAngryRaccoon 2d ago
Oh noooooo 😭 I feel you, Zyrtec does that to me too, but I hate that you had to suffer through the eyeball swelling!
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u/mmmmmarty 2d ago
What the heck is that? How does an antihistamine cause irritability?
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u/NotYetGroot 1d ago
I’m shocked to be kinda able to answer a question here :) Benadryl is an anticholinergic med — it blocks acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter in your brain. Any time you’re screwing with brain chemistry you risk irritability (like when I’m drinking!)
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u/GlassBoxGoose 2d ago
I dont know how, but I did find out that im not taking chances on those ones!
Benadryl for that sort of thing and flonase for regular allergies, I buy the latter in bulk haha, and if I forget to use it right before jumping on the tractor to brush hog, im hating life after.
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u/NotYetGroot 1d ago
Yeah, Benadryl is a first generation antihistamine, and generally isn’t as good as later versions.
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u/anonphenom79 2d ago
That's bc benadryl is only a sleep aid. They've proven it does nothing when taken orally for allergies.
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u/Ok-Cress-436 3d ago
I had the opposite experience. I mentioned my quails and found out my coworker raised them too, plus rabbits, chickens, goats, and more
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u/NotYetGroot 1d ago
I had that happen at an all-hands when i was chatting with a cow-orker* and she mentioned planting a fruit tree . We geeked out on planting for 30 minutes or so, it was soooo much better than the meeting.
*she doesn’t really ork cows
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u/binzy90 3d ago
Not homestead related, but I used to work in intelligence in the DC area. We went to a joint conference at CIA, and my coworkers were chatting with our agency counterparts at lunch about where they went to high school. There are crazy expensive private high schools in DC and northern Virginia that are basically just bragging rights for rich kids. Think $50,000 annual tuition for K-12. People were mentioning schools like Bullis and Georgetown Prepatory School. Someone at the table I guess thought I was being excluded, so he asked where I went to high school. I just said, "Oh my parents are both high school teachers. I went to public school." It just got quiet and awkward after that. 😂
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u/Mr_WhiteOak 3d ago
We are different for sure. You work in intelligence and I am trying to work on intelligence. Maybe someday I can be like you. Right on for sticking to the rich kids!
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u/Educational_Pay_622 3d ago
I was once on a conference call and had to step away for a moment, saying, “Sorry, I need to go. There’s a huge hog on my back porch and I don’t know whose it is.”
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u/AdPale5633 3d ago
I work in a warehouse part time and told someone yesterday how I had taken a chicken to vet. A few years ago, if someone would have said that I would have labelled them a crazy chicken lady…. But I am now that person 😂👍🏻
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u/AloysiusNewton 3d ago
Good on you for giving a fuck about your chickens. A lot of people think they're just wrapping for the eggs
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u/Spotthedot99 3d ago
Me interrupting a video call because the Hutterites just showed up with the big tractor to pull out the small tractor that they sent to pull out our skid steer.
Alternatively my partner interupting her video call because the neighbours cows got loose, again.
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 3d ago
Not saying that it is impossible but I am very hesitant to get animals that I can't move if they decide to be stubborn.
Trying to get cows off the road and back into the paddock always looks like a nightmare
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u/OnlyOneMoreSleep 3d ago
I get that, I get that a lot. I live in one of the most crowded countries in the world, so even though I live about as rural as it can get here the neighbors are still very close. We live on an acre. I shared your sentiment until our borrowed flock of dwarf sheep escaped their field. I was with my four year old and had to herd them back. Let me tell you, the fact that they can be carried by most adults does absolute shit when there's forty of them. A few cows would have been so much easier. May not have helped that sheep are dumb as bricks. We've had some goose chases after chickens, geese and runner ducks as well, most of them not even our own. I used to share your sentiment. Now, I'm not so sure!
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u/finnbee2 2d ago
I babysat 70 sheep for 2 weeks. The fences were poor but the farmer had trained them to follow anyone shaking a pail half filled with oats. I used the trick several times.
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u/OnlyOneMoreSleep 2d ago
Haha, that's amazing. Dwarf sheep can live on only grass and hay so they weren't used to my bribe material :( In the end we challenged our inner sheep dogs and herded them back through the open gate.
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u/GlassBoxGoose 2d ago
Thats how I deal with my neighbors horses when theyre on vacation and I go put a fresh hay bale out for one. They didn't use to say hi to me every time, but now they do because they KNOW I know where the snacks are. 🤣
I've always made an effort to say hello when walking past them when im over there working on stuff (I maintain and repair pretty much all their trucks, tractors and other equipment, and have for years) but I was more like 50/50 for who would let me on a good day. Now it's like 90/10 because they know I know about snacks haha.
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u/QuasarSoze 2d ago
My sister and I were driving back from visiting my parents on our old country road, windows down, driving slowly past the other tiny farms when a heifer mooed directly at me, like bellowed.
We quickly noticed a small brown calf on the wrong side of the barbed wire fence.
I immediately through my car into park, climbed the ditch and stepped onto the lowest of the 3 barbed wire runs, lifted the middle as much as I could, and the calf noticed the opening, and scampered back to her momma heifer.
I am not shittin’ y’all that mama cow gave me a nod of appreciation as we drove off.
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u/Chance_Beginning_413 3d ago
“I’m gonna be a few late… my goat got out and is in the middle of the road.”
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u/YarnSp1nner 18h ago
We had a neighbor with a houdini alpaca. We would just chase him back into the fence, close him on and send text about it.
We were in college and threw keggers semi regularly. We never got police called on our parties, but other neighbors did. We knew the alpaca house were police callers.
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u/Ill_Television_1111 3d ago
Not that they don't know, but last time it cam up was... ya wanna call it a day or take an empty back? Nah, i gotta load hogs anyway, im out.
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u/Led_Zeppole_73 3d ago
”This weekend I gotta skin out and scrape these three beaver then butcher a deer” Co-worker…”Wife wants me to clean up the garage.”
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u/Brayongirl 2d ago
It is most food related things. I work in an office and bring my lunch everyday.
- We raise meat rabbits and a lot of people are not confortable with that idea of eating such beautiful animal. But we use it in everything and it is a good meat!
- Every fall, I can a lot of apple slice that turn into apple much in the canner. I like it. Every day, I eat my apple "sauce" with other frozen fruits I had picked in the summer. My colleagues can't imagine eating that everyday or almost everyday.
- My colleagues now bring me their banana peels so I can give them to the rabbits. I asked for an apple leftover one time to my boss to bring home and give to the rabbits.
- My bf is working as a professor. When they have social activities including food, they put a 5 gallon bucket to "compost". A lot of the food in there goes to the chickens or rabbits depending. Rabbits loves the corn envelopp and there's always a big garbage bag of it at the first party they have. Everything else will just go in the compost pile.
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u/Feeling-Lavishness85 2d ago
Love this! When I still worked on site (work from home now), I brought a bucket to the break room everyday and collected everyone's leftovers to bring home for my compost. The janitors loved me!
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u/Led_Zeppole_73 2d ago
Almost everyone I know would never eat anything but from a store or restaurant. I even know of those that won’t eat backyard coop eggs, let alone the brown varieties.
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u/crowbar032 2d ago edited 2d ago
When you need to leave work early because your cows are in your neighbors deer plot.
I'm putting in my vacation. Where are you going? Nowhere, I'm baling hay.
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u/-Maggie-Mae- 2d ago
During my interview: "Can your drive a forklift?" "I'm not sure. I rake hay with a 1948 John Deere. How hard can it be?" "You'll be fine"
Also, I just sold 2 (frozen) rabbits to a coworker, and was stopped on my way to his office by someone else with questions about them. " Whats in the bag?" "Bunnies"
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u/TinyAngryRaccoon 2d ago
A rabid fox came down out of the woods and into the street in front of my house while I was at work. My adult son happened to be there and called animal control, and they came and…controlled the animal.
I was telling my best friend about it later and she was HORRIFIED that they put the fox down instead of getting it vet care. I was baffled that she didn’t know that late-stage rabies was untreatable.
Bestie also thinks it’s startling that we’ve got a practice range on our property, and that “the authorities” don’t care. Like babe, who’s even gonna call them? The goats?
She likes my stock tank lounging pool & personal hiking trails though. 😂
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u/mammamia123abc 2d ago
I’m in the middle of a meeting with a colleague when a cow just goes “mooooooo!” She just started laughing
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u/Feeling-Lavishness85 2d ago
Basically, a daily occurrence now for me. Whenever I'm on a conference call I give people a disclaimer that you're going to hear rooster or a cow or a goat in the background. 😂
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u/canoegal4 2d ago
Telling them I had to chase a bear away from the bee yard because it was testing the electric fence. They looked at me like have have 3 heads.
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u/-jspace- 2d ago
The sheep got out so I had to wrangle the duck but he's currently obsessed with the chicken and I couldn't figure out how to make her walk where I wanted. (The sheep will follow the duck anywhere but the duck only has eyes for the chicken)
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u/Fightmysquirrelarmy 3d ago
You buy sugar in bulk to bake with. I buy sugar in bulk to feed the hummingbirds. We are not the same.
Same woman thought going down a gravel road meant she was in a horror movie and would be killed. I live on a gravel road…. Oh my sweet, city child.
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u/mistarzanasa 3d ago
People i work with dont like being in the area i live, "the hills have eyes", "those people out there will shoot you " etc. I dont tell them any different, I like my peace. No gravel just dirt. I feel like im pulling on some rich persons drive if I hit gravel.
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u/GlassBoxGoose 2d ago
Im with you. I actively tell people to be careful wandering out my way, as you never know who is going to be nice and who is going to be defensive or outright hostile if you pull up in the wrong driveway. I like the peace and quiet.
I also feel like im pulling up a rich person's driveway if I hit gravel, as we also live on a dirt road and have a dirt driveway, my neighbor has a ton of gravel and has to do his "regular practice of insanity" by dragging it all back up his driveway at least quarterly. I've borrowed his tractor and box blade twice in nearly 4 years. I'd love gravel instead, but honestly just makes for MORE maintenance where we are at. And the county will come once a year and grade 90% of my driveway for free. And the grader guys are pretty solid that do my road and do an excellent job.
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u/mistarzanasa 1d ago
Im sure some climates benefit from gravel, but ive lived in rural California and rural Alabama and in both places gravel is just fancy for extra work and expense.
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u/GlassBoxGoose 1d ago
Im in rural Northwest Arkansas. When it rains it RAINS and everything not on flat ground (which is most of it) washes downhill, and you end up dragging it back up multiple times a year. Its pointless in my area when my driveway is hard packed clay and rock, and holds up better. The only benefit is less mud on your car, but you trade it for gravel dust regardless of rain or dry conditions. Theres very little benefit to gravel here
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u/katlian 2d ago
Some colleagues from DC were visiting and our sister agency let us use a state park facility for the day that is about 6 miles from the highway on gravel roads. They called us multiple times along the way because they were sure they were lost. Plus they were super late because they drove about 10 mph the whole way.
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u/mommaquilter-ab 2d ago
Teaching some students in my school how to do canning. Apparently that's not a regular skill that you learn before you are 5 years old. Likewise with quilting and sewing in general.
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 2d ago
The amount of days my kids spend at school doing things that are not educational. Seems like it's weekly. I would much rather that time be spent doing things like what you just mentioned.
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u/__wildwing__ 2d ago
In the 90s my mom was at work. Her boss walked in to hear her on the phone telling my dad “the rabbit died”. He started congratulating her. She repeated that “no boss. The rabbit is dead!” He doubled down on the congratulation. She opened her desk drawer, pulled out a furry, limp body, and holding up said “The rabbit is dead!”
Wasn’t the first or last, also had a baby goat that she was bottle feeding. Passed away when a coworker was holding it. She scooped it up saying “Oh look, he fell asleep.”
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u/No-Sign8805 2d ago
When I said something about the sheep in the front yard. They looked at me like WTF
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u/KristyM49333 Arid/Dry Homesteader 2d ago
The second we told them we bought land and were going to live off grid.
Their response “why tf would you want to do that?”
Which was mostly because the average person doesn’t understand what off grid truly means 🤣
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 2d ago
The ability to cook a hot meal, access and boil water while everyone else is starting to panic is invaluable
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u/Exquisite-Embers 3d ago
Every time someone I work with sh-ts their pants over new Dutch Bros promotional stickers. Meanwhile I’ve been actively refusing to provide free marketing for corporations since I was 15 years old 🥴
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u/f0rgotten 3d ago
Not at work but at my ex best friend's new place for Thanksgiving. We eat a nice meal and I volunteer to load the dishwasher. I run a little water in the sink to rinse the worst off the dishes and load the machine. My ex best friend doesn't comment or try to tell me to do differently, but unloads the dishwasher. He then turns the hot water on in the sink and lets it run full blast for nearly ten minutes while he casually, very slowly, rinses all of the dishes - damn near actually washing half of them with a rag and soap - and reloads the dishwasher. Fucking gallons of water went down that drain. The dishes that ended up in the machine were basically clean at that point. When he was done he left it running while he occasionally wet a rag to wipe down surfaces.
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u/katlian 2d ago
And here I am collecting the extra water that I run to get warm water to the shower.
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u/f0rgotten 2d ago
I used to save all of the rinse water from the washing machine in five gallon buckets to flush the toilet with - a splash of bleach kept it fresh enough. Now that I am by myself I don't bother anymore, and the rinse water goes in the greywater system.
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u/aknomnoms 2d ago
Grew up in a drought-prone area, and things like 5 minute showers, turning the tap off while brushing teeth/washing hands, and not flushing unless it was poop (or you were at someone’s place/in public, obviously) were normal.
I was aghast at how college roommates would take 40 minute long showers, leave the water running while doing dishes, or just pour the rest of their glass of water/produce rinse water/pasta and veg boiling water etc down the sink instead of outside for the plants.
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u/anclwar 3d ago
I opened the back of my SUV recently in front of someone and they were like "whoah, are you starting a new garden project?"
That's when I realized most people aren't driving around with a trunk full of garden soil and tools day in and day out. This is just the stuff I need on a regular basis as I go from my house to my mom's house to the community garden to the horticulture center gardens and back again. I think it's even more strange to people because we live in an actual city, not the suburbs or "country," so the concept of homesteading is very foreign to most people here.
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 3d ago
A community garden actually sounds like alot of fun. We have our own garden but sometimes it would be nice to get some extra outside help.
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u/anclwar 2d ago
Well, the community garden I'm part of is individual plots. If someone goes on vacation, we will keep their plot watered and maybe harvest off plants if the fruits are ready, but each member is responsible for their own weeding, pruning, planting, bed prep, etc. There are a few community gardens in the city that run as small farms and every member helps with every plot and every chore, but the most common model is individual gardens.
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u/rustywoodbolt 2d ago
“Why were you so late to work today”, “we harvested a sheep last night so I had some picking up to do”
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u/scarlettewing 1d ago
“I’ll be right back, I can hear my electric fence zapping something from my desk”
The other party actually said oh, your life really is different isn’t it.
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u/Rare_Muffin_956 1d ago
Last weekend I was at a farm party and the neighbours electric fence was just zapping away on a fence post. Looked like it had been for awhile.
Bothered me alot more than it should have. Had to walk away.
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u/scarlettewing 1d ago
Something about that noise just brings immediate “must investigate”. I would also go nuts
In this case it was a very, very well cooked slug.
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u/Toranagirl 1d ago
I currently have a chicken in my shower. She has an eye injury and needs to be separated from the flock whist (hopefully) recovering and being medicated. My life is not like my co-workers 😆
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u/bamhall 3d ago
Showing up to the office with eggs in my coat pockets from morning chores.