I may make it out to be a bed of roses, but the homesteading lifestyle is not without it’s share of dangers. Homesteading injuries are more common than you may think! Bumps, bruises and scrapes are a daily norm around here, but let’s take a walk down memory lane and recall some of our more noteworthy injuries!
Broken toes! OK, fine, I broke one toe in the house as a result of pure clumsiness, but another toe was broken when Beulah stepped on it as we left the milk room one night! I’ll hand it to her though, she made it right in the end. It was still very sore a few weeks later when she stepped on me again. It hurt like HECK and then . . . nothing. By the next day it felt all better. Thanks Dr. Beulah!
Concussion! So I have now learned to keep my toes away from cattle and my head away from goats! Last year my sweet Molly goat and I accidentally bonked heads and I ended up spending the afternoon in the Emergency Room getting checked out. I was diagnosed with a concussion and sent home. Little did that diagnosis prepare me for how foggy and thoughtless the head injury left me! I made very odd decisions for the rest of the week. I burned a pot to the point that I had to throw it out because I left the house while cooking caramel! I also left my NEW cell phone on my bumper and then took a twisty, barely paved road home. It’s a miracle that I ever found it. (We really don’t have to talk about the fact that I went and knocked on a stranger’s door to ask if my phone was in their back yard because the internet said it was, do we?)
Major Bruising! After the “snake in the chicken coop” incident, Eric bought me a shotgun. Apparently, he felt that firing 14 additional rounds at a snake that I had hit the first time was excessive. Whatever. He wasn’t there. Anyway, he took me to the shooting range so I could learn to use it. That thing kicked like a mule and I ended up with bruising so bad I couldn’t move my arm! I blame the snake.
In addition to these, I have also cut myself while trimming goat toenails, sliced open my elbow on the mirrors in my milk room (yes, mirrors in the barn are weird, there’s video of the milk room here that explains the mirrors…) and been bitten by a naughty goat! (Oreo bit my finger. It really hurt!) And don’t get me started on wasp and bee stings!
To make myself feel better, here are a few homesteading injuries sustained by others I know…
Our sweet piano teacher, Mrs. Suzy from Old Field Farm (affiliate link) was bitten by a snake during feeding time last year! Yikes!
Mike from Blue Yurt Farms nearly lost an eye. Erin tells the story in this post titled “The Brambles Fought Back.”
So my question for today is: Have you ever experienced a farming injury? Let’s hear the harrowing tale!
Are you a homesteader (or a homesteader at heart)? You might like my “Self-Sufficient Living” Pinterest Board. And be sure to sign up for Beulah’s Mooooooosletter so that you don’t miss my next injury!
***This post contains affiliate links. A small percentage of the purchase price of items bought here will go toward keeping this blog up and running and food in Beulah’s bowl, so thanks!***
Yikes! I’m so glad none of those were really serious! I’ve been stung by scorpions, I’ve fallen down the icy front steps, and have been knocked over by horses several times. One of those horse incidents was really bad, he knocked me down while I was carrying a bucket of feed and all I could envision was being trampled by ravenous horses as they fought over the feed. I rolled out of the way in spite of how much my leg hurt. I really thought I’d broken it, but thankfully I didn’t.
We had built a hay bale structure for our chickens outside their regular coop (they really liked it and it was very warm over the winter, it was an interesting experiment). You had to crawl in through the entrance to get to where they would lay their eggs. Doing so, I got pecked in the eye by a chicken. My worst fear, realized! Thank goodness I recoiled like I was shot and she was further than she thought so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Somebody else in our farming group bent down to pick something and managed to get an old weed stalk right THROUGH his eye. He did not lose the eye, and his sight has come back but it was a long road.
Yikes! Eye injuries really freak me out! I don’t even want to think about getting pecked or impaled in the eye! *shudder* Thanks for visiting!
Let’s see…stepped on and bitten by my horse, another knocked my chin so bad I was chewing on what I thought was sand…turned out to be my shattered teeth, concussion from a sheep head butting me (surprised it didn’t break my glasses), got ice in my eye chopping it in horse trough, eaten alive by nettles, stung by giant wasps, lost my boots for a while in the mud, tripped and fell out of my chicken coop and tore my rotator cuff…dropped firewood on my toes and broke them…think I will stop there.
My goodness! Maybe we should wrap you in bubble wrap! 😉 Thanks for sharing!
Contact dermatitis of unknown origin… Do not ever get it. Just don’t. Two months and more of agonizing itching. (My husband almost duct-taped oven mitts over my hands.) Three different steroid treatments before it was brought under control. Scars to this day. [Shudder] I’ll take all the bangs, bruises, scrapes, bites, and everything else I’ve ever had ten times over before I would do the contact dermatitis again.
Oh that sounds horrid!! Glad he didn’t have to resort to the oven mitts!
Oh my goodness, so many injuries, so little time! I am clumsy by nature and can only imagine the injuries I’ll sustain when I start my farm. Every time I even visit a farm, I leave with a bump, bruise, or injury haha.
That bruise from learning to shoot looks so painful!
As often as I get hurt, I’m actually convinced that homesteading is SLOWLY making me less clumsy out of sheer necessity! (Oh, and the shooting bruise was totally my fault. As my shoulder hurt worse and worse, I kept moving the gun farther out on my arm where it didn’t belong. I should have just called it quits!) 🙂
I’ve thrown my back out moving hay and 50 lb sacks of grain… but I am a Grandmother, and at some point this is to be expected. I too have had my share of unpleasant run-ins with nettles…. to the point of a rash. Bug bites….. sunburn… smashed toes from wood, a suicidal #10 can, and more goats walking on my feet than I can count. I was stung multiple times by bees when I worked with a beekeeper, and later when plucking dead bees out of the honey. I have sprained or twisted my ankles numerous times, chasing away coyotes, turning wrong with something heavy involved, and twice by having a pallet I was standing on give way. My fingers have been smashed in gates, my arms have been bruised by the tops of fencing (chain link usually), and I have had much less intense head butts. No one said our lifestyle choices would be painless… they said they would be worthwhile. 🙂