If you ever want to teach a kid about responsibility, hand them a bucket and point them at the chicken coop. Suddenly, they understand cause and effect real quick—no water in the bucket, no happy chickens. Ethan complains about the smell every single time, but he still beams when he finds a fresh egg in the nesting box. Funny how kids will gag one minute and brag the next.
The garden is another sneaky teacher. I’ll send Ethan out to pick weeds, and ten minutes later he’s giving me a lecture about how “weeds grow faster than the vegetables, Mom.” He’s not wrong. Some days, I think the weeds are laughing at us. But pulling them out shows him patience, and maybe a little grit. He once declared himself “the boss of the basil,” which I guess makes me middle management.
Even the simple stuff turns into lessons. Feeding the rabbits, for example. If he forgets, they thump around like angry little drummers until he runs out there with a guilty look on his face. It’s hard to ignore consequences when they’re fluffy and stomping at you. Josh jokes that the animals are better at teaching responsibility than we are. He’s probably right.
And then there’s the messy fun. Building forts out of old pallets, “helping” me mix compost, making mud pies that somehow end up on his shoes and in his hair. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real. He’s learning that work doesn’t always feel like work if your hands are in the dirt and the sun’s on your back. Sometimes I catch him humming while he waters the garden, and I know those little moments are sticking.
Homesteading with kids isn’t neat or efficient. It takes longer, it’s louder, and there’s always a mess to clean up after. But watching Ethan grow into someone who understands that food doesn’t come from the store shelves, and that animals need care every single day, makes all the extra chaos worth it. Besides, I’ve never seen him smile as wide as he does holding a basket of eggs he collected himself—muddy boots and all.
