I HAVE always had dreams of running livestock, but I come from a long line of journalists, a profession not exactly known for prowess in the paddocks.

I did all the reading I could on animal husbandry but, of course, none of that prepared my wife and I for the reality of working with animals.

It’s a bit like Clarkson’s Farm without the film crew and the loads of money.

And my three-year-old is like Gerald, the local who knows more about tractors than I do but I have no idea what he is saying.

We have now lost seven animals on our property in a little over a year.

We moved back to the countryside to escape the interminable cycle of work, sleep, repeat, in the city.

The plan was my wife (then long-term girlfriend) and I would come back to the place we were raised and start a family of our own.

So, we did the only thing we could with our savings from our well-paying jobs in the city, we moved back in with my parents.

It was a temporary solution, we figured it would take a year before we could put a deposit down on a house.

Three years, a wedding, a global pandemic, and the birth of our first son later, and we had finally sorted ourselves out.

We bought seven-and-a-half acres just outside of town and moved an old Queenslander on it.

We had grand plans of growing and raising as much as we could to lessen the impact of our grocery bill and potentially make a little bit on the side.

Simple enough in theory but as the oft misused quote goes: “Never work with children or animals.”

The original meaning of the quote was that they would steal the show, and, while that has been the case with our boys, it has been less so with the animals.

Chickens were the obvious first step into the world of rearing animals and after a couple weeks of searching, we took a four-hour round trip to pick up a dozen Coronation Sussex chickens and one rooster, whose unfortunate destiny was to end up as lion food at the nearby zoo.

An oversized coop was erected and the chickens were free-ranged in the orchard.

That was it for a while, a tame entrance into the world of ma and pa homesteading.

As is always the case, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

The renovations seemed to be never-ending, our second son was on the way and we lost my wife’s father to a battle with cancer.

The new year rang in a new tempo to the pace of things on the property.

We added a half a dozen ducks to the mix, while fun to watch, the chickens were less than enthused.

• Continues Next Week