Hands-On Learning: Why Experience Beats YouTube or TikTok

One personality flaw that I have is I always tend to think “how hard could it actually be” before I jump into a new venture.  When I first started homesteading YouTube was my best friend.  I followed a lot of channels that showed bucolic scenes, happy animals and easy and quick “a day in my life” videos.  I quickly learned there is a big difference between watching and doing.

The problem with trying to learn through social media is that people only tend to post happy and easy days.  It’s human nature to want to put your best foot forward (or publicly on the internet) and as a budding social media presence I tend to be just as guilty of this.  I am more likely to pull out my phone and capture happy moments.  When things are going wrong, I am more focused on fixing than documenting.  I have watched countless videos on processing chickens, but what those videos don’t teach you is what to do if things go wrong.  Examples of how to sterilize and clean everything when a gallbladder pops, what to do if you nick a bowel or the sadness you feel if you don’t make the first cut right.    The first videos I watched on how to process chickens didn’t teach me to remove the lungs.  Luckily, I had a friend with me that taught me that step.  It doesn’t just have to be processing related.  I had questions like what I should do when trimming goat hooves and I cut too much and my goat bleeds.  

Also, you can’t get everything through watching a video.   I can tell you to I am blue in the face that ducks SMELL but until you are brooding duckling and you smell that yourself, you don’t truly get it.  When you are trying to feel for pulses on a horse that turned up lame, you can watch someone tell you where to feel or what you should feel for, but you won’t really know you have it right until someone shows you in person.  Plus, animals are unpredictable.  You may be watching a video on how to milk a goat, but what they probably didn’t show was how frustrating it is when your goat doesn’t feel like jumping up on that milk stand and all the crazy ways you tried to convince them.  YouTube shows you the highlight reel. The homestead lives in the unedited version

Muscle memory is a real thing and having someone lead you through getting that down is priceless.  It’s one of the reasons we have enough chickens for everyone to go through the processing steps a few times.  Many of the other processing classes only ley you do one bird and then you are on your own to go home and try it yourself.  Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like that and our minds and bodies need repetition to truly master something.  You can’t learn things like how much pressure to give, how to hold the tools correctly or timing without a mentor.  I can’t count the number of times in my life (not just farming but all aspects) where I was certain I was doing something the right way until someone more experienced came along and showed me.  You can watch a video, but a video can’t watch you back and see if you are doing it right.  Animals don’t know that you watched a video and they have to behave the way the animal in the video did. Equipment won’t know not to breakdown or tell you a way around the issue. The wind won’t know that in the video the tarp wasn’t flapping in the wind as you try and build a shelter.

There’s also a power to making mistakes.  Mistakes are how we learn; they are normal and necessary.  However, it’s better to make those mistakes when you have an experienced teacher with you to show you how to fix them and how to not panic.  Plus when you learn on our animals, you don’t have that emotional connection that can make you more nervous.  Working with animals and farm equipment can be dangerous.  There are thousands of ways to get injured on a homestead of you don’t know what you are doing.  Having someone watch your back while you are attempting things for the first time is a blessing.

These are the reasons that the biggest mission of Haxton Homestead is to teach.  There are so many lessons I had to learn the hard way and if I can help stop a person or animal from suffering due to inexperience, then I am serving my homestead community.  When we teach hands on lessons, we keep classes small.  Many of our processing classes sell out and it would be easy to be greedy and keep people signing up.  Keeping it small helps up give the most one on one attention.  Our processing classes have a minimum of 2 instructors (me and Jeremiah) to 10 students.  We have a learn by doing approach and remind people that there is nothing they can do that we can’t help fix.  Sure it would be much faster for Jeremiah and I to process those birds just the two of us, but then we aren’t helping people learn to do it themselves.  You don’t just leave our class with knowledge; you leave with a story of your first time.

If you have been wondering if homesteading is something you can do, you can.  If I can do it, a girl that grew up in the city never holding a chicken, you can too.  The best thing to do is build a network of like-minded people who you can turn to for questions and advice.  A good way to do that is to take one of our classes.  You get the muscle memory, knowledge, and you meet new people to build your network.  If you want to learn something that we don’t currently offer, reach out.  I am always open to creating classes to meet the needs of the homesteading community.  Some of the best lessons don’t come from watching—but from showing up, trying, and being willing to learn.