Biggest surprises, good and bad

Good afternoon Cody;
I was wondering if you could share with us any unexpected surprises you have had in your homesteading journey, both good and bad. From your YouTube channel, I get the impression you plan ahead and have a pretty strong practical background, but we all get caught sometimes.

Thanks for coming out to Permies.

If I may speak for Cody, I think he would say the worst was not getting our Dozer running. He really was disheartened. Cody is a fix-it man. Very practical. He spent so many hours and days and dollars trying to fix the old dozer we bought and we never could get it to run. We had so much help - from Youtube and from mechanics working on it. I think we was surprised too. He is very mechanical and figured he could get it going. Biggest good surprise would likely be how much joy he has found in woodworking. When I met him, he did not like wood working - was loathe to work on our first fixer-upper of a house, but did it because he knew how to do some of it and could figure out the rest. Now he LOVES being in the woodshop. I think too - he used to be a man of speed - fast sports, cars, noise,chainsaws, power, etc and now he likes the quiet. Perhaps that is because we are getting older. MrsW