Farming with kids

The girls love to help around the farm. Elli truly likes to do chores and see things get done! Kalena really likes playing with paint brush's and hoses :)
Painting the garage. The chicken coop is in the background. We have been doing a lot of painting this fall!


The girls with their "cat hotel". This is really the nesting box for the hens (who by the way have yet to lay an egg...grrrr).

Renovated Chicken Coop

By request here are some pictures of the before, during and after of the chicken coop painting. We did the work this past September.

This was taken after the carpenters did their work. Bryce is shooting any cat with water that seems to threaten the young chickens. It turns out the cats were not a threat at all. They just like to see the hens flap and squawk.

during...

after.

Most of the work came even before the before picture! We had to empty it of 80 years of farm junk, then had the help of two carpenters to make it "safe and usable" and now finally a nice paint job and a door with a fiberglass window that will not shatter into a million pieces again! :) Let's just say I looked a bit silly this fall vacuuming the grass.

Goats...because they are cheaper than a pony!

We have two very adorable additions to the farm named Misty-Anna and Princess! These 5 month old Nubian Dwarf/Oberhasli goats which were given to us by a friend of a friend. She had more goats than she could care for over the winter. We needed them both as weed-eaters and companion animals. Since we lost our old pony Poncho in March the acre pasture behind the hog barn has become a bit out of control. The goats co-exist in a pen in the barn and the pasture with 3 calves.

The girls have fallen in love with these two. They are quite friendly as their previous owners had pre-teen girls that made them as tame as a well loved puppy. We underestimated their athletic skills and intelligence. After a couple quick escapes we reinforced all the week spots in the fencing and pen wall. After the girls told me "the goats can fly!" I knew I was in for a good story. Apparently Princess (the goat with the little white crown) took a running leap off the plank you see in the picture and jumped over the 3 foot wall onto the hay bales on the other side. I guess she needed a snack.

That night they proceded to knock the empty 20 gallon plastic tub off the plank and somehow with all of their 16 pounds of strength they managed to move it right up to the pen wall and voila hay snack. Thankfully they are so tame and friendly they were not hard to catch. They really were not trying to escape and head for the hills, just looking for a midnight snack I guess.

They now have their very own hay bale set on end to jump on, sleep on and snack on. I think they are finally satisfied!