Life with farm animals

When my husband and I purchased our land, my first thought was how badly I wanted animals. Horses, chickens, pigs, you name it. So far we've successfully raised all of the above with the exception of pigs, and added a couple bunnies into the mix as well. We do plan on raising hogs for meat, but we'll get to that later. Let me start off by saying, I LOVE my life and the life we've created for our daughter. She has such a great understanding of how the world works, the responsibility in something other than herself, being outside and enjoying the little things, not just watching tv 247. I've also noticed recently that she has such a great understanding of life cycles and that death is a part of life. I can't believe that for a three year old, she easily understands the food chain, and that sometimes things happen to our animals (specifically our hens) and that it just works out that way sometimes. 

Which brings me to my reason for this post. Our first pets we brought to the property, way before our house was even here, were three hens we inherited from my mom. Two of them were barred rocks that were about six months old that she specifically had gotten for me, in hopes I would soon start my own flock. She also let me choose one more out of her flock to bring home. My eyes were set on 'Fluffy', my daughter and I named her and instantly became so attached to her. She was a golden sexlink with the cutest little cream fluffy butt, and a darker gold chest and wings. She, from the get go, had her own attitude about her, she always wandered by herself, kept to herself and seemed so much more "mature" than the other two younger hens we got at the same time. She never squawked or drove me nuts, like a few still do, and I just had this strange love for her. I chose her, named her, and watched her grow. A few months later, we ended up taking the rest of my moms flock and all seven of them were back together. I've grown attached to some of the other hens, like Sassy, but Fluffy was still my favorite and my first "baby" of the flock. Unfortunately over the last few weeks, we lost one of our hens to some sort of predator, however it didn't bother me as much as I expected, because she just disappeared. I didn't find her or watch her pass away, so i keep telling myself she just waddled her fat butt to a nicer coop :). 

Yesterday, in my daily egg check, I opened the door to find my sweet Fluffy, dead in her nesting box. I was so upset. Fortunately, my husband was just getting home from work, so I was able to let my crying out while he scooped her up. I still can't understand why she passed, she was totally fine the night before, no signs of distress, no wounds or broken bones, she just didn't wake up. It seems so silly to be so upset over a dang chicken, but all these critters have made their way into my heart and that was made very clear last night after my finding. My sweet husband gave her the burial she deserved and I feel okay knowing that she passed peacefully. 

I know that these things happen, and having sixteen animals already, and continually adding more, I know that it will continue to happen. I guess this was just my first real experience with the death of a furry friend. I know she's in chicken heaven, eating an endless supply of mealworms and doing her own thing, I just wish she didn't have to leave us so soon...

2015 so far!

I would first like to say, 2015 has been a great year so far! Every year, we come across different experiences, whether it be with Lacey, our property, which has now become our home and now a pregnancy, and I'm always so impressed with how well we adapt and overcome everything we need to. We have had a crazy last few months and I can't believe it's already April! I can't express how happy I am to finally have my own home again, my own space, my own schedule, my own life. It's truly made such a difference in my everyday life and attitude, I feel like I can finally be a fun mom and wife again and spend all my time decorating a nursery, (more on that later) bake more often, and have my husband's dinners ready when he gets home. Those things seem minimal to others, but when you can't do those things for over a year, you have a much finer appreciation for the little things! Lacey has adapted so well to being in her own room again, and in a big girl bed. All of my anxiety over this topic has really been for nothing, because she has been amazing. AND, just to brag a little bit, she's totally potty trained now too! The timing couldn't be more perfect with just about nine weeks left in my pregnancy. (That's a scary thought)

I'll start off by showing you some pictures of the house being delivered! This actually happened on December 30th, and it was the craziest day I've ever experienced. Not only was the house being delivered, PUD was here with a four foot deep ditch across our driveway running our main power to the home site. We had so many people here in one day helping to get everything situated, and it was sooo cold out. It, of course, all worked out, like it always does!

It looks nice out, but that little pond in the bottom of the picture was frozen! I forgot to mention, the week previous, the slab was poured and I have a few pictures of that process as well.

It is truly so crazy to see how different everything looks around here, just within a matter of a few months! Here are some of the house getting here, and everyone scrambling to get the driveway re-filled so they could even get in here. I was super impressed with the transport company, they patiently waited while we backfilled the driveway, I don't think our neighbors were that impressed however, they had the road blocked off for well over an hour :/

I'm totally not kidding when I say it was freezing, you can see the frost and ice all over the ground in these pictures. Lacey was such a trooper and we made frequent trips to the car to get warmed up a little bit before standing outside watching the chaos.

 

At the time, it seemed like the days just seemed to drag on, until we could actually live at the house, it was extremely difficult to have it sitting there in front of us every day, but we weren't staying there yet. There was still lots of work to do, sheetrockers, painters, fine finishes, carpet and a cleaning person were all in line before we could even think about moving in. And of course, the county approval, but everyone knows how horrible that worked out for us, so we won't get into that anymore than I have to! In the grand scheme of things, it really wasn't that long of a wait and we stayed our first night in our own home on February 19th. We didn't actually sign our papers until the next week, but we like to live on the edge ;) we did have our occupancy certification, so why not, right?! It has been so awesome living here, we've been here for almost three months now and Lacey still asks me everyday if we get to live here. Yes baby, we finally have a home! Lacey celebrated her third birthday the end of January, we had her party at a local gymnastics place and she had so much fun. She had been asking us for a few months for a bunny for her birthday, so after her party, of course we had to let her pick out a bunny for her gift. Just one more animal to add to our compound! We ended up getting two sisters and I'm so happy that we got two of them, they totally adore each other and keep each other company and I think I would've felt bad just having one by herself. Their names are Bella and Bonnie, and they are truly the sweetest little bunnies.

We, of course, had to have a family birthday dinner on Lacey's real birthday, which fell on a Thursday this year, and she very much enjoyed her ice cream sundae. The very next day, we had an ultrasound to find out the sex of the baby! We were fairly nervous and found out that we were having another girl! Of course, this has me thinking that we now have to have more to try for a boy, but we'll see how two treats us. I am so excited for Lacey to have a sister and she seems to be getting pretty excited too :)

 

Since living in the house, we've (I) have been doing lots of decorating, re-arranging, and re-arranging some more. We've tackled some home improvement projects already, like hanging cabinets in the laundry room above the washer and dryer, rather than the ugly white wire rack that was here when we moved in. I haven't quite finished that project yet, so pictures will come later. The nursery has been a work in progress, but I'm super happy with how its coming along! There are still, of course, lots of things I want to do in there, but I feel content with where it it is right now, that if for some reason I had the baby today, it would be somewhat workable. 

 

 

Like I said, there is still a lot of work to do in there, but so far I've enjoyed making her crib skirt, an extra soft lovey blanket, burp rags, the tissue paper poms on the wall, and I have a project in the works with my dad of course. I think my next addition to the room, will be some floating shelves filled with books, and a sweet rocking chair in the corner. I just need to find the right one! She still, of course, needs some headbands to fill the chicken wire frame and more smelly stuff for the shelf above her dresser/changing table, but I think I'll wait to see what I get at my shower.

 

Something I wanted to work on before Baby H's arrival, was Lacey's playroom. I feel like I want her to have a perfect little working/playing space to call her own before the baby arrives, so that she has plenty to do in times I can't sit directly with her and play like we can now. Here are a few before pictures of the playroom, we prettty much, just threw all her toys in there and told her to play while we got the rest of the house in order.

 

We worked on some DIY projects, like a whiteboard wall, an eight bin shelving system, and a teepee.

I really love how the shelving turned out, it did end up being a full day project, even with Kameron and my dad working on it, but it was totally worth it. I grabbed some galvanized bins from good ol'e Walmart and splurged on paints, markers, paper, stickers, play-do, dry erase supplies and pretty much any other messy thing you could think of for a three year old, and surprisingly, she's done really well considering all these options are within her reach. She even painted a few pictures for us to display right away.

 

It's been a great space so far, and she always has something to do!

 

This last weekend, we did a little barn renovation, and took some stalls out, added some tack space and got a spring cleaning bug out of our system. It is SO much better of a layout, we have an actual working space in there and soon, I'll be adding a box stall for grooming and saddling, I can't wait to some day soon have my own horse. The ponies are great, but I don't think they would enjoy me saddling up on them lol, we'll stick with skinny butt Lace for them. We also adopted more animals to the flock here (of course) we got four baby chicks! They are about two and a half weeks old today, and they are so stinkin' fun. They have such great personalities already and Lacey is doing great, taking care of something other than herself. I must say, I am pretty blessed to be able to allow my daughter to grow up in the environment that she does, thank goodness for my husband and her push-over daddy, he lets us get away with too much ;)

 

I started my 30th week of pregnancy on Monday, and I'm feeling more than ready to have this little girl here with us. However, these next few weeks, I am definitely going to enjoy hanging out with my girl and we plan on doing as much as possible with her as we can before baby comes. Were planning a zoo trip, camping trip and of course, vintage market trip over these next few weeks, I can't wait to share those photos, as well as my growing belly! Until then...