The Barn

So it is after 10:00 in the evening, and I should totally be going to bed, as we have an early morning tomorrow, but my hubby is gone for the night, and I just can't seem to get to sleep.  So what better time to blog right?

Want to know the big news around here? WE GOT OUR BARN UP!

It isn't a big barn, more like a shed, but thats ok. It is perfect for what we need right now.

We ordered a kit from a local lumber supply store, and decided to build our own, instead of ordering a pre-done one.   No problem right?!  We could totally do this!

Pre- building day:  We had the store alter the plans from a 12x20 barn to a 10x20 so that we wouldn't have to go through the permit process (anything 200sq ft or less does not require a permit) This seemed to work fine.  We asked them to deliver everything to our house Friday morning to save us some hassle, and we recruited my mom and dad, younger brother, and an unsuspecting friend to help us out.   All was going according to plan.

Day 1 -

My family arrived about 10 oclock with a trailer full of goodies.  A Skid Steer for moving dirt and anything else we needed it for. Extra saws, saw horses, hammers.... We were ready to work!

My boys loving the chance to drive around in the skid steer

Problem 1- No barn.  It was supposed to be delivered about 10. By 11 we still hadn't heard from the delivery people.  Ok, well then, since we had nothing to do while we waited, we decided to move some of the asphalt that we were using for our driveway to make a nice building site for the barn. We had the boys get out the level, and they made the building site nice and even all around.  That turned out nice!  Now if we do get a lot of snow/rain, we wont have to worry about it being soggy under the barn.

 Problem 2 -Still no barn.  By 12:00 I had just decided that we would go in for lunch and I would call and see what was up when the delivery truck showed up! Yeah!  Now we could get started.  We watched him unload everything, signed for the delivery, and then went to eat real quickly so we could begin.  

Problem 3- They didn't send us the right supplies.  Somewhere in the altering of plans, they messed up the supply list, and didn't send us all the boards we needed to build the floor! Hmm.  We got the skids laid out, and then spent probably another half hour trying to decide what to do about the floor.   Thankfully, my husband showed up about then, and helped make the decision.   Now we were REALLY ready to start.

The next part of the building went pretty quickly, for beginners.  We got the floor done before my family had to get home for the evening.

one last piece needed...

Day 2 -

Saturday morning, we we back at it again.

Problem 4 - the missing wood.  Because they hadn't sent us the right supplies for the floor, we had used up other supplies that should have been used for the walls, so now we were short wall lumber.  Hubby and I spent an hour going over the plans, and he put a list together of what we needed to get.

While he was working on the list, I was busy trying to arrange for my parents to pick up some ducks from a friend in town on their way through Cheyenne to our house, to save us both a trip.  Then, since they were already stopping in Cheyenne, and we now had a list of supplies we needed, I called them again to see if they would pick up the lumber on their way through as well.  They agreed to both.  Aren't my parents AMAZING! :)

Also, my sister joined us to help out for the day!  I love my family :)

So, once again we got started on the building about noon. This time though, we had a better idea what were were doing, and we had the right supplies.   During the next 6 hours we build 4 walls, 11 trusses (the beams for the roof), and got them all put up just as it was getting too dark to see.

Day 3

Went to church and when we got back, my parents and sister were already here, working.  They had one panel up on the wall, and it was so fun to see it coming together. Without too many hitches, we were able to put the plywood on the roof, get all the siding put up, and make/hang each of the doors! Come sunday evening, we had a usable building!

We still need to get shingles on the roof, and paint and trim, but we can work on that next weekend... for now we are happy that it is up :)


Oh, want to know the second most exciting news around here?!   MY HOUSE DOESN'T"T SMELL LIKE A BARN ANYMORE! YIPPEE!

Monday, Matthew and I put up a half wall inside the barn, and made space for the baby chicks to FINALLY get out of my house.  Seriously. they stunk. Even when I cleaned the box, they stunk lol.   But not anymore!  Well ok, they still smell like chickens, but my house does not.  

Oh and remember those ducks my parents picked up for me?  We introduced them to our own Little ducks we had gotten on Friday (which i was going to blog about and ran out of time), and they became instant friends!

Today, we took them out to the barn as well, and introduced them all into the chicken coop.  I wasn't sure if the chickens would be nice to them, so we sat in the barn and watched them for about 30 min.  At first the chicks tried to pick on them, but the biggest one soon realized she was bigger then the chickens and kind of became the mamma duck.  She kept running the chicks off anytime they got to close to the others, and by the time we left the barn, they were all happily enjoying the same space.   Another win for our farm LOL.  

Here are all the birds in their new home.  We will get a door put in on the inside, and chicken wire up so they can't fly out as they get older. Then we will add roosts for them to sleep on, and nests for their eggs.  Also, once they are used to being outside and the weather gets a little nicer, we will add little chicken doors so they can get outside to free range :)


So whats next? Probably fencing for our milk cow that we are hoping to get next month. Oh and did you hear?!  You can now LEGALLY buy fresh milk from a farmer! No more milk shares.  So if you are interested once we get our cow..... ;) Oh and we ordered about 200 little trees to start our windbreak, so if you get bored anytime in May and want to come plant... maybe free eggs and milk would entice workers?!

Chickens, Chickens, and... no Ducks :(

It is like Christmas all over again!  We got our baby chicks! 67 to be exact. We were also supposed to get baby ducks, but they didn't hatch out in time, so we will have to wait a few more weeks for them :( A little bummed about that, but I will post again once we get them!

A month ago, I placed our order online for a mixture of brown egg layer pullets (female) chicks, along with a couple of other specific breeds.

After placing the order, we had to decide where to put the chicks.  We don't have a barn up yet, and in all honesty, they are so cute for the first couple of weeks that I really wanted them in the house.  :)  But, if you have read previous posts, we don't exactly have any extra space in the house. Adding something new means something old had to get moved.

So, we scooted the dining room table out from its place, and made room for them in the corner.

We put together a brooding box by taping a bunch of boxes together to make a large enough space.

As you can see, the kids commandeered the box for themselves for a few days. They built a ramp and were racing their cars down it...

After the kids became less interested in the box, we added saw dust for bedding, and put in their water bowls and feeders, hooked up the heat lamp, and waited for the chicks to come.

I got an email monday morning informing me that they had shipped!  That meant they would arrive anytime in the next three days.

Wed morning (everything ALWAYS happens on Wednesdays around here) I got a call at 6:45am from the local post office ( yup, they really do ship them through the mail!) letting me know that my chickens were ready to be picked up! Michael was awake, so a snatched him up, and we headed to town.  He was as excited as I.  We picked them up from the friendly lady at the front desk, after letting her take a peak (baby chicks are irresistible and must be looked at), and headed home to show the rest of the crew

Michael holding the box of chicks. Hard to believe they are small enough to fit 68 chicks in one box.  

We got them home and everyone was super excited.  I showed the older kids how to give each chick their first drink of water, which we did just that before handing them to the younger kiddos so they could put them into their new home.

By this time though, we had to go.  Wednesdays are MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) days, and we have to leave by about 7:30 to go open the doors and finish setting up before our moms get there. So I loaded up my very unenthusiastic children and we headed to town. It was probably a good thing we had to leave, so that the chickens could settle in a little bit and have some peace.   But come 12:00, the kids were the quickest i have ever seen loading up in the car to go home.  They wanted to see their chicks!

Who could blame them! Look how adorable they were!

Because we just got a mix, we had no idea which breeds we actually ended up with, but that just made them all the more fun. 

I had added 12 "Easter Eggers" because they are the ones that lay green eggs, and we really like getting green (and sometimes blue or cream!) eggs, and we knew which ones they were. They look like this:

Can't wait to get colored eggs!

and we also added in 3 "purple" chicks. ( I know, there are only 2 in the picture, but we really do have three!)

They actually look more grey then purple, but they are a rare breed, and are supposed to grow up to look like this:

I am more then a little excited to see how "lavender" they actually are as adults.   One of the lavender chickens we ordered as a Cockerel (Rooster).  Once they get older, I hope to have a continual rotation of baby chicks around, hatched naturally by their mommies, with this beautiful lavender rooster as the father.   We will see in a few months how that works out.   :)

For now though, we are completely enamored with these little ladies.  They are soo adorable! 

Heidi calls this one doughnut 

look at those fuzzy feet!

a Lavender Orpington and Easter Egger

So Cute!  ( we didn't even clear the table after brakfast we were too excited to play with the babies lol)

Thanks to the Chicken magazine we got (did you even know they had chicken magazines?!) we have been able to identify a few of the breeds, but there are still some that will remain a mystery until grown.  It is still amazing to me that a little fluffy yellow chick can end up being black, and some of the black chicks can grow up being more white with black tips. Just another fun example of God's creativity.  

Oh, and here is me getting up on my soap box for a few moments in regard to buying eggs in the store.

BROWN EGGS ARE NOT HEALTHIER THEN WHITE EGGS!  

REALLY! Different breeds of chickens lay different colors of eggs, but that doesn't make a brown egg any different on the inside then a white egg (or blue, or green, or olive, or......)

What you feed them and how they are raised are what makes the difference.  If they are able to get a nice diet of foods, to eat bugs, pebbles, dirt.. all the things they would eat in the wild, their eggs will reflect that and have delicious, rich, orange colored yolks. 

store bought, brown "organic" egg on the left, farm raised White egg on the right. 

 But it has nothing to do with the color of their shells.  So the next time you see those expensive brown eggs at the store, don't be tricked into buying them just because they are brown and look more "natural"!   It is more important how they were raised then what color their shells are.   I promise!  

ok, done with that rant, but really, color has nothing to do with nutrition.  A farm raised white egg is just the same on the inside :)

Thanks for visiting and taking a peak into the beginning of our family farm.

Until next time...

The new year

Can you believe it is 2015! Am I the only one still trying to remember to put 2014 on my checks, and now i have to switch to 15! Oh well.  This year has already brought us some fun blessings, and we intend to make it a great one.


The weather here has been unbelievably nice!  Oh we still get our regular winter days and snow storms, but there have been lots of days already that give us a glimpse of what Spring will be like. The kids have had most of this week to be outside without jackets. One day we had temperatures that hit 70!  Its been lovely.

With the lovely days, also comes the chance to do some clean up and building around here.  First on the list: Get the metal shed put up. That was more of an ordeal then we anticipated, but it is now up and being used for some much needed storage.

 However, since we are using it for storage instead of the chicken coop as we had intended, we had to do some other improvising.

The original lean too

The "lean to" that was here when we moved got a little bit of a face lift, and had a chicken run added to it.   We re-braced the ceiling panels, added in a wall down the center, and added chicken wire. It doesn't look the greatest, but we are now confident that it will be safe for our chickens for the time being.

Next we set to work on the chicken run.  My DH (dear hubby) helped me with the frame, and then the older boys helped me hang the wire, and build the door.  It was a blast.  I loved helping them figure out how to measure, cut,  and put together the pieces.

Then came the fun part...acquiring the chickens :)  A friend from church knew about our desire for chickens, and passed along our name to her friend who was looking to re-home their beautiful ladies. She contacted me and after a fun visit, and a fresh dozen of eggs!,  we decided that it would be a mutual blessing for us to add her chickens to our farm family.

Aren't they beautiful?!  and the fun part is, they are super friendly.  The kids have spent HOURS outside, feeding them by hand, and holding/petting them.

The first morning after we got them, the boys were out before the sun, and stayed out there until the first egg was laid, about 8:00am. At which time they came barreling into the house all excited to have gotten their first "real" egg.   I have to admit, I am about as excited as they are about both the chickens and the eggs.  So if you notice a lot of my blogging in the near future has to do with chickens and eggs, you have been warned ;)

Another one of our projects has been to clear up a space for Penny (our pup) to be while we are away from home during the day.  We don't have a yard fence (or yard) for her to stay in, and we didn't want her to be left in her kennel all morning.  So we once again took part of the pre-standing "building" and turned it into a nice little nest for her to be in to stay out of the wind and snow on those not so nice days.

We also were able (thanks to my awesome FIL) to put in a driveway.  As you can imagine, when we get rain or snow, our dirt path driveway got pretty muddy.  So Dale kindly volunteered to haul us up a bunch of recycled ash-fault to lay down.

He also brought us up his tractor and blade to use to smooth it out, (who doesn't enjoy having a few minutes away from the kids while you ride in the tractor with your hubby!)

We have a little more work to do on the end closest to the house, and we may bring in one more load, but for now we are super happy with it ;)  

I think the final outside project for this month was the set up of the trampoline. I decided just this week that while the weather was nice and the wind was gone, I would get it set up for the kids.  Have you any idea how hard it is to hook those springs around by yourself!  maybe i am just a wimp, but after I got the first half done, and had to stretch the others across, it became quite a struggle.  I did get it done, but it took the help of a tie strap, and a metal chair to help me stretch it enough to hook on the hooks. And my arm muscles are still tender in places....

Once I got it together though, the next problem arose.  The Wind.  I do not need our nice trampoline to go crashing into the neighbors barns at the first gust of wind. So I recruited my DH and we hauled over everything heavy we could find to hold it down. Rocks, a table, and even some ground anchors.

Yup, that should hold it! LOL

What else had been going on?  Here are just a few snapshots of our days:

Our first eggs 

 Living the farm life

William still loves HIS pup

 my 3 year olds choice of shoes...

Penny is getting big

So whats next? Well besides trying to stay on track with homeschooling, and on top of our MOPS schedule, We are going to be getting BABY CHICKENS!!!  Yup, in 2 weeks we will have 60 little chicks running around.  So, before that happens, and I end up keeping them all in the house somewhere, we need to build us another small barn/shed.  At this point, it might just be worth buying a prefab one....  but who knows, we always work best under pressure.

I'll keep you posted!