Wanna be farm update

So, you all know I'm terrible at keeping up... I'm suprised anyone even reads this. I love love love to write, and I wish I had more time to do so. It's crazy here though, as always, and it really is hard to balance family, farm, and the business! Some days I feel like the cat in the hat when he has all that junk balanced and he's trying to bounce on a ball at the same time. Yep, that's me. I hope I don't sink the ship in the cake!!!

So here's what's going on here...

We ended up with 15 chickens total. We bought them as a straight run, so there is no way to tell how many male or female we have until they are big enough. At almost 3 months now, they are getting pretty big, and a few are definitely getting bigger, and redder combs than the rest. I'm fairly certain we have at least 2 roosters, and I really am hoping that the rest are hens, but only time will tell! They love to run around the yard, eating bugs and being chickens. The kids love to chase them, well because they are kids. This of course is frowned upon, much to the kids dismay!

The goats are getting big too and acting rather, well, goat-ish. If you've never been around goats, this is what they do: eat, jump, yell, head butt. That's about it, the life of a goat. They are related to deer, and it shows. They prance around and jump a lot like a deer. They are hilarious to watch, and watch them you must, because the neighbor dogs would love to eat them for dinner! We are still working on getting our electric fence up, which Terence is hoping will electrecute at least 1 dog before they learn. He's pretty mad that he has had to rescue the goats a few times, and would like to see a little revenge! HAHA!

Our garden is awful. We seriously under estimated the amount of protection that it would need, and the fire ants are AWFUL here! So, everything has helped itself to our produce, and the fire ants have helped themselves to the nice soft dirt that we tilled up! The new game plan is to do raised beds with a "hoop coop" over it, and then cover it with plastic as soon as it starts to get chilly, to create a greenhouse to grow stuff in the rest of the year. Terence is currently 1/2 way done with this project. Many more updates on that to come I'm sure! The one thing that did make it was our peas! They were delicious! We ate them raw with dinner last night, and you never did see a group of kids eat so many peas!