I thought I would write a little bit about the beginning of our farm here. When we first moved down here and were renting a house while we were building this house, some very good friends of ours had a couple of bottle fed lambs. The wondered if our kids would enjoy having them and bottle feeding them - of course we thought they would, so Todd built a little pen and shed for them and the kids and I went down to pick them up in the van. They were so cute and little - they fit in a cardboard box. Anyway, we underestimated the amount of grass the little fellows would eat, and it wasn't long before their little pen didn't have any grass left in it - so...we let them out in the yard during the day when we were over here working on the house. They really enjoyed the shade of the porch - hence the name of our blog - "Critters on the Porch". They were the first of many critters that enjoyed laying on the porch. A couple of times they even made it into the front door of the house - they sure did skid around on the freshly laid and finished hardwood floor!!!

Our next experience with farm animals happened when we decided to get some chickens. We had been talking about getting some sometime. Todd was at a tradeshow for work and met up with one of our friends there. Brad asked if we were interested in their chicken house that they weren't using. Todd said we sure would be. About that time, Rural King - our local farm store - advertised their "Chick Sale". We figured we could get some, put them in the basement for a little while until Brad could get the chicken house up here for us. We had to buy at least 25 - so we did, but then we got to figuring up that if we ate 1 chicken a week they wouldn't last very long - so we headed back to Rural King to get more chickens. I think we finally ended up with about 60. Then, it started to rain - it rained and rained and then rained some more. The days turned into weeks and it was so wet Brad couldn't get his trailer in to get the chicken house out. The chicks grew and grew and grew and started flying out of their box and smelling up the house!!! There was a little falling down shack across the road from us and the farmer there said we could have it if we wanted it and pulled it across the road for us. So, that became our new chicken house - and still is working great a few years later.