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Well, it seems nothing is easy. It may be doable, but not always easy…..

The goat barn has been at a near stand-still as we battle with the County Inspector’s office about permits. As part of having the deck put on the house, the County Inspector came out and took it upon himself to look at every single building on our property. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, but the bottom line is he looked at the goat barn we had just started building and informed us if it is bigger than 12 X 12 it needs to meet code and be inspected. Meeting code involves anchoring the barn with metal straps and digging 2 foot holes every few feet and pouring with concrete to sink the metal straps. Ridiculous doesn’t come close to how we feel about that. So we’ve filed with zoning for “farm use”, and are waiting to hear back on that. In the meantime, we are working to finish a 12 X 12 section. And this is where we are this afternoon:

This section is the milking area and feed/hay storage room. On the right is the door, and we’ll frame in three windows.

Once we get the “farm use” approval, we’ll add the goat room and stall to make it a 12 X 24 foot goat barn. Off the front will be a 8 X 24 foot lean-to.

The deck is coming right along! They’ve got the front portion of it finished - minus the steps that lead to the front yard.

They’re still working on the side - this picture is from the backyard and shows the side deck that ties into the front:

Construction is always a mess, but with all this snow on the ground that’s starting to melt…. well, Bernie says we have a yard full of “snud” - snow mixed with mud. And he is right. This is the front yard, in front of the deck. If you follow me on FaceBook you may remember that they sent a Bobcat up here to clear the snow away from the front and side of the house so they could begin construction.

Bernie says he’ll be mowing around that mound of snow in July…… The deck guys have had a cement truck and a huge lumber truck up here. It’s taken a toll on our poor driveway.

Driveway repair is certainly in Bernie’s future…..

And the big trucks have widened the driveway at the end where they turn onto the road.

The mail-lady is surely concerned when we get mail.

But, the good news? We are getting a deck! A really, really nice deck.

And I’m certain we’ll have a 12 X 24 goat barn in short order for my three baby goats to come home to. Thank you, Angie for being an angel about how long all this is taking.

We have snud. We’re getting a deck. And the goat barn is under way. Sometimes things aren’t easy. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t doable……..

Eeeeeep! Look what we finally got this morning.

A double yolk egg! I had all but given up that I would ever find one of these. I am totally all about yolk in an egg. It’s the best part. So I almost peed my pants when Bernie called me into the kitchen this morning to see this beauty. It was all the more surprising because it came from a small, skinny egg. We have three girls that lay very small slender eggs, and the yolks are very large. Today one of them had a double yolk. Yay! Because it wasn’t really unusual in it’s appearance before he cracked it, we didn’t take any pictures. But I took some pictures this afternoon of two that are pretty similar.

The rounder eggs both weigh in as large eggs. The two skinny eggs both weigh in as small. And the egg that had the double yolk looked very much like those two skinny eggs.

This was definitely double the pleasure for me. I savored every bite and chewed with a smile.

The evening before the 2010 Snowmageddon began, Bernie and I signed a contract to have a deck built. That was a couple of weeks ago, and there has been so much snow on the ground since that day that I was beginning to doubt we’d have the deck before summer. But Friday, the construction company sent a guy out with a Bobcat to move all the snow away from house so they can start work a lot sooner. And while Mr. Bobcat was here, he cleared the area in the backyard where the goat barn will be built so Bernie can start on that. Yay!

The snow has been moved for two days now, and the temperatures have been above freezing during the day, so the area around the house is close to being snow-free.

And, even though it’s muddy, I will absolutely not complain….. this time…..

The deck will span the length of the house in the front, and then wrap around to span this side of it.

Diesel and Dolly are standing on the path Mr. Bobcat plowed to get to the area where the goat barn will be built.

Unfortunately, I forgot to tell Mr. Bobcat about the Sewage Treatment Plant the county forced us to get, and we suffered a casualty.

The good news is the piece that was shattered is a protective cover that we can hopefully get replaced easily. And Mr. Bobcat did make it back to the goat barn area and get it cleared.

We are supposed to get freezing rain tomorrow, but it doesn’t sound like there should be much, if any accumulation. Bernie plans to start building the goat barn Tuesday. And I’m hoping the deck work begins very soon.

While I was out taking pictures today, I decided to head up to check on the plants in the greenhouse.

Its was 41 degrees outside, but it was balmy 83 degrees in the greenhouse, with 34% humidity.

The thermometer displays a few things, and one of them is the low and high for the past 24 hours. It looks like it got down to about 30 last night in there, and the highest temperature in the past 24 hours was 102 degrees. And the most of the plants in the greenhouse look pretty good. They died back for the winter, but many are beginning to pop up again.

Psssst, Danni……. this is the rhubarb. I’m hoping it’ll be ok for a month or so until I can get it into the ground…..

I didn’t check the greenhouse on a regular basis during the really frigid weather we had, but I do know that the gallon jugs I painted black and filled with water never completely froze - even during the week or two that we never got above freezing.

Things may not be happening as quickly as I’d like on the homestead, but I think they are finally starting to move along now.

We are finally getting temperatures above freezing….. but it’s going to take this mess quite some time to melt off. Today Bernie dug a path for me to go to my greenhouse.

Duke supervised.

OK. With two feet of snow on the ground, and the possibility of 3 - 6 inches more on Monday, it’s quite apparent that building a goat barn isn’t going to happen as quickly as I’d hoped. I’d be fibbing if I said that doesn’t bother me. I think about Mirrie, Hope, and Chance every single day and I do wish they were here.

Even though we can’t work on building the goat barn, I’ve been looking into the best feed/water configurations. So, for those of you who have goats, would you please do me a favor and tell me your thoughts on some of this? I’m mainly concerned about the water, feed, and hay I provide inside the goat barn. The barn will be 20 feet long, and 8 feet wide, divided like this - 5X8 stall, 8X8 main portion for goats, and an 7X8 area for milking/doctoring and hay/feed storage.

For the hay, Bernie planned to build a manger. But I found some wall mounted hay racks that look as though they help reduce waste, and that won’t take up as much space. With three goats, I figure a corner mount and wall mount may be sufficient? What do you think? This is what the wall mount looks like. Would two (corner and wall) be adequate for daily hay inside the goat barn? Or do you think we should just go with a large manger that Bernie builds? The goat barn isn’t going to be extremely large, so I’m hoping to save space where I can - but if those wall/corner mangers aren’t adequate, we’ll figure out something else.

How do you secure water inside so the goats can’t knock it over? I found these wall mounts that look great, but there are several different types. These are also used for feed. What do you do for securing feed and water? This page shows several - do you use any of these, or do you recommend another method?

Kendra, from New Life on a Homestead provided a link to the Fias Co Farm website, where I found detailed plans for building a milk stand. Milking may be quite a while in our future, but I can see that using a milk stand to secure a goat while caring for her may be a necessity long before then. And this is something I may be able to work on in the coming days to make me feel like I’m at least moving a little bit forward!

If any of you goat parents can offer some advice here, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

As I type this, another snow storm is hitting us. But I’m not going to complain right now. I’m going to show you some of the beauty I took time to appreciate today.

Like these icicles.

Most were intertwined in the overhead netting.

But look at this interesting icicle.

And look at the face of this sweet little Phoenix hen.

The white in the face of my White Faced Black Spanish hens is really starting to show.

This girl is having a bad hair day for sure.

A lot of beauty surrounds us here on the homestead. We are truly blessed.

Bernie and I worked hard at keeping up with shoveling and plowing as the snow was falling last Friday and Saturday. By the time it ended Saturday evening, the snow was about mid-thigh on me, the chickens refused to leave their coop, and the pups were having a hard time finding somewhere to potty. I dug a small path between the house and the chicken coop, but I only removed the top foot or so of snow because it was pretty firmly packed from my walking on it. The chickens really did not seem to like it, and this is as far as the would venture down it:

So, in order for the chickens and pups to have an area for roaming, Bernie plowed the area between the garage and the chicken run.

And I shoveled a small opening that led to the chicken run and, within only a few minutes, Pico brought a few ladies out into the cleared area.

That cleared area joins with our driveway.

And Bernie is at the end of it, where he’s been for quite a while, shoveling the last few feet of the driveway that hook up with the road that leads to the main road. Diesel and Dolly know this, and they want to go find him.

I had only intended to take a few pictures and head back inside, but I knew the pups had cabin fever, and I knew they really wanted to find Bernie, so around the corner and down the driveway we went.

Around the bend, and over the little creek.

And then back up, beside the old cabin.

And at the top of the hill, they saw him.

And I saw why he’s been down here so long.

I would say this has been the Big Dig of 2010, but I’m afraid to assume we won’t get anything worse. It’s only February. And we do have another storm heading here tomorrow night……..

The pups and I decided to check out Bernie’s plowing on the driveway. He did a great job - but judging from the effects of the wind, he has a little more work to do……..

We got more snow after I filmed this. And Bernie plowed the driveway a couple of more times. But there is still an awful lot of snow in those trees……..

Most of my older hens stopped laying as the days got shorter. Fortunately, I have several pullets that hatched out last year, and those little girls are keeping us in eggs through the winter. And since there are several different age groups, the eggs vary in size between the older pullets and the younger that are just starting to lay.

I just love checking for eggs each evening. I just can’t wait to see how many I’ll be collecting, or the size of each of them. The size really ranges - from itty bitty to extra large sometimes. And even though my chickens are white eggs layers, some of them lay tinted eggs - kind of a pinkish/beige sort of color.

I love my chickens. And I love their eggs. Every stinkin’ one of them.

If you regularly follow this blog, you know I’ve posted several time about Angie’s blog. Angie is nothing but awesome. She raises chickens, turkeys, goats, and heaven only knows what else. And she’s FULL of knowledge about how to raise them. I’ve learned so much from her. She’s also taught me to make grocery bags out of 50 pound bird seed bags, how to make homemade yogurt, how to….. well how to do many, many things. She’s also a moderator on backyardchickens and I have nothing but respect for her. She also happens to live a couple of hours from me.

Being the Angie Fan that I am, I also follow her on Facebook. And today she posted that two of her goats had kidded six babies. Three of them passed away But three of them are alive and, thanks to Angie’s most excellent care, are doing quite well.

I need to explain “excellent” care here. Angie brought these three babies into her home and sat with them next to the fire. She put pampers on them (YES - pampers) and they are living in her home. She and her family hold these babies and wrap them in blankets that they rotate in and out of the dryer to make sure they are warm. They fedd these baby goats with bottles filled with the goat mama’s milk. Angie’s teenage daughters sleep in the room with these precious babies and set their cell phone alarms to go off every two hours so they can awaken and feed these babies. There are many, many days of goats living in the house for Angie and her family. And do you know what? Angie doesn’t care. She’s such a good goat mommy. These babies will be sleeping in laps and wearing pampers for quite a few more days. Or weeks. Maybe just 4 more weeks……

Angie knows how badly I’ve wanted goats…. really, really, really wanted goats……. We talked last fall and she had some ready for me to take. But Bernie and I were not ready. We didn’t have shelter for the goats. And we didn’t have a fenced in area for them. Angie said “No worries”. She knew there would be future goat babies, and I knew Bernie would build me a goat shelter in the spring.

But then these babies came. Early in the year. When we still had no shelter. And Angie taunted me with them. She posted pictures for heaven’s sake! *gasp* And I knew…. I just knew….. and after a day of “discussing” it with Bernie, he agreed. He’ll need one month to build a proper shelter, but after one month, I can bring these precious goat babies home! Yay! But shhhhhhh, don’t tell Bernie…… I’m hoping it won’t be a full month……shhhhhh……

So, without further ado, meet Mirrie:

And Chance and Hope:

The white baby is Chance, and the fawn colored baby is Hope.

There is a really precious story behind each of their names. And I will share it later.

But right now, please be happy for me. I am excited beyond words. And I am so very, very happy that three little goats from Angie’s farm will be coming to live with us on the homestead.

This homestead is growing. And I am smiling. Really, really, really smiling.