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Look what Bernie did today.

He built gates for all three of the deck step openings.

Now the pups can go out unsupervised and bark at things and we don’t have to worry about them terrorizing goats and chickens.

Speaking of the pups terrorizing chickens, I must tell you that sometimes the chickens terrorize the pups. Dolly gets very excited when Bernie throws her frisbee off the deck for her to chase.

But sometimes Duke can’t stand to see Dolly having so much fun.

And she has to do some pretty fancy footwork to get past him.

She actually thinks Duke is her friend and wants to play. She’ll abandon that frisbee to play with her friend.

Dolly thinks Duke is the best playmate ever.

Duke chases her all over the yard.

When she gets tired of being chased and retreats, Duke lets out a crow that just about shatters windows.

Diesel excitedly watches the entire exchange.

And this is about as animated as he gets over the whole thing.

On second thought, maybe the gates are to keep Duke from getting at Dolly on the deck.

We finally have a deck. Yay! This deck will not only be a wonderful place to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet, it will be where I do all of my canning this summer. That will help keep the house much cooler on canning days!

That’s from the driveway looking along the front of the house. It turns at the end and runs along the side.

Between melting snow, rain, and deck construction I’m sure you can imagine the mud we have been dealing with the past couple of weeks. The deck has three sets of steps, and the shortest set is on the end closest the driveway. That set of steps seems to be the pups’ favorite - and the ground there was a muddy, clay filled mess.

If you look closely, you may be able to see the paw prints filled with water! It was raining when I took that picture. It was, in fact, raining when Bernie and I spent three hours outside this morning building a small landing from free pavers we got through FreeCycle. We also put gravel down to widen the driveway right up to the pavers.

As you can see, there is still plenty of mud to deal with in the yard, but I sure hope this helps to reduce the amount of mud we track into the house……

Even though it rained most of the day yesterday, Bernie spent it outside working on the goat barn. Our permits came through for “Farm Use”, so the goat barn will be 12′ X 24′ with a 8′ X 24′ lean-to. It is really coming along and although I *hope* sharing this won’t jinx it, we plan to pick the baby goats up next Saturday morning! Please keep your fingers crossed………