I Blame Thane

I blame Thane for this whole farm thing...I've always loved farms and farm animals, but I didn't start seriously pursuing acreage and dreaming of goats, chickens, sheep, cattle, etc., until I got Thane.  Then I thought...hmm...if I have an old-fashioned farm Collie...wouldn't it be cool for him to have livestock to herd?

And thus it began.  It's been a long journey to get to this point, but I am excited to announce that as of today, Butterscotch Farm is home to five charming, adorable Oberhasli goats!!!  :D :D :D

Hopefully soon it will be home to me too...LOL!!  

I am actually hoping to move in over the next couple of days...things will be pretty rustic for a bit, but I'm excited!  And it'll let me get a bit more sleep and put a few less miles on the truck when I'm over there.

Here are a few photos of the progress that has happened since I last posted:

Pastor Hayman brought me the rest of the firewood that my aunt and uncle gave me!  What a huge blessing!

Timothy installed my solar fan...and had some fun while doing so, lol.

Here's the actual fan:

It runs well, but doesn't do nearly as much as I hoped to mitigate the heat.  The dome came with screen windows that can replace the vinyl windows; I just need to come up with a way to modify them so that they won't let the rain in.

Another huge blessing: one friend from church brought his excavator, and another brought his tractor, and they have been working to do some serious clearing and stump pulling for me!

They carved a path from the water pump down into the goat field; previously, this was an almost impassable tangle of downed trees and brush.  I sure appreciated that today when I made a couple trips down to the field with a five-gallon bucket of water in each hand!  

Also, Joe found me a boulder!  Just a bit was sticking out, and he worked at it and worked at it and finally got it out.  

It now lives in front of my dome, and I LOVE it!!  Lol, Dad, Timothy, and I were pumping water from the well and scrubbing the sand off the rock the other day.  :P

Dad and Timothy hung the shade cloth this past Saturday...not sure that does much either, lol.  Maybe I need a bigger one.

I think this was also on Saturday...Dad finished getting my sink hooked up to the gray water system.  It's just a drain - I can dump any non-sewage waste water in there, and it goes down through a pipe into a special ditch.  I don't have running water in the dome; I'll have to bring all water in.  I still need to get the water from my little well tested.

Oh, and Scott, Joe, and Paul managed to use the excavator to get the woodstove inside!  I'm especially grateful for that - that thing is a BEAST!!

And...here's the goober that started all this, LOL!!  I think he's pretty sure that the chickens are squeaky toys.  Sometime in the next day or two I'll need to introduce him to the goats, too....that'll be interesting!  

Happy Monday!!!