Good things come to those who wait

    One day you just wake up and say, "I want a farm!" No, Just me? Well let me just say that's basically what happened.  

     Ok now I'll admit we weren't exactly new to owning a few livestock,  We've own goats in the past, but  honestly it came and went in a blink of an eye, we just weren't ready, and that's okay to admit, right? 

     We we're a young couple on a large (to us)  plot of open dry land, and in over our heads. Our kids were little and one of our boys is special needs, so when you take young parents with young kids, in a new home with so much work to build our property, getting chickens and goats sounded like a good idea, right?Wrong! 

      Let's just say we didn't do enough research or have the time to commit to our animals, which is something I strongly suggest everyone do before bringing home any pet, whether it's a dog from your local shelter or in our case a couple free goats a family friend gives you. Long story short, it was chaos! We didn't have proper pens built, so goats got out, pooped all over our deck and now that I'm a little more knowledgeable on taking care of goats, I'm pretty sure we feed them all wrong, but hey, they were fed everyday. Needless to say, we sold our goats a few months later.

    And our small flock of chickens, which I absolutely loved, just hated cleaning out the coop and run, all eventually died off from natural causes. Years went on before we decided to try again.  By then we focused on planting trees,  and did some lanscaping. Our kids are now older with our youngest starting high school, and with them being able to help out alot more, not with just animals but property management, (seriously how many weeds can grow on just over an acre of land?) I don't know how some people manage anything larger, but more power to them . The time came to start growing our farm, or atleast that's what my plans were.

     The vegetable garden is the first thing we started, my husband built up some planter boxes out of cheap fencing materials to get me started, which is definitely on the list to get redone in the near future. I'm not the best gardener but through trial and error its definitely fun for me because I love the challenge and the suprises each season of growing my own food. It's small scale, but it's just enough for my family and enough to share with some family and friends, plus our farm animals get scraps from time to time. If you've never grown your own food you wont understand the gratification of planting a tiny seed and watch it grow into something you can eat in a matter of weeks. I highly recommend trying it.

      After gardening a few years I wanted chickens, I was itching for farm fresh eggs grown in my backyard. I remember bugging my husband to fix up the old beat up chicken coop and run because we were getting chickens, and my husband looking at me with that "here we go again look" in his eyes. My husband is my rock you guys, I just have to throw that out there, he works full time to support us and still works hard on our farm on his days off, he's definitely a keeper.  Anyways, we found a neighbor close by that had a huge sign saying he had chickens for sale, so we gave him a visit and picked up 10 white leghorn chickens, they were perfect. They were just a couple of weeks from starting to lay their first eggs, perfect timing I thought. 

     Now a couple years in to chicken farming I thought my girls deserved a new coop. I was envious of all the "pretty coops" I saw on pinterest, and ours was basically three large boxes made up a quick years ago, which are now repurposed into our rabbit cages, I just love reusing what we got. Anyways right next to our chicken run was our old "goat shed," as we called it, and pen. I started to  think it was perfect for my new coop. Needless to say, with new siding and paint and of course I had my husband cut out a couple small windows,  it was perfect. That got me thinking, "I want a farm!"

    A year later we decided to expand and get our pot belly pigs, rabbits and Nigerian dwarf goats as well. It's a learning experience but we are so happy this time, and I'm so glad we waited, until we were ready. 

    And one more thing, our son Daniel has Autism,  hes high functioning but still has everyday challenges. Hes an animal lover at heart but has never had a connection with our dogs or cat, (yes, we got those too) so after getting rabbits and especially our goats who just love attention, Daniel finally has animals that dont run from him and definitely connect on another level.

    So if you tried the farm thing before and it didn't work but you know in your heart it's what you really want, then just wait, until the time feels right.