Snowy Days

Junior enjoying his first winter!

The field

The back of the house & well house

Trees in the front/side yard

Meet the Kids!

Our family has grown... by two kids!

Introducing: Tink & Buck!

Okay, so the introduction is a bit overdue... they came with the house, so we're 4 months in! 

The back story: Once we went to contract on the house, the owner asked us if we'd want to keep their two goats.  One is a Nigerian Dwarf goat, the other's a Pygmy goat.  They had been 4H goats & were hand-raised by her daughters.  Mike & I discussed it and figured that with all of these barns, we should have some kind of animals- and these guys are really cute!

We've also welcomed two barn cats into the family- Jack & Jill.  They're kind of elusive... I was only able to get pictures of Jack.  Jill ran off as soon as I whipped out my camera.  (I will continue to try to get a photo & will update this post when I finally succeed!) 

They love us though- judging by the lovely half-eaten gifts they've left on the path to the barn!

Believe it or not, the cats like to spend their days lounging with the goats in their fenced in yard!

And the real reason for bringing all this up, is to start off the barn summary/To-Do list! 


This is the goat barn, which is in pretty good shape...

You can kind of see where we need to fix the door on the far left that goes from their stall to their yard.  It's gotten a bit wind-blown lately (thanks, Irene!)

And we would like to add a barn door to the big opening on the front right of the barn (used for storage)- I'm pretty sure Mike could build one, but we need to figure out if it's worth the effort of a DIY project.

The inside of Buck & Tink's humble abode:



Their yard



Mike is generally in charge of the barn stuff, however I really wasn't thrilled with his decorating choices.


  He originally put this deer skull on the wall inside the goat barn, but I made him move it outside.
(It was part of the deer carcass he found, briefly mentioned here)
It was really creeping me & the kids out- and I'm sure Buck & Tink didn't enjoy it hovering over their feed can.  GROSS! 

There's also a chicken coop in this barn, though it needs some serious cleaning before we fill that vacancy! 

A few questions about this...

Can you paint the inside of a chicken coop, or is that bad for the chicks?  Will they eat/peck at it? 

Anyone with advice, feel free to speak up! 

With all of the other projects we've got coming up, I'm thinking this will wait to spring anyway- so plenty of time for me to do a little research!

So, that's the extent of the work we're looking to complete on this outbuilding...

-Fix goat door
-Add big barn door
-Clean (paint?) chicken coop

Sharing the love


A day in the life of
Tink & Buck



Walking the goats








How about a little goat trivia?

K's idea of "Get your goat!"

Get Your Goat- to aggrevate someone.

The saying "Get Your Goat" supposedly originated from the early horse racing days, where goats were kept with nervous race horses to keep them calm before the race, and if you wanted to beat the competition you would get their goat causing their horse to become agitated & unable to race! from http://www.urbandictionary.com/