Itty Bitty Hooves

This Is The Life

May 30, 2007 on 2:57 pm | In farm, life, home |

You know, it’s days like this that someone who lives on a farm can really appreciate the fantastically relaxing aspect of this type of life. There are days that are crazy, and hectic with all these animals, and so much work involved in caring for them that you begin to wonder if it really is such a ’simple life’, but there there’s days like this.

It’s sunny, and warm, but a beautiful warm breeze that makes it pleasant to sit outside in which I just came back in from doing. The chores were normal today with one little exception.

Oreo is my little exception. I swear if there’s a way to make me crazy, that little three day old kid will find it. She is determined to find a spot in the fence where she can lay up against it and roll into the horse pasture. Everytime she finds one, I go and ‘rescue’ her and put her back with mom, and fix the spot she found… then she finds another. I really thought that fence was secure enough for a newborn kid… like they say, if a fence will hold water it will hold a goat. Sometimes it really is that hard. It’s the really small babies that are the most trouble in that respect though. They can slip through the teeniest of openings.

Other than the day’s rescue though, it was peaceful and relaxing here. I rotated the younger dry doelings through the backyard to cut down some of the weeds on the back 1/4 acre of it. We have a one acre fenced in back yard that we don’t have animals roaming or pastured in, but it cuts down on yard work to have them in there at times to do the lawn mowing. There is a 1/4 acre front yard as well that’s the same. No pastured animals in it, but we let them graze it down occassionally. The rest of the front 5 acres is pretty much dedicated to animal pens and pastures. Our back 5 is still unused except for our occassional fun times in it. That will change eventually, but it’s a lot of fencing to put up and that’s about the most expensive part of animal housing. Actual sheds and barns may cost more initially, but they last a lot longer. Fencing has to be repaired often. If we never had to replace, or repair fence we’d probably have all of the property finished by now.

Anyway, it’s so serene sitting out there with the animals as they graze. Pretty much all of our goats will come when called so if they stray too far the back of the yard is fenced but it’s original fence from when we first moved in and there are a few holes that need repairing so I don’t want them back there, they come running.

That right there is another of the joys. Animals that bound across a field to be with you when you call because they love you. It’s such a joy to live this life.