I was a little sad yesterday when I unplugged the incubator. Sure, I have 26 duck eggs in the hatcher, but unplugging the incubator means they’re the last batch for the season. (Yes, I could plug it back in, but I am at least trying to be reasonable with how many I hatch.)

As it so happens, my girls have decided to help me out.

I haven’t seen eggs from my Easter Egger in a while, so I kinda figured she’d gone broody on me somewhere. I found her nest today, and the 20 eggs in it. Three of my cochins have also decided it’s time to hatch some eggs. Two of them are trying to share the same spot. Even with two girls on the nest, they’re still spilling over.

From the looks of things, we’ll have even more babies wandering around in a few weeks! Since the last batch hatched in the incubator wound up being the cutest chickens ever to exist, I’m pretty excited to see what these ladies hatch out. (And yes, I’ll eventually get around to posting pics of the aforementioned adorable chicks.)

There was a time when I gave my girls nesting boxes. I gave up when I realized their favorite spot to lay was an old burn barrel.

When I was researching goats, one piece of advice that came up more than once was “if you want them to be friendly, get a bottle baby.”

I think it’s more accurate to say “if you want them to be friendly, be nice to them. If you want them to be surgically attached to you, get a bottle baby.”

Our little goat herd now stands at 6 goats: 1 buck, 3 does, 1 wether and 1 soon-to-be-wether. Four of these were not bottle babies, and all of them – even the wildest among them – became pretty danged friendly once they discovered the joy of getting their neck scratched. I’m sure figuring out who carried the feed bucket had something to do with it, too.

Two of our goats were Nigerian Dwarf bottle babies. Raising them was a delightful experience, but not one I’m super keen to repeat any time soon because they were a handful. Goatsy and Snickers go beyond friendly to the realm of “more loyal than any dog.” They run to greet the bus when the boys come home, they try to sneak in the house (and sleep on the porch when they don’t succeed), and if I sit down outside, I will have one of them on my lap whether I want to or not.

The way our little homestead is set up, the house and pastures are completely surrounded by woods. There’s a 1/4 mile bumpy little dirt driveway that leads to the larger dirt road where the boys’ bus stop is. Because of the way it’s situated, the goats roam free for the most part and the dogs are almost always loose so they can protect all of the animals.

The only time this is a problem is when you want to walk away from the house because then the dogs and goats all think it’s time to go on an adventure. So, if someone’s walking down the driveway, someone else usually stands outside to keep them at the house.

This morning, my boys decided they wanted to ride the bus instead of being driven to school. Don’t ask me why. So they go tearing down the driveway at 7:30 to catch the bus while I stood on the porch, calling out to any animal that looked inclined to follow. Once they were gone, I went back in to make some coffee.

Then my phone rang. It was my neighbor, and she was giggling. Never a good sign.

The bus couldn’t leave because all four of my dogs and five out of six goats were swarming it. (The sixth goat wasn’t being well-behaved, by the way. He’s just on solitary confinement until he’s a wether because he’s a little too friendly with the girls.)

By the time I got there, the bus had managed to pull away, and my neighbors were kind enough to help me walk the goats and dogs back down the driveway. (This is not an easy task because a butterfly has a better attention span than a goat.)

Turns out Snickers, one of those bottle babies, had not only gotten on the bus, she’d jumped in a seat and looked at the bus driver like, “Okay, we can go now.”

Luckily, he thought it was funny. I almost wish I’d been there to see it, except it’s bad enough that my neighbors got to see me in my PJs with my hair unbrushed chasing down goats. I’m not sure the boys social standing would have recovered from the entire bus witnessing that.

Snickers, the learned goat

When we moved into the gray house, there was a decrepit old hawk house in the field. Granted, the leather ties the boys discovered had a certain cool factor, but as the designated worrier of the family, I was concerned the building would collapse on one of my kiddos. It had been quite a few years since the structure had housed anything other than wasps, spiders or mice. I could tell there was still usable wood in there; it was just a matter of getting to it.

We got in as a family and worked together to dismantle the old hawk house. It was a daunting task, but we dove in and little by little, the building came down.

Until we were left with a pile of wood and tin for me to sift through. The wood that was no longer usable, we burned. What was left, we pulled nails out of (or hammered the nails flat when they wouldn’t come out).

I reassembled the usable pieces into a structure we would lovingly dub Chicken Shanty. A pretty big storm came through that summer and pulled part of the roof off, but we were able to fix it easily enough. Other than that, the Shanty held up surprisingly well against both predators and weather.

Even if it did look a little odd with doors for walls and a random hodgepodge of wood pieced together like an intricate puzzle.

All in all, the Chicken Shanty served us well. We were able to make two more small coops out of the leftover wood, along with pallets I picked up for free.

Those, I dismantled and brought with me. But the Chicken Shanty is our gift to whoever moves into the gray house after us.

You’re welcome.

I tell myself it’s a commentary on life, that we’re all interconnected, even if we don’t realize it. That sounds so much better than, “I’m too busy and tired to drag out photo albums.”

Before our alpacas moved in, I’d heard a myriad of sounds from them. But now that they’re at ease and we’re their people, they’ve allowed us the privilege of hearing their song, and that’s something I wasn’t expecting.

There is a nearly constant chorus of hums that emanate from the alpaca pasture. They have one tenor when they’re grazing, another when their startled, and yet another when they see me approaching with breakfast or dinner.

Being surrounded by their contented chorus fills me with such peace. Sometimes, if the stress gets to be too much, I put the brakes on my day to go sit by their pasture so their alpaca song can wash away the tension. Maybe that’s why I put the bulk of my produce garden running along the outside of the alpaca pasture. It gives me an excuse to listen to their beautiful songs while I work!

It’s the kind of thing that makes me wish I knew the first thing about plumbing. No, I take that back. It’s the kind of thing that makes me wish I had a plumbing genie to make it all go away for me because I have no desire to learn about plumbing.

I just want a quiet shower that doesn’t scald the skin off my back, but maybe that’s just a pipe dream.

Yeah, that’s right. I went there.

Tuesday we were incredibly blessed to celebrate Blake’s 10th birthday. We had his favorites for dinner and I took him to buy his first real bow and arrow set so he can practice since he’s on the archery team now. Monday and Tuesday, as I prepared for the big day, I couldn’t stop tearing up and telling everyone I knew that my son was turning 10. A milestone for any child, but after coming so close to losing him just before his 8th birthday, this one was especially cherished.

Chris, Dylan and Blake on Blake’s 10th birthday

Wednesday, I was privileged to be the speaker for the graduation ceremony at the Chillicothe Correctional Center, a women’s correctional facility in northern Missouri. I met so many wonderful people that day. It’s impossible to put into words how I felt by the time I drove home. One of the staff members said, “I left with my heart full.” That pretty  much sums it up for me, too. Only I’ll add that I was humbled by the teachers and other staff members at the facility. They were so kind and they all make such a difference in the lives of others every day. Spending time with them was a true inspiration.

I spent a lot of the week slipping and sliding in the rain, which seemed like it would never end. Just about the time I thought I’d lose my mind, the sun finally made an appearance. I put in fences, got the horses moved to the new place, and finally made some progress on my garden. On Sunday, the newest additions arrived on our farm – two of which were actually old friends.

Mina and Lani were the first alpacas we purchased, and the first animals to be given up after Blake’s accident. I think it was God’s hand that led them back to our door. I’m glad they’re here. Everything feels right now that they’re home.

Mina saying hi. She came right up to me once everything settled down. I think she remembers me, even though I’ve only seen her once in the past two years.

Lani, the littlest alpaca, saying hi to Gabriel, one of the goats.

Anywho, there are about a billion things I want to blog about. Hopefully I’ll get to at least a handful of them in the next couple of weeks. As the move winds down, I tell myself there’ll be time. We’ll see how that works out for me.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of really good information out there by some really resourceful people, but there’s also a lot of articles that seem to be written by hobby homesteaders with enough resources to glide gently into their new world. Such is not the case with my family. Sometimes I think we repel money like my car repels hubcaps.

At the moment, my pride and joy is my $20 alpaca shed. Made from mostly recycled materials and spare parts, it might not be pretty, but I don’t think the girls will mind as long as it keeps them dry. Although, if I’m being totally honest, I was a little nervous that my friend would show up to deliver alpacas and decide she wasn’t leaving her babies in such a hovel. Thankfully, that didn’t happen because we adore our lovely ladies. They seem to like their shelter, too. Granted, the first couple of days they were a bit nervous about going in it, so they’d sidle up to the side of the shed with their hay manger and use their long necks to reach in and grab a bite of hay before running off, only to come back and repeat the process. I guess they’ve decided the shed won’t eat them since they’ve stopped those particular antics.

The fence cost slightly more than $20, but even it was done with a bit of creativity to save cost. I’ll expand the fence as I go along, but at least they’ve got a big enough area to get us started. I put the terrible twosome in the alpaca enclosure for a week before the alpacas arrived to be sure they wouldn’t find a way to break out. (The terrible twosome being Shoeshine and Po, my Great Pyrenees/Welsh Corgi cross puppies.) The way I see it, if the fence can hold those beasties in, it’ll do the trick for the alpacas, too.

Now that I’ve been at this homesteading thing for a year, I’ve realized a few things were left out of the articles. So, if any of you are thinking of making the homesteading plunge, here’s my advice:

1)      It’s never as easy as they make it look. Life will throw you every conceivable curveball. When you get to the point where it’s either laugh or cry, choose to laugh. It’s more fun that way.

2)      The tool you need will always be the one you left back at the shop, on the other side of the fence. You won’t notice this until you’re on top of a ladder, leaning precariously over the roof of an animal shelter, feeling around for the tool in question. The sooner you accept this, the less frustrating the walk back to the shop will be.

3)      Animals have no sense of style. You can build a fancy nest box only for your chickens to decide they prefer the old burn barrel. Don’t worry so much about making it magazine pretty and go for functional. Besides, a good coat of paint can cover a multitude of sins.

So today, my prayers are with not only those in Boston, but the people all over the globe suffering at the hands of those who would instill terror. May God bless them and keep them, may He fill them with peace that transcends all understanding, and may He heal their bodies and soothe their troubled spirits.