Goat-lets!

DISCLAIMER: This isn't the new and improved blog system... life has a way of messing with my awesome plans. Oh well.

In case you didn't know, baby goats are called Kids, just like people. My dad has a friend who came over one day to see the goats we had at the time and was a little confused.

"Whatcha call 'em, Hoss?" he asked. "Goatlets?"

So, it stuck and we've said Goatlets ever since.

 (By the way, if you say something weird around my family there is a chance you will change the way we talk to each other forevermore. Don't say you weren't warned!)


Without further ado, look at what were born between 7AM Saturday and 5AM Monday! 

Make it Monday - Feed Trough

So I'm going to try something new in an effort to keep things more organized on here - Mondays will be Make it Mondays with DIYs. Wednesdays will be Wacky Wednesdays and that'll be for all the random stuff I want to post (plus there was a book of that title that I loved when I was a kid.) And Fridays will be Frugal Fridays with money saving tips and ideas. I might not do all three each week but we will see what I can do!

Today's Make it Monday post is about the little goat feed trough we made a couple weeks ago. You could modify it and use something similar for bigger goats, sheep, llamas, a pack of dogs if you're into feeding packs of dogs... basically any smaller animal. If you got a really huge piece of pipe you could make one big enough for cows. 

Since the goat population explosion we needed something bigger than one pan to feed them all in. We were using several plastic dog bowls as a temporary solution but the bowls were getting busted up and it wasn't at all convenient. 

We went to TSC and they had a little goat feeder that hung on a wall, but it was $14.95 and I knew there had to be a cheaper way to handle this! Plus I knew what kind of feeders my dad had built for their sheep, using angle iron and PVC pipe, I figured we could do something close with scrap wood and PVC. So off we went to Lowes.

Farm Kids Can!

I consider it the best part of an education to have been born & raised in the Country

Not knocking "City Kids" but farm kids are just a different breed. We grew up a lot more self reliant and resourceful than some of our more urban counterparts, and when we're grown it shows.

I don't normally think about it much. I really didn't when I was still on my parents' farm. My dad, having two daughters, said we were "the sons he never had" and we carried and tossed hay bales, worked in the shop, and ran and brought tools just like the boys. We played in the creek and the mud and climbed trees and put in a lot of hard work around the farm and in town at the farmers' market.

I guess the market is where we started realizing we were different. I remember one day picking up at the end of the morning and this woman almost gasping when I grabbed the 2"X12"X8' that was the bottom shelf of the display. 

"Oh my God, you did!" she exclaimed. I grinned and shrugged and shoved the board into the trailer, just like every other market day. It was a board, for Pete's sake!

2013 In Review - *Brag Alert*

The other day I made a list of everything we accomplished in 2013 and I think its a pretty good list! I will try to include some photos. If you see anything you're particularly interested in learning more about, let me know in the comments and I will try to feature it in a future post! 

Here goes! (They're in no particular order.)

• improved electric fence to contain goats
• Built grape arbor

Josh's own design for  grape arbor