Working Together!

     Now a days, it's not very common to see a family working together.  By a family, I mean a group of kids from preschool to high school, and maybe a parent.  Today was a good day!  I home school 4 out of 5 of my school age kids.  (My second son vehemently requested to attend the local high school). This requires much less of their time for study/academics than a traditional brick-and-mortar school.

     Today we needed to work on getting the fence put up so we can let the goats free range, and be able to go pick up our cow and calves.  We have already placed and set 45 six feet tall steel T-posts.  I am waiting for Lowes to get the rest of them in (30 more) on Friday.  Next we had to put on the insulators, because we are using electrical fence.  I chose this because barbed wire scares the life out of me.  This is not just for animal safety, but for my family as well!  The thought of one of the kids running and tripping/falling/rolling into barbed wire leaves me with mental images fit for a horror film or nightmare!  The electric fence will give them a zing, but they have all bumped into it at one time or another with the pigs, and the worst ending was a severe case of giggles while they were rolling on the ground!

      So above we have Mack and Kay trying to put wire insulators into one of the trees.  To the left is my oldest son, Zack using a junior machete to clear the brush and vines where the wire will run.  Right now, just the area that will be our "Spring" garden is wired in.  The two pigs have been in there since October, rooting it up, eating any form of vegetation and bringing ALL the rocks to the surface.  I was planning on taking my garden wagon in the pen tomorrow to start removing all the debris but we have a 90% chance of rain for the next 24 hours!
     Also, our sister missionaries were planning on coming over to help run the wire for the fence.  Yet another task that will have to wait, (hopefully just until Friday!!).



So here are some photos with the reasons behind all this work!

 The pigs are a joy!  The black and white (Oreo looking) pig is our male (boar) named, "Ham"let!  The pretty pink pig with Cleopatra eyes is his wife, Ophelia!  In the middle picture, she was sleeping in their feeding trough!  Sometimes they really freak us out because when they sleep, they look DEAD! Hahahaha!
Kay is our biggest animal lover!  She willingly feeds, waters, plays with and loves on every one that will hold still long enough!  Here she is holding our newest addition, Peanut!  He is a male (buck) Pygmy goat.  He is only 3 months old, but will be a "daddy" next year ;)  The picture below them is our "herd".  We have Caramel, our wether (neutered male) & his twin Cinnamon our female, both 1/2 Nigerian Dwarf & 1/2 Pygmy, Pepper and her twins Shiva and Callie (Agoutis), .

 The picture below is some of our chickens.  They love to follow the goats around.  It's like a bunch of little kids following the "cool" big guys around, hoping to find something worth the effort!  I'm just tickled that they eat all the BUGS!

Days like this leave very little time for the TV, XBox or computer.  Days like this make me smile and make me very happy with my choices!