Sunday, February 28, 2016

Farm life

It's been a busy weekend on our "farm" and it only has highlighted how much more work we have to do!

When we were looking at homes we toured one that had a barn with horse stalls. Thankfully it wasn't a final contender because how do you explain to children that just because a home has room for horses doesn't mean you are going to get them! We did promise the kids that we would get chickens because I have always wanted them and I knew we would have enough space for them. Earlier in the week we purchased everything we would need to set up a brooder, since our local farm supply store was receiving their first order of chicks. We are very fortunate to have a large garage with a second floor full of storage. So we set the brooder up there to ensure it would stay draft free.



On Friday we picked out our chicks and brought them home! We tried to pick out some that had distinguishing marks but I'm not sure we will be able to tell them apart.



On the same day we brought home our chicks, the owl nesting box arrived. Which is super exciting, but it meant double projects this weekend. We are hoping to encourage the nesting of Barn Owl's to increase their population and to help decrease the rodent population on our land.





We are concerned that it sways too much if an owl lands on it, so we may need to change out the pole on it for a wider one.

Meanwhile Tacoma was excited to explore more areas. This was a big hike for her and she's now happily snoozing in bed.



We managed to get one post sunk this weekend for the chicken run. However, with intermittent rain and all of the other projects that is as far as we got. We are building the run next to our garden area. We will add additional smaller chicken wire along the existing fence line of the garden and will build the sides along our irrigation canal. Since we have lots of aerial predators as well as ground predators we will also cover the run with the smaller chicken wire as well.


Lots of work to do outside and we will just keep plugging away at it. It's exciting and overwhelming to have so much land to work with!

Monday, February 8, 2016

Love Stinks 5k

Now that we are feeling mostly settled in our new home it was time to start researching races for 2016. From my research it seemed like a local running club Southern Oregon Runners hosts many of the runs in the area. I stumbled upon the Love Stinks 5k and I was surprised when the entire family said they wanted in.

With a 9:15 am start and a 10 minute drive this was an ideal family race. Kylie had actually gotten a few runs in the week prior but Sydney had opted not to join us, so I don't think anyone really had any expectations other to go out and have fun. Scott and Sydney took off and Kylie and I ran together  on the out and back course. It was fun to see so many people dressed up for the run and it kept us entertained along the course. Kylie was doing a good job of managing run/walk intervals and so many people were cheering her along; which really helped because after while everything I was saying was not appreciated.

As we rounded the last corner we could hear Scott and Sydney cheering and two other women also started cheering for Kylie, it was awesome. She picked up her pace and I had to sprint just to keep up with her. It was a great finish.

As it turns out both girls placed second in their age groups! They also both recorded personal record's beating their previous times from a race in 2014. It was a great race and such a supportive community, we are looking forward to our next race together.