Welcome to my Crazy Life!

I have never had a normal childhood, not that I'm complaining. Family time to me is going out in the garden and pulling weeds, unloading wagons full of hay, canning tomatoes and working with livestock to get ready for upcoming shows. I have always loved family time, but let me give you a little run down of my life:

Mornings:
- Get up around 7:00 and have coffee with mom and my brother Fred (after dragging him out of bed. . . not a morning person at all!)
- Fix breakfast so when dad gets in from his morning chores at the dairy farm
- Let dogs out (1 border collie, 1 husky/sheperd cross, 1 beagle/sheherd cross and 4 beagles. Yes that is a lot of dogs)
- Feed and milk goats, Right now I only have two in milk and five more to kid. I have a set of twin kids I am bottle feeding (can you say adorable?)

- Feed the four pigs their grain and milk (we feed our pigs milk because it makes them grow faster and they love it!
- Feed, water and let chickens out (we have over 20 different breeds in pairs or breeder pens, we raise meat birds, show birds and layers so our total is somewhere in the 250+ range)
- By this time it is normally around 12:00 and usually we have customers for chickens or are doing random jobs (i.e. castrating pigs, trimming hooves, weeding the garden) today though it's kind of rainy and mom and I are making goats milk soap.

Then it is lunch time and depending on how mom feels (we will get into that later) I will be fixing lunch or helping with lunch. Then my brothers do the dishes and put laundry away.)

3:00 p.m. is kind of my downtime, usually I do English homework (I am finishing up a few classes and then will be completely done with my Bachelors degree in Animal Science.) Occasionally I will use this time to do other odd jobs. Around 5:00 you start chores all over again, hopefully finish up by  9:00 if all goes according to plan (lets face it it rarely does) be back in eat dinner and be in bed by 10:00. Often times I look forward to nothing more than curling up in bed with my two dogs and getting sleep so I can start all over again in the morning!

So now that you know what a BASIC day looks like, I hope you follow my blog so you can see what else I do throughout the day. I will be offering tips on things such as trimming goat hooves, making soap, preparing chickens for show, feeding poultry, the importance of local meats and many other things. I will try to post everyday and show you the exciting things going on in my life.