Keeping Up With the Joneses, er McCoy's?

While on the way home from town today, I noticed one of our neighbors (neighbor meaning three miles down the road) had some chickens. I hadn't noticed them before because I was always admiring their sheep, or their miniature donkeys.

We live in the middle of hobby farm central. I dare say that within a ten mile radius of our house ninety percent of the homes have some sort of livestock. Just on this road alone there are five horse farms the two miles north of us. When you head south things get a little more exotic with miniature horses, lamas, etc. East of us you have sheep, cattle and more horses. So it's easy to see by not having livestock, we are social outcasts. The chickens are going to help but we need those goats to really fit in!

While I was out gathering up more yard waste for our giant mountain o' rubbish (for scale reference that's a 8' x 8' shed) it occurred to me that our problem of not having a place for the goats to live isn't really a problem at all. We have a perfectly good shed for them to live in. Isn't' it lovely?


Okay, so it's not the most attractive living quarters I've ever laid eyes on. It is nice and dry inside though and if I recall, that's all goats care about. What's even better is that this humble abode is already surrounded on three sides with welded wire fence. And there are old burn pile mounds for the goats to play king of the mountain on. All we would need is one more row of fence and a gate. Sounds simple enough, yes? Then if we ever get around to fixing up the big barn for the does, this wee little barn can remain a bachelor pad for a buck. And besides, the kid already hammered out a fancy new door handle for it.

If we're lucky we might even be able to bribe him, er I mean "encourage his entrepreneurial spirit", into fancying it up even more by painting it this summer. You know, so our goats can keep up with the Joneses sheep.