Sunday, October 17, 2010

coyote proofing




So far our chickens have been roaming around during the day. They usually stick together in the same areas. At night they go in their coupe. Have you heard that saying, "go home to roost" or something like that? Anyway, they do. As soon as it starts getting dark, the chickens all find their way back to their coupe and jump up on their roost. That's where they sleep at night. Its funny because their roost literally is like a 4" wide piece of wood. You can use anything like that for a roost. And if the chickens don't have a designated roost, they will hop up into a tree and sleep on the branch. That happened a couple times when their coupe door was closed so they couldn't get in when it was getting dark.
So I have been digging this trench, a square perimeter where we will put up a fence for the chickens. This will be their roaming yard. You have to dig into the ground, then put the fence into the trench so coyotes won't be able to dig under it at night. I know, its a confusing visual. Anyway, this is what I've been doing. And its not easy. Its really hard rocky ground. But then again, I'm Bad-A.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Chickens




Okay, so it dawned on me that I know the life of our chickies, but other people probably don't. So here are some pics (And hey, does anybody know how to make it so I can put a description under each picture?)

They first started out as little tiny baby fuzzy chicks. Then they eventually grew into our big white clucking hens. Now, these chickens are Laying chickens. That means they don't need no man to lay an egg! But that also means that you wouldn't want to eat these chickens. If you are raising chickens for the meat you need to get meat chickens.

Anyway, here they are from tiny fuzzy chicks in an aquarium to now clucking around Anza...

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Horses




Okay, so our neighbor has 6 horses. In fact, she's a really nice lady from England and she has a cool accent. She has show horses that she rode in the 1996 olympics! Isn't that cool? So we go up to the horses and feed them carrots... The black horse's name is Gus Gus, its Colt's fave.
That white lining around the fence is electric fence, so the horses don't jump the fences. I shocked myself on it of course. But it didn't really hurt because I'm so bad-A.

Our view from our front gate

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Trailor-ific!



So yes, we live in a double wide. And I'm loving it. I've coined a new term, 'trailorific'. So when something is just SO double wide and you gotta just laugh, you say, "TRAILOR-IFIC!". Here are a few pics...
*Decorating for Halloween in a double wide is so cool. Check out the awesome 99cent window stickers from Winco...trailorific!
*The other pic is a view from the street coming up to our house. Ha. The whole 10 acres is completely fenced in. Its so great to just let the boys, the dog and chickens run around wherever.

Getting our mail


Here is a picture of our row of mailboxes, about a mile down the road. This is a night picture, it doesn't look very good, but you can totally tell from this picture how DARK it gets here at night!

A different way of life



Okay, so out here as anyone can imagine...it is a huge culture shock. First up, this is how we get into our property. This is our very own big huge gate. Most people have gates to their property because they have a few acres with animals and they need to be protected from coyotes... so when you drive down our dirt driveway, you have to stop, get out of the car, open the gate, get back in the car, then drive just outside of the gate, then get back out of the car and close the gate. Okay, just then as I was describing it, it sounded like a big ole pain in the butt...but its not, its kind of cool. And again, just a different way of life. AND I love our big huge iron gate.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

So Why Anza?


Really, the answer is simple...we were wondering. We are just a simple couple who kind of got the itch to wonder what it would be like to have land and animals. So we decided we'd better do it now while the kids are still young and resiliant. And while we're still dumb enough to make this kind of move, not knowing what we're getting into. So here's our adventures in Anza...