Chicken Coop

One of my big farm projects to do at the new house was building the chicken coop. We really enjoy having chickens and were anxious to have the again. It finally surfaced to the top of the to do list so several weeks ago I got started on it. I finished it a couple weeks ago and we finally got chickens last week. It is nothing fancy but it will serve it's purpose. Since we are not planning on being at this house forever I am building this more functional than what my ultimate dream would be.

The actual coop is 8'x6' and the enclosed run is 8'x18'. We will eventually let them free range during the day and just coop them up at night and when we are gone. We plan on keeping around 10 chickens.

Anyway, my plan is to also build a small barn on the back side of the coop (they will share a wall) so I built it so that I could add that on later in the year.

Here it is after the main framing was done

Finished product

The goats love to rub on the chicken wire to scratch themselves which tears up the wire and stretches it out. I decided to try adding a couple barb wire strands around the run on top of the chicken wire to see if that what help. So far it is working great.

11 Months

She is getting older and growing up so fast. It is so crazy to look at pictures from when we first got her to now. She is babbling a lot more these days which is really cute and funny. She is also getting really close to walking we think. She pushes her little walker car around walking behind it, sometimes only holding on with one hand. She will stand for a few seconds without holding on to anything and take a step between things without holding on.

Here are a few recent pics of her.

This is before church on Sunday. She got her sandal off and was chewing on it. Everything goes in her mouth these days.

Here we are on Fathers Day

And this picture is a true depiction of Esther these days. There is a lot going on in this picture. Esther at the baby gate wanting to get to something on the other side that she can not have/ watching me work on the deck out the back window. Also using one of her toys to stand on to try to get a boost over the baby gate.

She is always on the move. She wants to be crawling/cruising around trying to get into whatever she can. Everything has to be baby proofed because she can open any door or drawer she wants. She would love it if we would let her play with power cords, the computer, or the trashcan. She definitely keeps us on our toes.

Winner

A couple of weekends ago we went down to Mena for a visit. While we were there the Lum 'N Abner Festival was going on. It was really hot, but we spent a few hours there walking through the car show, arts and crafts, and other festival activities. One event that we were excited about seeing was the All American Lumberjack Show. Two lumberjacks competed against each other in various lumberjack activities, like log rolling and speed sawing. They also did a chainsaw carving demonstration. The guy carved a little chair out of a log using a chainsaw. He said he would give it to the youngest person in the crowd. He started with two years old and then started working his way down. He got to 9 months old and there were no babies that young in the crowd. So he asked for 10 months old and there were two, Esther and another little girl. So it came down to the birthdate. He asked the other parents first, their little girl was born on July 21. Esther was born on July 22, so she won by a day! It was pretty exciting to win. The little chair fits Esther perfectly right now.

Josh and Esther collecting their prize.

Esther sitting on the chair (it was really hot and nap time, hence the face)

Let's Play

My parents have a house for sale just over the border in Missouri. With the bad housing market it has been on the market for a while (they don't live there anymore, it is just empty). Anyway, there was a swing/play set that my dad built at this house. It was not getting used at all and I don't think it was helping a whole lot to sell the house so they told me I could have it. We thought that sounded good to us. So, they took it apart and brought it to us a few weeks ago. And I finally got time to set it up yesterday.

Our friends Russ and Kristy came over for lunch so we had their daughter Sophie give it her stamp of approval. It is a little big for Esther yet but she will grow in to it and we know lots of kids who will enjoy playing on it. I had to do a little leveling with blocks since our land is not flat.

Esther really likes to swing. Hopefully soon I will get a little sandbox area set up under the platform that she can enjoy also

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Esther is getting big, and getting there fast. It is crazy to look at pictures of her when we first got her. This weekend we reached another milestone in her short life so far. Car seat upgrade. We moved up from the infant car seat to the convertible seat. The infant seat only goes to 22 pounds but the convertible goes to 65 pounds and can face back or front. Side note: New car seat guidelines were released a couple months ago. They now recommend that babies stay rear facing until they are two years old (it used to be 1 year old). Studies have shown that kids are 75% less likely to be seriously injured or killed in a car crash if they stay rear facing until 2 years. Okay, back to the post. Esther was looking really big in her infant car seat. One negative about switching her to the big seat is we can not take it out of the car with her in it like the infant seat. Usually if she fell asleep in the car we would just take her out in the car seat and let her continue to sleep, now we can't do that.

Here is an old pic of Esther in her seat, this is the day we brought her home. I wish I had got the whole seat in this pic for better comparison but you can look at the size of the tag next to her head for size comparisons.

Here she is on Saturday, she's a giant.

And her she is in her new seat.

A few pictures

Thought I would throw a few pictures on here to tide you over until we can put up a longer post.

Well

We have some big new on the Farm of Hale. We are growing again. It seems that we are pregnant. Seriously, not kidding. As some of you know we have some issues in the department of getting pregnant and were basically given an almost zero chance of getting pregnant. We tried for several years and were on some potent drugs for a while. Last year we stopped all the meds and decided to adopt. Which was awesome. What else can we say except that Esther is the best thing that has ever happened to us. Getting pregnant was not even a thought or consideration for us anymore. Well, we had us a good old fashioned miracle and got pregnant. It was quite a shock for us and very unexpected, but we will take it. Margo is 9 weeks and is due in mid December. We have had a couple ultrasounds and Margo is on some medication because she is at a higher risk for problems with her previously mentioned problems with her baby making parts.

Anyway, we are super excited and wanted to share the news. See ultrasound pic below.

I also want to go ahead and educate everyone really quick on something. I am not trying to be harsh here but more of just something that people should know. Fertility problems are hard. There are several things that people say that drive couples with fertility problems crazy and they can be hurtful. I know that people think they are being nice so we try to just smile and go on. Anyway, I wanted to share a couple things with you of what not to say to couples like us. First, when a couple is adopting because they can not have kids, don't say "I bet you will get pregnant after you adopt" "you will relax after you adopt and have a kid and get pregnant" and other statements that are similar. People who have dealt with infertility have dealt with a lot and had to go through realizing they will not get pregnant. It is hard, and these statements don't help, at all. There is a medical reason we are not able to get pregnant, adopting a baby does not change this. Second, if the couple does happen to get pregnant (like us), don't say "I knew that would happen", "it always happens to people who adopt". Again, these statements drive us crazy. We adopted because us having kids naturally is a very low chance, like 1% (it will vary from couple to couple). So not impossible but very unlikely. We found statistics that show that only 5% of people who adopt because they can not have kids get pregnant naturally down the road. So, that is my education of the day. If you have already said these things to us, we forgive you and there is no need to apologize. Just remember it the next time you are talking to someone like us. This was a total miracle for us and we give the credit to God, it wasn't "us relaxing" it was a God thing.


Here is our little blob

Happy First Mother's Day

Happy first mother's day Margo.

9 months!

Esther is 9 months old today. We can't believe how much she has grown and changed and how fast it happened! She is more like a toddler than a little baby now. She has a personality and likes to show it! She had her 9 month Dr. check-up yesterday. She weighs 19.5 lbs (70th percentile) and is a little over 27 inches (50th percentile). The Dr. gave her an A+, said she looks great and developmentally she is doing things that 12 month olds do.

Here are some of the things she is up to:

• Crawls everywhere, and she is fast. We've had to put up several baby gates to keep her out of trouble!
• Pulls up on everything! She loves to stand and has now learned how to get down from standing too.
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• Cruises around the furniture. She walks around the coffee table, goes between the table, couch, and recliner.
• Will walk if you hold her hands. We know it won't be too long before she takes off on her own.
• She has mastered the "pincher" grasp, so she can feed herself. She still loves all baby food but is eating some real food. She will feed herself pieces of avocado, banana, beans, cereal bars, green beans, puffs and more.
• She can drink out of a sippy cup.
• She babbles all the time and likes to screech and squeal.
• She loves all of our animals. She squeals every time she sees one of the dogs or cats and loves when she gets to pet them.
• 
• She is finally cutting her first tooth. It has just popped through her gum.
• She is so fun and we are loving every minute with her.

Esther's New Friends

We finally got all of the fences up and ready for our animals. We went down to Haletown this weekend to pick up our sheep and goats. They'd been with Josh's parents since we moved. They have been having babies the past month or so, so we were excited to see our new additions.

Esther loves our dogs and cats. She loves to pet them and squeals when she sees them. So we were curious to see what she thought of the baby goats. She wasn't so sure when they would cry/bleat really loudly, but overall she loved the baby goats too.

I wanted to share this funny picture of Esther. Josh was feeding her some baby food last night and she decided she need to talk and spit. This was the result!

Our Protector

We are getting close to getting the fences and shelters done on the new farm so that we can get our goats and sheep back. I am ready to have them back. We have five baby goats and two baby sheep that we have not even met yet. Hopefully this weekend we will be able to go get them.

Anyway, I was offered a deal on a farm animal that I could not resist this weekend. We bought a donkey. Someone at work knew of one for sale and we have always kind of wanted a donkey so we thought we would try it out. So, we went and got her today. She is like 5 years old. She is pretty tame and is supposed to be broke to lead and ride. She is still getting used to her new environment but she will let us pet her and stuff. We are going to get a halter tomorrow and try to get that on her. It is fun to have her, I hope she turns out to be a great addition to the farm.

One of the reasons we wanted a donkey is they protect goats and sheep. They have a natural hatred of dog like animals (dogs, coyotes). And actually domesticated dogs are one of the biggest killers of goats and sheep. So, the donkey will chase off all the dogs that might try to get in to the pasture and chase the goats. As an added bonus, this donkey is supposed to be bred which means we could have a baby donkey in several months.

We are having a hard time deciding on a name for her so feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments.

Margo hates it when I play with fire

My project (actually several projects involving the same thing) the past couple weeks has been dealing with the storage sheds. I had to do this before I could put up the yard fence. It took me a while to decide what to do but now it is done. There were two sheds on the property when we bought it, a big one and a small one. They both were in not very good shape. I had thought about trying to fix them back up but ultimately decided to get rid of them and build a whole new shed.

First, I tore down the little shed. It was in ok shape but had just been built on top of the ground so it was leaning and rotting on the bottom and the door had fallen off. Here is an old pic of it.

I used some parts of it to build the new one.

Next, I built the new shed. I used almost all recycled wood and recycled sheet metal. It was mostly from old chicken houses that had been torn down. I had never really built a shed exactly like this but it worked out pretty well. It is 16'x12'. I used stacked blocks to get it level and set the main beams on. My goal was to build it in a week just working on it after work and on the weekend. I got really close, I had everything except the doors and windows done in a week, those took me an extra day. Here are some pics.

This is during building. The tallest wall was about the max of what Margo and I could lift and set up. For those of you who know about building, you may notice my walls are a little strange. That is because I recycled the walls from the old shed. The front wall is the two side walls from the old shed stacked on each other.

This is after it has all been framed.

And here is the finished product.

And here it is with the window and door open. I especially like the door because it is a sliding door.

After we moved all our stuff into the new shed, it was time to get rid of the old big shed. It was a really big shed. But it had not been built correctly, the roof was not sloped enough so it was rotting. There were several holes in the roof from rotting and there were rotting areas in the floor. And the yard fence was going to go right at the front edge of the shed. I decided it was not worth salvaging and it would take too long to tear it down. So, the next best option I could think of is burning it down. Which I don't really think is legal but seemed like fun and a little dangerous.

Here is an old picture of before.

I decided that it would not make quite as big of a fire if I tore it down a little, so I hooked it up to the truck and started yanking.

I had to wait for ideal burning conditions which happened to be on Saturday (it was misting and raining most of the day). I did a little pre burning of leaves around the shed a couple days before to help prevent the fire from getting out. I started it early in the morning so that most people would probably not be out and about and see it and call the fire department on me. Because that could result in a fine.

Here it is at first, all catching on fire, which happened really fast

Here it as maximum burn. Margo took this picture from her view from the house. It was really big with lots of black smoke, Margo was a little nervous and I was worried about someone calling the fire department.

Here it is starting to collapse down

This is after it had collapsed and looking more in control.

And here is the final picture.

It is much better with it gone, it was kind of an eyesore and now we can see our pond completely out the back window which is nice.

Buses Beware

A few weeks ago, Margo had a wreck. She was pulling out onto a busy highway during rush hour. It was one of those places where you pull out any chance you get. Well there was a vehicle that had it's blinker on like it was going to turn on the road she was coming out of. So, she pulled out, but that vehicle was not turning and it hit her in the front drivers side. It was pretty scary for her especially since Esther was in the car. Esther never knew anything happened though. The wreck was Margo's fault and she got a ticket for failure to yield. Here is the kicker though....the vehicle that hit her.....a SCHOOL BUS. Holy crap batman. I think that is the worst thing to get into a wreck with. Luckily no one was hurt, except the CRV. But it did give me plenty to give Margo a hard time about, and I won't let her live it down for a while.

Anyway, the CRV was totaled.

It was kind of sad. It was the first car we bought together and the first new car either of us had ever had. We went tons of places in it: New Orleans, Denver, Cleveland, Nashville, St Louis, the College World Series, and tons of other places. The best place we went in it though was to get our new daughter in Little Rock.

Our insurance company gave us a good amount for it, more than what I was expecting. So, last week we got a new (used) car. We got a 2004 Honda Pilot. It is the same age and has the same miles as the CRV did and we got it for less than what we got from insurance for the CRV. I think it was a pretty good trade. It is a bigger than the CRV and has 3 rows of seats, seats 8, leather seats, dvd in the back, and Margo's favorite- heated seats. And it was even the color we prefer for cars.

Finally, the house update

I know a lot of you have been asking and waiting for before and after pics of our new place. Sorry it has taken so long, but I have been super busy with getting the farm part of the new place set up. I have been working on fence the past couple weeks. Anyway, it is pretty crazy how much the inside of the house changed with the renovation. It went from super crappy to pretty nice in 3 weeks. And I learned a lot about house renovation while doing it. Overall I really enjoyed it all.

So, here are a bunch of before and after pics. I will try to tell you what all I did in each set of pictures. Some things we changed throughout the house. I hired a guy to hang new sheetrock throughout the house. There was wood paneling everywhere and then 1-2 layers of wallpaper on top of the paneling. There were 11 different ugly wallpapers throughout the house. We did not sheetrock the closets or laundry room so you can still see a sampling of them in there. We also had new carpet installed in most of the rooms. And we had new windows installed. The old windows were single pane and the new ones are energy efficient.

Before: This before pic actually does not look that bad. But that bar thing was huge. It took up a lot of space and made the kitchen seem really small. It made it impossible to have a refrigerator and use that doorway on the left because it took up that whole space.

After: No more huge bar which left space for the refrigerator, microwave stand, and china cabinet. I also installed beech laminate flooring over the ugly and ripped linoleum.

Before: Living room

After: New carpet, new A/C return vent, new paint on the new sheetrock. Also I put a nice new light fixture in. This house has low ceilings and I would hit my head on all the fan lights.

Before: Another view of living room, front door.

After: New front door, new light, beech laminate in entry space.

Before: Kitchen. What can I say. Oak cabinets with fake oak butcher block countertops and fake oak butcher block laminate between cabinets.

After: New countertops, new paint between cabinets, new beech laminate flooring, new sink faucet, new stove.

Before: Ugly kitchen close up

After: Kitchen close up

Before: Laundry room. There was a section of floor under the hot water heater that was rotten that I had to replace.

After: New maple laminate floor, new hot water heater. I left the ugly wallpaper since this room is closed and no one beside us goes in there.

Before: Master Bedroom. Awesome pink carpet

After: New paint, carpet, windows, light (light not yet installed in this picture)

Before: Spare bedroom

After: (Actually the other spare bedroom but the effect is the same.) New paint, new carpet, new light.

Before Bathroom: It was bad, plastic tile on wall with a hole that had a rat's nest.

After: New walls, paint, removed broken shower door and replaced with curtain, new window, new bathroom fixtures. New light with a fan.

Before Bathroom #2

After Bathroom #2: New toilet, new sink and faucet, new over sink light fixture, new medicine cabinet.

There is tons more that we did that is not shown in these pics. There was a half bath that was in a weird place that I totally did away with and turned it into a pantry for the kitchen which has been awesome. This involved widening a doorway from 24" to 32" so we could get our freezer in. I also had to fix several plumbing issues and electrical issues. I did new baseboards throughout the house because most of them broke when I was removing them for the new sheetrock. New floor vent covers and blinds throughout house.

I really appreciate all the people (everyone in our community group, my dad, other friends) who helped me with the renovation. There were lots of people who helped do all kinds of stuff. And a really big shout out to my friends Evan and Rick, they came out for several days and nights to help on the house. I also want to give a shout out to the Lowe's guys, especially the plumbing guys who really helped me a lot. I did not know what I was doing on the plumbing but they totally explained stuff to me when I asked them and they helped me a lot. At one point I found a leak under the house and I jiggled the pipe that I thought was leaking and a whole big piece of pipe with connectors and a P-trap and stuff just broke off. I took it to Lowes with me and the plumbing specialist got every piece of it that I needed to replace that section and set it up on the floor in Lowe's for me to show me how to set it all up.