Farmstead Mornings with Littles.

My children wake up and get their clothes on and come out to the living room. They give me a big hug and proceed to put their overalls and jackets on. We all head outside with smiling faces. We stop to notice the smell of fresh air and the beautiful sunrise. They all skip to the barn and immediately start on their chores that I have previously delegated to them. Sometimes we sing Old MacDonald.

HA! Totally kidding!

They wake up and come out to the living room and someone is crying because "she got the blue cup with the blue lid and I'm princess of the day". I tell them to SHHHHH! because A4 is sleeping. A1 goes to get dressed and has a small meltdown because she wants the Elsa shirt and it's dirty because she wore it yesterday. She has to settle for purple. A3 decides to pull the string hanging from a sock and now cries because there is a string on her sock. A2 lays on the couch and whines because she needs help picking out her clothes.

Fast forward 20 minutes and we are all ready to go. Overalls on. Jackets on. We walk outside and A1 takes off to the chicken coop. A2 starts crying because "she didn't wait on me". A3 is playing with bugs in the dog water. A2 also can't get her boots on. I'm bending over as to get to child height, and our big monster of a dog is licking me in the face. He's a poop eater so his breath is absolutely fabulous. Boots on! MOMMY! There's something in my boot! Now we are frantically kicking our boot off because there is a piece of straw in her boot. Ok, boots on. I have to go potty. What? Seriously? Back inside. Back outside. "She didn't wait on me!" Bleh. Head to the barn.

Crap, I forgot to feed the dog. He really needs to get fed before we let out the chickens because those little birds will come eat his food. And dog food is expensive and chickens can eat bugs. This is A2's job, but I will NOT be taking off her boots to have her go back inside to do dog food. There are some things that just aren't worth it.When he's done eating he gets to go out to the pasture and chase the donkey. It keeps them both young.

Then we feed Julie. The 2nd easiest animal we have right after Shorty. But she's sweeter so she wins.

Chickens are next. They all get a small scoop of food. We feed and water any chickens in ICU before the others so they don't try to squeeze into the sick ward. Then we open the big coop door. The plan is to sprinkle the food on the ground; however, there is always someone who holds on to their scoop and a chicken is flying up around their face and perching on their arms to try and eat. This causes a bit of chaos, and some crying. Then some, "Obey mommy and that won't happen." Then it's mommy's job to scrape nightly droppings into a dish a bin to take to compost. Mommy also fills water with the help of an apple cider vinegar "pourer". The waterer is too difficult for my kids to maneuver at this point, but they can pour. ACV is great for animal gut health! Then we put more straw in the laying boxes. not sure why because our Australorp, Lucy, goes to every box and kicks it all out. It's a great job for the girls! Except the straw hurts their fingers. Not every day, just some days.

Then we take care of hoofed animals. This is tricky because they're all ready. Bleating and moo'ing for someone to come give them a treat. Really it's just a treat. 9 goats and 3 heifers share about 4 quarts of show developer. It's smothered in molasses and has corn and types of grain in it. They LOVE it! We originally got it for our calves as a starter feed. We bottle fed them, and their momma wasn't their to let them nurse whenever or teach them out to eat grass and such. Now we keep it as a treat. They are mainly grass fed. Eventually they will be purely grass fed, but for now, we do this.

I squeeze in the run where they have set up camp to wait on me. I usually get bombarded by goats running around my legs. Prayerfully the cows just stand there and don't do as the goats do. As I pour that scoop of yummy into the feeder I must quickly move. They're fast and strong. The sound of munching fills the air. I let in A1 to help scoop the gifts the cows left in the stall overnight. Yes, GIFTS! It's fantastic compost. We put it into a cart. Once the cart is full, we dump it into our compost pile. The chickens go nuts over fresh poo. MMMM, eggs. We don't fill up water troughs often because we have a pond that our hoofed animals drink out of. We do fill them up every 10 days or so. We also mix ACV in their water also.

Once a month we spend about 4-5 days on lead work. We put rope halters on all 3 of our calves. Tie 2 up and lead one around the run. This is good for learning how to be tied up and stand when we start milking. It's also good for them to learn to trust us and walk with us. Then repeat. A1 likes to ride our oldest calf, Honey. When she did it every morning, Honey cooperated. We slacked off and she's become as stubborn as our donkey.




Recently we decided to start working with some of our unruly goats. We have 3 that are as sweet as can be. The others will eat out of our hand, but run when we try to pet them. So, the name of the game is catch the goat and hold her in my lap while A's feed yummy leaves and we all give her a nice back scratch. There is kicking and bleating and head butting. Fun stuff.

We dump any more compost. Open the gate for the ducks to go out to the pond. And I get trampled by a big monster of a dog who wants some lovin. The A's play with the animals for about 10 minutes, and then we go inside. Well, I say, "Come on, let's go inside". And I get responses like, "I don't want to", "Wait for me" (followed by sitting on the ground and crying while the dog proceeds to lick the face of said cryer), "Moos" sounding off for more food, and then the always fun "I CAN'T GET MY BOOTS OFF!".