Here is a cute one of our puppy Shelby. She is probably twice that size now.  

Here is four of our dogs and one our 3 cats.  

Dog Pen and Aviary in the works!

Just ordered the building materials for the dog pen for our dogs and bird aviary for my cockatiel and parakeet. Yeah! They will be so happy with thier new set up. : )

Also, boxing up our neverending stuff! Sent some of it off with my mother-in-law who is meeting me up at the new house, she is so great!! Her dog Brandi will be the first to use our new dog door. I will post pics of our pups!

Cochin mama with barred rock chicks. So, cute. : ) Thanks to Feathersite for this picture. 

Roger Wants To Name His Own Chicken

Oh, it excites me so to hear that Roger (my husband) is actually interested in naming a couple of the chickens I'm going to pick up. I'm going to buy some Cochins from a local breeder before we move to our new home. Here is what they look like:

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Cochins/BRKCochChix.html These are babies.

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Cochins/BRKCochinStd.html These are the adults, look at the bottom picture, awww so cute!

I told Roger he should name the rooster and his comment was that roosters are mean. If anyone knows Cochins knows they are big teddybears not a mean bone in thier body. I think he will be pleasantly surprised.

Thinking about worms. . . . . . . .

I read the worm article in Countryside yesterday and it got me thinking about being a worm farmer. Hmmm. . . . . . There is a lot of fishing in the area we are moving to so it would be a good thing to raise my own worms for fishing and if I can find a market for them maybe I could sell some too. I also thought about raising worms for thier castings to sell as fertilizer. It would be really easy to do. Cheap to start too. Here are a couple informative sites for buying books and worms to start your own worm business.
http://www.wilsonsworms.com/index.html

http://www.wormbooks.com/

I can picture myself now putting my hands in the cool dirt pulling out long squirmy worms, oh my chickens are gonna love it.

Escrow closing on September 1, 2004 or So That is What We Are Planning On

Lots of planning of what to do first once we get settled with our stuff. It will be a little difficult to figure out what to do with stuff we need to put in a garage, because there is no garage. We will be putting in a work shop soon, but until then we will probably put all Roger's dirt bikes and gear and tools in his dad's garage, if that's alright with him. More excuses for Roger to see his dad more often : ) . . . . Since he only lives like 3 miles away. That will be so great.
So, first we will be putting in the dog pen since they are leaving a brand new roll of fencing (free stuff is good) and then a garden or honeybees, whatever takes less time and money to do. I'm hoping I can build my beehives myself, that will test my handiness for sure. Here is a good bee website I found today. http://www.betterbee.com/home.asp I'm hoping the Penn Valley Fencing Company will figure out there virus on their website soon so I can check out what they have. I want to grow some flowers for next year for farmer's market, but that all depends on how soon we can till and fence in the garden area otherwise the deer will eat them all. They like treats like peoples flowers. Deer delicacy ya know. : D If I get some Angora goats in the next couple months I can just put them in the corral that is already fenced. We will see, they are a little expensive so will have to have money for those. Here is what an Angora goat looks like. http://www.ferncrestfarm.com/goats.htm This is a farm I want to go see when I'm looking to buy some Angora's. Really precious huh?
Here are the two organic seed companies I will be buying from. http://www.groworganic.com/default.html Our neighbors here in Grass Valley : D
http://www.seedsofchange.com/default.asp?UID=2004012723174650 This one is in NM
Oh, and here is a really neat website for printing out your own seed packets. http://alenkasprintables.com/seed_packets.shtml Really cute!
Enjoy!

Here is the far East corner where 2 acres is already fenced in. Lots of trees on this side of the property. 

Here is the acreage where we will fence in pasture for the goats. 

Here is the house, it is a 2003 mobilehome with 2600 sq. ft. of living space 

In escrow on new Homestead potential property

Here is a picture of our future homestead! Yeah! So, hopefully by the end of September we will be able to move in and start living the homestead life.