Our family lives on a small quiet street.  All our neighbors are retired so when we start a project, specifically one in the yard, everyone is all “curious” about what we are up to.  One of our neighbors will sit on the other side of the fence in his lawn chair sipping sweet tea and watch us as we work in the yard.  After 10 years of being the entertainment for the neighborhood seeing him pull up his chair just makes me laugh.

We live on what the kids call a “small farm”.  The property is over 4 acres with a big yard, creek, and woods.  The girls and pets love running and playing in our yard.  We’ve even done camp-outs, paintball games, bonfires, target practicing, and a lot of other activities in our yard.

Okay…..so back to the neighbors question “what are they building now”?  A little over a year ago I was reading an article about goats, don’t ask me why, just happened to catch my eye during that time.  Now I am not a big fan of goat milk or cheese or meat so that wasn’t what caught my attention it was the part about what the goats ate.

While the goat’s digestive system is similar to that of cattle, horses, and sheep they tend to prefer brush and trees over grass (they are more like deer).    The reason why that caught my attention was because with our 4 acres we have a lot of trees, leaves, and brush.  My husband and I had been talking a week before about spending some more time cleaning the undergrowth in the wooded area of our property so the article intrigued me.

With all that being said our kids LOVE animals (dogs, turtles, horses, cats, you name it), it is one area they have in common. They have been asking for years for a horse (I don’t think that’s going to happen, at least any time soon).  A couple months earlier I teased my husband that I was going to get chickens for the girls to raise and so we could have fresh eggs to eat.  He vetoed the chicken idea mainly because we have too many wild animals that go through our property (turkeys, deer, racoons, possums, foxes, coyotes, etc….).  So when I brought up the idea of getting goats (more as a joke) I figured he would just laugh at my suggestion…..well, he didn’t.  He started researching it more and decided that if I was up for it we could consider the possibility in a few months.

Well, a few months went by and we started preparing for the newest members of our family.  What began with a simple glance at an article turned into building a goat house.  Jake designed and built the whole thing by himself (well, with the help of the girls).  The girls were soooooooo excited!  Here are some pictures of the process:

Brina hammering away

Brina and Karlie having fun “working” on the goat house

Daddy working with his two helpers!

Brina & Karlie helping Daddy on the roof of the goat house

Brina, Karlie, Mommy, and Skipper painting the goat house.  The girls picked out the color “candy apple red”!