New Additions to make our house a farm....

Spring Break is here.....which means we have had a few visitors. Matt's younger brother brought his GF and her daughter to visit last weekend. While we were at our neighbors house riding the horses (the ones who rent our back pasture for the horses to eat in) we got to talking to the older man about chickens....how difficult they were, how quick they grow, how good the eggs are, etc....

Thus led to our recent purchase and new additions to our home...

Monday after we played golf Matt and I ventured to the Farm Store in Logansport to check out the cost of starting up our mini chicken farm....We already have a pretty large barn area that at the time was only being used for storage of our pool equipment during the winter and was pretty much empty, so all we needed was chicken wire so Matt could secure the chickens from intruders, and also separate the barn in 1/2 so we could still use 1/2 of it for storage.

We found the chicken wire, the pine shavings, the chicken starter and all the necessary buckets and holders......along with our new additions....no not 8-10 chickens like we wanted....

But the state minimum to purchase not a hatchery....25 CHICKENS (10 meat chickens that will be full grown in about 8 weeks and 15 egg laying chickens that we will have around for a while)!!

So far they have settled in nicely....they eat ALOT and the meat chickens have doubled in size already in the past 2 days...

So I guess we now officially have started our farm :)

Here are some pictures:

Long Past Due Update

So I'm not as good at this blog thing as I thought, but after reading my cousin's comment on the last blog entry I figured it was time for an update....a few things have happened since :)

First of all we are still in school...the kids miss having Spring Break at this time of the year...whereas this year ours isn't until the 23rd....they are antzy....11 weeks in a row is a long time!!

Lots of projects right now. We are in the middle of our Solar System unit, we just finished up ISTEP (more on that later), just finished the book Chocolate Fever, and are working on a set of directions in writing!

ISTEP last week was a struggle for not just the kids but me too!! It was very frustrating as a teacher watching some of my top students literally break down crying, punch their test book, and just get so angry because they didn't even understand what the question as asking!! The ISTEP this year was definitely NOTHING like the ones that the 5th graders even took in the fall...it was a mess!! The questions were often worded so the text was not even at a 4th grade level, if the kids couldn't understand the question then was it really testing their math skills?? Many of the questions were cumulative so if they got one part wrong they were pretty much screwed for the rest, and several of the problems were not based on one standard but several rolled into one...so it really wasn't testing their math standards....beacuase if they got it wrong we can't distingush between whether it was the area they didn't understand, the multiplication, the story problem and whether to add it subtract, or reading a chart. All in one question....Anyways enough about that!

On the coaching front, I went into interview with the AD Mr. Miller and the Varsity Coach Chad Thomas....after erading my golf experience and resume with wins and such they were excited I wanted to do it! So we had the call out meeting after school today (23 middle schoolers) and our first practice is after school the day we get back from Spring Break! I'm excited!

Matt is almost done with wrestling....next Tuesday is their last meet. I think he is very excited!!

I'm fighting a cold that is going around.....more of a pain then anything. Hopefully it will be gone soon!!

Our furbabies are still doing great....Allie and Lizzie are my lovers...Tyson is a pain in the neck but I guess I'll have to get use to it...I hear children are the same way....You treat them all the same, but 1 likes to me the troublemaker.....thats Tyson for sure!!

I guess that is it for now!! Hope everyone is enjoying the springlike weather!!