Our Neighbors Think We're Crazy

It's no secret we bought a house in a place we thought we would never buy a house. But circumstances didn't really give us another option. And at the end of the day, I truly believe we were pointed in this direction. Not necessarily for our own mental health...but for the health of the property.

Speaking the name of the guy who previously owned our house tends to elicit the following response "Oh yea, him..." and then *silence*.  Nothing bad has ever been said, but nothing good has been said either!

He was a bit of a junk collector. And by a bit, I mean we had to use a skid-steer to take the top couple inches of dirt off the ground from around every building in order to collect all the crap just left laying around.

We have 30 years worth of workout equipment (hiding in the trees), at least 30 tires, a semi axle with tires on it, truck hoods, truck beds, and a never-ending list of crap floating around.

Not to mention a house that hadn't seen TLC in quite a few years (even though it was brand new in 1970 so it's not that old). The toilet, bathtub and sink in the bathroom leaked for so long it ruined the subfloor and the walls. Just to give you an idea of some of the problems.

We knew going in that this would be a heck of a project. Worth it, but still a project. And the more we dug in, the bigger the project got. For about 4 months there, I didn't think we would make it to our first anniversary as a married couple. But we are still plugging...and we can almost see the end.

I digress though. On top of all the crap left laying around, we also inherited about 5 acres worth of weedy pasture. And I mean weedy with big patches of thistles and monster weeds taller than me. Being the animal collector lover that I am, I set out one day to get some chickens. Chickens turned into more chickens, which turned into ducks, which turned into goats. Given more money, I'm sure we would have cattle (even though it's a bad time to get into cattle with such high prices) and horses as well. If I were allowed, I'd have pigs too. But that's a biosecurity issue and a discussion for another day.

The best thing that all of these creatures do? They are really good at grazing down the weeds. That's not to say that each species loves every weed that's in their pen, because they don't. There are some weeds we end up having to get rid of ourselves...but in general, they do an awesome job cleaning up the weeds.

In between the pens is a good example of some of our weeds...in front of the pens is the grass we've mostly reclaimed :)

We set the birds up in a fresh patch of weeds, give them a couple weeks, and move them again. It's kind of a pain...which is why making a permanent (well permanent-ish) 4 pen rotational section is already on the list for next spring.

If you've made it this far, I'm sure you're wondering what does any of this have to do with the neighbors thinking we're crazy? Well the neighbors drive by multiple times a day to check their cows and corn fields and they always drive reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaallllll slow past our house...just trying to see what crazy thing we've done this time.

Or maybe they are just thinking about pelting our beautiful coops :)

Take that Husker fans!