The country way of life

On Mother's Day we got to talk to Shelby's little bro Shane on the phone. He's serving a mission in Canada and comes home in 4 months. I was telling him all about his brother's kinda funny new-found obsessions and hobbies and had to take some pictures of our hicks-in-the-sticks way of life. Below is Shelby's new chicken coop that he built. Well- one half is for chickens and one half is for the baby pheasants until they are big enough to move into the 'fly pen'. This is the fly pen. Shelby and the kids built it- complete with 'cover'. The cover is the rocks, trees, and branches that they hauled in and planted to give the birds some more landscaping. We also covered it with this special netting so they can not escape until Shelby is ready to let them go and shoot them :)

These are our chickens. They are getting pretty big! I guess the plan is to only keep 6 hens and 1 rooster and he'll slaughter the rest in the fall to eat????

Shelby built a large shop or 'shed' as he calls it a few months ago. It has a large room to hold all of Shelby's tools and projects and then another room that we use as our long-term storage room. It's getting there!

This is the 'orchard'. The picture only shows 2 trees, but we really have 2 apple, 2 peach, and 1 pear tree spread over the property.

Below is Shelby's raspberry patch. He transplanted a few and bought a few starts. These are his babies. You can't see them very well from the weeds surrounding them, but there are 12 in all.

I will later post a picture of the garden, which I am quite proud of considering this is my first true attempt at one. It's coming along great. It's so amusing to me to watch the things that my husband becomes interested in, but it's nice to kind of revert to a more simpler way of life in providing for yourself and not being so dependent on the outside world for your needs. It's a lot of work, but I think all the fruits of our labors will be yummy.