A little nudge

 So Covid happened and my business Triathlon Coaching and Fitness Training business was shutdown from the public facilities by the Government.  My husband moved home to work out of the house, my son was laid off and my little retreat on the acreage became a little more crowded.  I am not one to wallow, I love to change it up to look forward to things, not to look at things I cannot change.  So outside I went to begin building a new future for my Acreage.  The change began slowly, we had a family of squirrels show up under our deck and no Mom.  Well my son was immediately asking what are we going to do?  I am of the perspective that you help, you can't ignore an animal in need. 

First we found two.  I sent my son into town to get a hamster cage, while he was gone two more showed up.  They were trying to find sun to warm up.  The smallest one didn't look very good.  When my son got home, we had them in the dog kennel in the small bathroom on the main level.  

 Introducing the squirrel king.  For photos you can find our page on Facebook at Squirrel King.  I will do my next post specifically on their story, it was a treat in the middle of a Pandemic.  

A year has gone by and my dreams of being self sufficient are under construction.  This is the fun part.  Our property was fenced for horses but we no longer had any.  We have 6 acres, 5 fenced and 1 acre  where the house and yard are.  I have always been an artist and that extends to any project I take on, so I had already built a shed that I had the plans to build it for 25 years.  That was finished 3 years ago.  I built my she shed.

A cord wood shed.  I had to learn every step of this.  I will do an individual blog on this process as well.

We raised the squirrels they needed a home away from home when my bathroom looked like it was about to suffer damage.  Then we built the Chicken coop to keep them in until they  matured.  That will also be in a blog, it is a great project.

After spending the summer outside feeding squirrels building chicken coops and refusing to go indoors as it wasn't my space anymore.  My empty acres started to burn on my conscience.  We needed the acres to pay us back.  We had overgrown hay in the back acres and my greenhouse needed to be built, it all came to a head and I blurted out, I am getting sheep.

My husband dead pan looked at me and uttered a single word "WHY?".  

I explained the fence was built for the friesian horse I never could get or never could afford either.  So I wanted to put something in it that I could afford and would give me something to do outside.

This was November in Alberta Canada, we were building a barn and the rush was on to get it ready for sheep that I would be getting to lamb in the Spring.

I researched the different guardian animals and realized a dog in a subdivision was definitely not going to work, the Llama might have worked I spin wool but a friend of mine had the coyotes kill their Llama, so I decided on the Donkey. 

 

So many things to get ready for this.  So many projects to get the acreage to function for us it just built some momentum and soon I was outside more than inside in the winter and getting some pretty great little projects done.  I figured that each project would make for a great blog for those starting up a homestead like we are.