I've always loved animals (maybe a little too much). Ever since I was little I have wanted a ton of critters roaming around but growing up I didn't live on a farm or have the money to expand into the animal world too much. Finally and thankfully, my husband and I moved to Illinois to be closer to his family and we are renting a small little old farm house with a bit of land and a barn. The tenants who lived here before us apparently had mini-horses and a flock of chickens. I was so excited when my husband agreed to let us have chickens. I couldn't expand my tiny farm inside my house, so now we are expanding to the outside (very slowly due to costs). We currently have 10 pullets; 5 Red Sex Link and 5 Plymouth Rocks. No roosters because it is our first year as chicken owners so I wasn't exactly up to the task of raising little chickies yet and because I didn't feel like being woken up at the crack of dawn every day while my husband (who can sleep through literally anything) didn't budge at all from the sound of a rooster. My mother in law says that she wants 4 of the pullets, but they haven't started with a coop or anything so I think they will end up staying with us permanently. Which is fine by me. I love the feeling of waking up every day, wondering if there will be eggs in the nest boxes, it's so exciting!! I'm now trying to get the pullets to trust me so that I can pet them and they will want to be near me instead of running off. When we got them, the guy told us that they were around 16 weeks but I think he was a little off on the ages. I believe that 2-3 of my pullets are the egg culprits. Our Plymouth's combs are still very small and pale.


Even though my dad used to always have a garden, I've never really known how to make things grow or what to do so I'm excited to have a garden this year. I hope that we can find some friends so that I can give away a good bit of what we will grow because my husband is strickly and "bad food diet" kind of person. He would rather die than eat anything green or remotely healthy.


Here is what is going on at our house so far:


When we brought our girls home.


Our first egg! (my dog in the background looks like she has demon eyes).


This is Mattie. Our oldest and cuddliest cat. She loves being tucked in snug as a bug in a rug.


After we re-arranged everything to make it a bit more homier for the girls.


Our girls enjoying some sun and grass after we fought with putting up a fence when the heat wave hit.


Girls loving their new pallet roosts.




Mattie enjoying the sun and warm weather from the comfort of my ironing board plant stand.

Our pretty big scaredy cat Sadie (the white one), the tough, fearless king of the castle Brody (the small one), and my mother in laws gigantic moose boys Kasey and Jackson. This was at my mother in laws house a month or so ago.


Our crazy little babies again. (taken at our old house in NC).

I'm very excited to be expanding and doing new things!