Farm Adventures Archives - Ankeny Hill Farm

Do What You Have to Do…

November 30, 2021 By admin Leave a Comment

Until you can do what you want to do….

Went for a walk in the field behind our property the other day. My youngest boy who is 12, is very into making Youtube videos so he wanted to do a trash finding video. I didn’t want him going out there alone plus he needed to use my phone for the video, so I reluctantly tagged along. Isn’t that just mom life? lol I never seem to have anything of my own that I’m not sharing with my kids or my husband. Maybe I say yes too often…I don’t know. But I do want to encourage his love for videography.

Anyway…I currently have so much on my mind and I feel like I have to make it all happen somehow. Anyone else have a million things you want to do and you can’t give up any one thing? (Not can’t, but don’t want to) sigh…

I feel the pressure to make extra money so we can get more done and keep the place up. The farm income is slowly growing, but we really need it to grow a little faster and there are things that need fixing. I decided a couple weeks ago to put in an application at Hobby Lobby. Now that all 3 boys are pretty much teens (my youngest is 12), I don’t feel so much like I need to be here to watch them. My youngest still home schools but i would only be working part time so we can still make that work. However, I worry about how I’ll do with everything else. The boys can help out but there are the egg sales, custom ornaments I need to get done, giving riding lessons on dry days, milking and other animal care, making meals and then once kids sports start back up again since they are taking the winter off. And then just the general concern of everyone’s well being in our home and everything that goes along with having 5 different personalities and ages under one roof.

Anyway… I really wish I didn’t need to get an outside job but I guess you do what you have to do for awhile.

Funny thing is, I keep thinking, you know what? Let’s say I start working part time away from home, for someone else. That’s probably 20-25 hours per week. What if I were to do that at home focusing on one or 2 things? I am always trying to do too many things at once and it’s really hard to get something going really well if I’m only spending a small amount of time and focus because I’m trying to spread myself too thin.

I also may need to go back in to surgery for my ankle that I broke in October 2019. It was doing really well until this summer and then I started having some new pain. Not horrible and I can still do my stuff, but it has started happening more often and it’s annoying. I’m thinking I may have to have the pins taken out or fixed or something. I had broken a couple pins early on during my recovery but the doctor said as long as it wasn’t bothering me, they’d just leave them alone. So, this month I go in for an xray and we’ll see if I need surgery.

If I do need surgery, then I’m not going to be able to have an outside job for awhile anyway. Oh well, I guess it’s in the Lord’s hands. I figure while I’m waiting for Hobby Lobby to call me, if they do, I’m going to push myself to focus on one or two areas of the farm and really try and grow. One of those areas I’ve decided is posting to Instagram every day for awhile and getting more content up here on the website.

Laser focus is what I need, but as a wife and mom, it can be so hard. I see others do it though so I know it can be done!

Building Our Chicken Coop With Old Barn Wood

May 17, 2018 By admin Leave a Comment

Last spring, after we’d been here nearly a year, we bought our first chickens. We happened to have a building that is perfect for a chicken coop/feed storage area. We also had a bunch of old barn wood that was taken off one of the big shops out here since we needed to completely re do the shop. Of course I didn’t want to toss all that neat old wood!

The chicken coop was pretty fun to build. I’ll show you how we did it below. This year I plan on adding to it on the other side so it will be U shaped. I also plan to make better nesting boxes that are easier to get eggs out of. That’s one thing I didn’t plan very well when we built the first part, but we were kind of in a rush to get it done since we had just got our first chicks home.

I love the barn wood look and I am hoping to have enough to use for some other things on the property, and for some country decor.

As you can see, we already had a great structure to work with! I love that those benches are there as it made it super easy to just install plywood over top for the floor. We also used some left over vinyl flooring on top of the plywood for easy cleanup and protect the wood from getting wet.

Next we used some leftover pieces of particle board and other plywood type board to cover the inside walls as well as the top. Then we used some 2×4’s and 2×6’s for the corners and other supports to be able to attach the barn wood on the outside.

Doesn’t that old wood look beautiful? Another project on my list this year is to stain the whole thing. Not a dark stain, just something to make it pop a bit more and protect it from the weather.

And here is the door that I made myself! I was a little bit proud of myself. I had a picture in my head of how I wanted it to look, and thankfully we have a chop saw, so I was able to make the angle cuts. I love it! We didn’t have to go buy any of the wood. These were all pieces of wood that we had lying around. I did have to go buy the chicken wire, door hinges and latches.

Here’s the finished coop. Like I said, this year’s project is to do the same thing to the other side of the bench so the whole coop will be a U shape. I may even make a removable divider so I can separate chickens if need be. I will be sure to make good nesting boxes on the other side that I can actually open up from the end to grab eggs instead of having to reach around the corner through the main doors.

After getting the coop done, we made a very small run on the backside of this shed and cut a small door on the back wall for the chickens to go out. At the moment I am working on expanding their run. Forgive the pictures if they look off. The tree next to that building is pushing it so the building itself is leaning a bit to the left. The chicken run boards are level and straight up and down lol The ground also slopes down a bit so it looks like the run is not level!

A tip I learned when researching before building this, make sure to set the chicken wire or preferably a more sturdy wire, down into the ground a bit so that predators cannot dig underneath. I have some other fencing I need to put around the run in place of the chicken wire, I just haven’t got to it yet! Actually, I am planning on siding the left side of this run so it will only have the right side open. Once I expand the run off to the right, I can remove the chicken wire from that side too.

I would love to just free range our chickens, but both our dogs, that had been doing great around the chickens for months, decided to kill a couple last year, so I’ve been afraid to free range the chickens since. The dogs are fine if I’m out there with them, so I plan on doing some training. I’ll probably keep the dogs inside a couple hours before dark and let the chickens free range in the evening. The nice thing about chickens is they put themselves to bed!

I’ll be sure to post an update once we get the other part of the coop done!

The Beginning of a Dream

April 25, 2018 By admin Leave a Comment

Ankeny Hill Farm Jefferson Oregon
I’ve dreamed of having a farm like this for years. Growing up, my parents had nearly the same size property and I showed my horses, trained and gave riding lessons. Well, then I got married (nearly 18 years and 3 boys later) and my husband and I lived in town most of that time. 2 years ago, the dream began to come true when we moved out here to Ankeny Hill from Albany after my parents sold their home in Oregon City to move here and retire.

We are still working on building what I have brewing in my mind that I want this place to be. My goal is to turn it into a small equestrian facility. Horses are my passion. Boarding, riding lessons and a large trail course that goes around the property where people can come and practice as if on an actual trail ride (though a bit smaller scale) are some ideas that I would like to see come to life.

As of right now, I am homeschooling, working from home, enjoying our chickens and farm fresh eggs (which we will have available to purchase by the end of this summer), two horses and a dairy goat for fresh raw milk! I have always wanted to homestead, and this is close enough! I gradually want to get to where we are mostly self sustainable. I’m not expecting to go off grid, nor do I want to, but it would be nice to feel that if we had to, we could pretty much live off of what we produce here on the farm.

I will be posting our progress, so I hope you will follow along on our journey. Please contact me if you are interested in riding lessons, farm fresh eggs, fresh goat milk, grass fed beef or any other questions!