10th Anniversary!!

I can hardly believe we're quickly approaching our 10th Anniversary at the Windy Hill Fowl Farm and Puppy Ranch! I should briefly explain the name for those of you that don't know. The first part is pretty self explanatory. We live on a hill and there's nothing between 'us' and Nebraska. Thus, it's WINDY!! Fowl Farm comes from my birds! In the spring of 2000 I started off with 7 chickens and 6 ducks. Since, we've never been with out birds. Puppy Ranch came from Bill's employer, they dumped it the 'puppy ranch' since we had multiple dogs and lots of fun toys!! AKA - Agility equipment.

Here's what our house looked like 10 years ago.

It's your basic 4 square farm house, built in 1890. Looking back, I do have to wonder, "What the HELL was I thinking!!!". The house obviously wasn't my priority. It was the 6 acres that went with the house! The barn and moving out to the country!! It took a long time to find an acreage that would fit our budget and be a reasonable distance from 'the city'.

Many thanks to Marsha, Melinda and Sandy who helped us tidy up
(as best as possible) and get moved in!!

It did turn out great. The land is flat enough for a couple agility yards. There's enough pasture for two horses, and room for the dogs to be able to get out and have some fun running. We really do love the country, even though Bill wasn't too keen on it at first. I don't think he'd ever move back to 'town'.

It didn't come without some issues however. I might blog about those at some other time. Let me just say, the whole interior of the house was painted either baby blue or baby pink! Walls and ceilings! It was horrible! The bathroom, well that along deserves a blog page by itself.

It didn't have any fences, so we had a side yard put on in December 99. Then some friends and family came out in March of 2000 to dig posts and put up 2"x4" horse fence out front. This was to become one of the agility yards. Thank you Melinda, Jeff, Dawn and Chris for your help!!

By January of 2002 it didn't look too much different. We did had the fencing and there were some red wood bushes added. Other than that, not a lot changed.

North - East View

East - South view

Winter of 2001-2002 it was apparent we needed a new roof. Looking to get some color on the house and move away from the boring white farm house. I suggested RED!! More on that in the next blog!!

Today I'm thankful for the wonderful weather!!