“Farm truck or minivan?” the stockyard guy quipped as he helped load the back of our caravan with woven wire fencing and 8-foot posts.

“Both,” I had to admit. Thank goodness for the minivan – without it, projects like fencing would be a whole lot more difficult!

That said, the fencing is up. What with bringing Peony home, we now have 3 permanent residents and 4 ‘visitors’ – a total of 7 goats. And if we’re being honest, the pen for Pepper and Flora wasn’t really big enough for them anyway. They needed more space. So, we embarked on 3 days of grueling work to get a new fence up.

This is big thanks to my brother, without whom this 3 day project easily would have been a 4 day project. Half the work wasn’t even the fence; we were running it through the woods and everything from fallen branches to brush to rocks and stumps had to be moved out of the way. Even after the 3 days were up, we still had 2 small details to finish after the fact. Namely, attaching the gate, and the fact that we were SIX INCHES SHORT on woven wire.

We walked away with 2 ticks, poison ivy, blistered hands and cuts and abrasions of all sorts. The kicker? The goats barely use the new pen! Instead, they prefer to stick close to the barn eating boughten hay rather than feeding on the 11,000 square feet of brush that we’ve oh so generously broken our backs over to provide.

Sheesh. What ungrateful little ruminants.