We are pretty militant about composting around here… Sometimes I even hide the trash can to make sure all of those kitchen scraps make it in the compost bin and not the trash can, so it wasn’t surprising that my seven year old daughter asked a waitress at a local restaurant where they keep the compost bin.

What surprised me is the response. The waitress didn’t even know the definition of composting. My daughter was flabbergasted. “But what do they do with all of their scraps” she asked.  That is when I decided to do some research…

Why don’t restaurants compost? It turns out that some do. In fact in Austin, TX all restaurants will be required to compost by 2017. When I told my daughter that in some places they do, she said “We need to start that here.”

It looks like we might have to start a local movement with some of the local restaurants and start a composting drive.

We might be able to change this world of ours. One seven year old at a time.

Starting a new goat enclosure has turned into its very own special process.

Firstly, some history: Our goat house began as a pigpen, when the Sunshine Sisters heard about a poor little piglet that fell off a truck. Being the sweet girls they are, the Sisters immediately began construction on the fastest pigpen they could build, dropping four fence posts into the ground at a record speed. As we only had a few days before the poor injured piggy needed the new home (he was staying in a friend’s house as his wounds knitted) concerns of straightness, squareness and all around levelness were thrown out the window.

Unfortunately, the poor piglet succumbed to its injuries before the enclosure could be completed, and the four posts stood as a solemn reminder of pitiful Porky’s fate.

As time went by, however, the pain of piggy’s loss turned bittersweet: We adopted Jethro, the amazing boy goat. And, in about a week, we’ll finally have another milk goat (comment below for naming ideas, I’m leaning toward Mary Ann to match Ginger). As a result, the family has been working frantically to complete a new goat enclosure.

To save labor and time, we decided to re-purpose our pigpen posts to serve as the beginnings of a new stable for our goats. To accommodate our growing herd, we’ve decided to build the new stable 16-feet long and 8-feet wide.

As construction continues, we’ve discovered that because of the original posts used the dimensions are as follows 16 feet, 8 inches; 8 feet 3-and-3/4 inches; 14 feet, 7 inches; 8 feet 4-and-5/8 inches.

It also includes the following angles, as near as we can ascertain: 94 degrees, 85 degrees, 150 degrees, 90 degrees and 80 degrees. Understand, we haven’t taken a protractor out there, as we have no desire to find out how bad it really is.

And yes, it does, somehow, have five corners. We counted twice.

At first, we were a little off-put by the measurements, but as one of the Sisters pointed out, “There won’t be another one like it.”

Melissa’s father-in-law made the observation that goats, in his experience, don’t seem so concerned with how straight or square things are.

So we’ve embraced it. The goat stable will be named “Crooked House,” after Agatha Christie’s book of the same name. Which, we found out while researching this post, was named after a quirky nursery rhyme, about a crooked man.

The whole thing’s kind of growing on us.

We’ll post photos when it’s complete.

Oliver and the new goat Jethro.

Today was a day of mending fences.

First on the agenda was the backyard fence to keep our pack of half-wild hounds safely contained. Lately, some new additions to the SSF pack have discovered the weaknesses in the system and immediately  began exploiting it to take long runs in the woods and wallow around in swampy spots.

Additionally, we recently hatched our first batch of chicks in our incubator. Everybody freaked! Our little maternity ward was nearly forced to adopt visiting hours as the row of children — and adults — stretched out of the room into the hall.

This forced us to relocate chicks from our brooder into the general population of our chickens in the outdoor coop. As you know, young chickens should not mix freely with older chickens, as the adults can sometimes injure, or even kill, the young’uns. So this prompted a round of building.

We established a nursery inside the coop fence, completely closed in, to allow our little ones a chance to spread their wings, so to speak.

They took to the space immediately, taking miniature dust baths and scratching around for the first time.

We also recently purchased a little buck goat. His name is Jethro, in keeping with the classic television theme of Ellie Mae and Ginger.

He’s a beautiful chocolate colored little man and he gets plenty of attention from the kids around the homestead.

They’ve even taken him on walks down our little road, much to everyone’s amusement.

Of course, we wanted to keep him separate from Ellie Mae and Ginger until he comes of age. So, a kid nursery was constructed inside the goat enclosure to give him a chance to get to know everyone, put on a little weight and stay safe and warm.

Now all we have to do is get ready for our new milk goat, which should be here on Thursday. We’ll post photographs as soon as she comes.

The bulk of the week was spent hiding from bad weather, but today, the crew managed to get out and get some work done.

We crafted a raised bed in front of our main deck, stretching from the front, around the sides and ending at the stairs. In related news, our load of topsoil is coming in on Thursday!

After weeks of staring at empty raised beds, we’ll finally be able to fill them with rich topsoil and begin the process of transferring seedlings into them and then wait for the fruits of our labor to mature. Is there anything sadder than an empty raised bed for a garden? I hope not.

We also put some work into our chickens today. The ladies have been hiding eggs under our goat enclosure, so Aaron volunteered to crawl underneath and pull out nearly a dozen eggs. Our latest round of baby chicks are almost too big for the brooder, so we cleared some space in the chicken enclosure to provide them a safe haven until they’re big enough to join the rest of the flock.

And, perhaps some of the biggest news of the day: The latest issue of From Scratch was released!

Head over to fromscratchmag.com to read it and be sure to follow it on facebook for regular updates.

This is the latest from the youngest member of the Sunshine Sister clan, Hannah Jones. A 7-year-old first-grader, Hannah is super excited to be writing for us. She enjoys puppies and watching “Mirror, Mirror” over and over again.

Eggs come in different shapes and sizes. Some are small. Some are weird. All eggs are different. Some are pink, some are blue, some are white. The bigger they get, the weirder they get. Some have babies in them.

And they hatch. And it takes a very, very, very long time. And mothers have to watch over their babies.

Even the ones that have the babies with, some fight over it (Editor’s note: ???)

And that’s my story.

After the Great Greenhouse Disaster of 2013, we finally got our act back together and now we’re starting to see dividends. Our tomato, basil, chives, pepper, sunflower, watermelon and parsley seeds are poking their little heads above the soil!

Everyone around here agrees they seem oddly — yet pleasantly — childlike, as such, I’ve dubbed our seedlings toddler plants. It really is astounding how much personality we imbue the little guys with: The sunflowers seem eager, the tomatoes are industrious and the basil is reticent.

Right now, our little 8-feet-long greenhouse is filled to the brim with flats, recycled deli containers and empty yogurt cups (our youngest blogger, Hannah Jones, has been particular diligent in getting every ounce of fruit-flavored yogurt out of those containers. For that we thank her).

In more new arrival news, our gathering of baby chickens are very happy in their brooder, our ducklings are entering the rough and tumble adolescent phase and our incubator is all set up and will hopefully have eggs in it soon.

We’re also in the midst of a huge kitchen renovation, which seems to have been cursed. Set backs, material shortages and equipment failures have been a constant roadblock in the renovation process. We’re pleased to announce, however, that the biggest problems appear to be solved, so hopefully (*knocks on wood*) we’ll be able to make some real progress in the coming days.

In the meantime, check this blog for Hannah’s latest post tonight, as she educates us all on “Eggs.” I know I’m looking forward to it.

Hannah Grace Jones – Guest Blogger

Hannah Grace Jones is the youngest member of the Sunshine Sisters crew. A 7-year-old first grader, Hannah is very excited about raising animals and growing her own food.

She’s discovered that she can post articles about homesteading here on the inter-tubes. So she took the initiative and hand wrote a series of articles about what she’s excited about and things that can be done on a farm. Here’s the first one, titled Farms (she had help with the typing):

We have to work. Everyday we have to work on ours. We have in our farm we have banana peppers and bell peppers and carrots. We have way more stuff in our farm.

Hope you enjoyed it. We know we’re very proud of her.