Introduction

Growing up I always admired farm kids. I thought they were infinitely better than me. They lived with animals, woke up at the crack of dawn to feed chickens and milk cows, usually had a bit of a twang while they talked and were just cool. I had no friends whose parents owned a farm, but I remained hopeful. I always thought it would be pretty neat to have a best friend who would let me ride her horse and climb her trees and feed her chickens.
Now that I live on a ranch with my family, I keep expecting people to think equally awesome thoughts about me. Come to find out, not only are my friends not envious of me, but a few of them feel sorry for me. Go figure. When friends come over, instead of wanting to hang around the ranch and look at the manure, they want to go to the mall or to see a movie. Who goes to the mall when they can get muddy? That's what I would like to know.

It wasn't until a few years ago that my family finally carried out the dream and moved on to a ranch. We steadily began to collect animals, beginning with a crazy llama named Lulu who came with the house. My little sister tamed her by bringing her peach skins. Lulu is still a little shy, but it's an act. She knows as well as we do that she would be forced to survive only on pasture if we stopped bringing her a nightly snack of alfalfa. In return, she guards our sheep. She does a terrible job. This summer some dogs got in with our breeding flock of sheep and had a small one pinned in the corner before I made it back there with two fistfuls of rocks. Lulu was standing in the small grove of trees in the way back watching the scene with interest. I waved at her to thank her for her assistance before pelting the rocks at the dumb dogs.
Did I mention the sheep? Our flock started with Fred. FRED is an acronym. "First Real Economic Disaster." He lived up to his name and killed our second ram, "Silver," who was a pretty decent ram. Fred was fat and chubby and we ate him.
Our flock soon grew to.... actually, I don't have a clue how many sheep we have. 50 maybe. Maybe more than that. I had a vague count until our ewes started having babies. Now I couldn't tell you.
Besides sheep, we have chickens, indian runner ducks (not good for a thing except an occasional egg but pretty cool anyway), turkeys (minus two which we'll be eating tomorrow), 5 calves, 2 horses (Selah and Arlo. Selah is about 25 years old and Arlo is a colt), 3 dogs (Hank, Jake and Flip), 3 cats which were supposed to be barn cats but prefer to get underfoot and trip anybody who may be carrying food, one rabbit, and no doubt some assorted animals that I'm forgetting.

This is our ranch. We are five, my dad ("El Jefe") , my mom ("Chicken Mommy"), my brother and my little sister (lil' bit) who has the life I always wanted. I finally decided to start this blog because I think my friends are getting sick of hearing my stories, and the whole family will join in the venture because their friends are no doubt sick of the stories as well.