Tour around a redneck wyoming farm

First a thank you to Christy for teaching me how to get the pics in the right spot ;) Something so simple...
Isn’t it appropriate that a Redneck farm post would start with a redneck trailer house. This is the back of our plain jane three bedroom too small house. Note the lovely skirting, that is our universal building project cheap weathered plywood, bought used at auction.



Next we move on to the front of the domicile. Our house was just moved onto the area of land last March. Everything is dirt (actually bentonite clay). When it gets wet it is a muddy, goopy, slimy, slippery bog. One of these days when all the animals have their needs met I intend to build a mudroom on the house and plant grass. I’m also hoping that this summer we’ll have a little extra money (hahaha) and can gravel the driveway.



Next on our tour is the shed. What kind of redneck has an air-conditioned shed but hasn’t gotten it painted yet? My husband primed the shed while I was pregnant over a year ago. Then calving season came and work went on hold. One of these days we’ll have to re-prime it and paint it. It’s going to be barn red.



Then of course we have to start the animal housing. This is the cat’s house (private quarters deluxe). We’ll tour the inside in a minute. Small kitty door placed on the side to allow cat access only, also can be locked to allow easy access to kitty’s who need to take road trips. Note the lovely recycled tin roof, these guys have high class digs around here. Next to the cat house is one of two portable hutches made for different purposes. They were made to house turkeys over the summer and to also allow the guinea pigs (gone now) and rabbits to have somewhere cool to munch fresh grass in the summer.



And on we go into the tour of the inside of the cat house. All of the animal houses around here have been “personalized” to suit their occupants wants and needs. We have a cat tower (picked up at a garage sale), litter box shelf and storage, underneath we have three hidey holes for snuggling and keeping warm in the winter (some have carpet squares in them, some are filled with clean wood shavings), above the litter box shelf is the feed shelf with recessed bowls for low spillage. There is also a miniature black cat tower placed on that shelf. Then of course there are lots of built in shelves and scratching posts. And although they don’t play with them much there are toys available on the floor. The house wouldn’t be complete without it’s plexiglass windows, one on each of three sides. Available views of the countryside without setting foot outside.



This is the milking stand that we built for the girls. It is two feet high and will have a ramp up to it soon, Ellie is starting to have problems jumping to it. It will also have a new barn to house it in later this year. For now it either sits outside or for really bad weather is placed in the shed for milking. The girls are used to both. Some of you may question the bars on both sides, it was built with Ellie’s friend in mind when we had her. She wasn’t a pleasant milker.



This is the garden/goat yard. The exterior fence for our area of land can just barely be seen past the snowbank and tractor on the left. When the exterior fence is finished the girls can move out to that pasture area and will be out of my garden, now being fertilized rather well. The pile of dirt to the right of the tractor is my future dirt for my raised garden.



The east side of my garden houses my strawberries, fenced off from the goats of course. They live in the tractor tires and although most did not survive the planting of them last summer (I ordered late, planted late) hopefully we will still have a few this year. Behind them you can see our pallets of used plywood, only three and a half left. To the left under the silver tarp are the hay bales for the girls.



This is the old rabbit hutch, it featured two cages complete with indoor and outdoor areas with a sturdy roof. As you can see though it is rather long and lacking in width. It was an easy thing for the bulls to shove their heads under and roll it out of the way. Due to that there is one nonfunctional side now. Peter lives in the other side. New hutch plans are in the making and should be constructed soon.



This is Mopsy’s house, it used to be the guinea pigs house. Thankfully the guinea pigs were both gone and this cage standing empty by the time the bulls played demolition with the hutch. It will stand empty as a back up again after the new hutch is built.



The dogs have their specialized area as well. Since my hubby drove a mixer truck last summer we got leftover concrete at a reasonable price (free) and piecemealed the kennels together. So the dogs have concrete kennel floors. The main kennel is 20X20 and is wire mesh. At our old house we only had a 10X10 so they love the extra space and being able to all be in it together. They have a water dish, automatic feeder, and two dog houses (one private and one shared). The second kennel to the right is the isolation kennel. It is also concrete and has wire over the top of it as well to prevent breakouts. It is used for isolating sick puppy’s that don’t get to come in (haha), keeping strays in temporarily, or taking care of foster dogs (haven’t had that opportunity yet but would like to soon).



The pups show off their dog houses.



This is the current goat house. It was built for bum calves in case the ranch needed somewhere else to place them (sometimes we can have a few too many in the main part of the ranch). While being designed for bum calves the girls think that although a touch small it does them nicely. All three of them are able to cuddle cozily against each other in the back room and stay quite warm on cold winter nights.



This is the interior of the calf house. It features a separate back sleeping area and a dining room. The dining room comes complete with three holes for pans and buckets. The hole closest to the sleeping quarters contains the grain pan for the calves (on the milk stand for the goats). The middle contains the night time water bucket, and the left holds the loose mineral and baking soda pan. To the left of that an area has been blocked off to provide a hay rack (which the girls have busted and I haven’t fixed yet). The house features multiple windows for fresh air flow on nice days.



This is the playhouse that was given to us free. Before being placed against the shed it was rolled by the wind several times and several pieces are now broke. It is up for debate as to using it for a playhouse now or a nice weather proof area for wagons and toys. Next to it is our pile of treated 4X4’s for our building project skids (in case you haven’t noticed almost everything here is portable and will remain that way until we own land of our own, we live on ranch land) The shed next to it is used for baby item storage and animal feed.



Some of our building projects left (I bought this lumber in the summer while we had money for it) Under the tarp is the pig house and the framework for the outside chicken pen.



This is my trees (buried in snow) I put up a windbreak of pallets to protect them and they got buried. I’m thinking I needed to put up the pallets the next tree line back that doesn’t have trees planted yet. On the left is the second portable hutch. The rabbits clean the grass out of this area when there’s no snow.



Ta dah! My redneck chicken coop! We traded a contractor labor on it for an old vehicle that needed repaired and our door (laying in front of it, found by dumpsters) wasn’t good enough for him ;) so he bought a brand new door and window for our shabby plywood construction.



This is the inside of the chicken coop. The chickens will have their nesting box on the first level, the two roosts the next level up (are 2X2’s too big for them?) then I have a storage area for the spare rabbit and guinea pig cage right above that. The storage platform comes out farther than the others so the chickens shouldn’t be able to get up there. This is my first chicken coop and first chickens…advice please, what needs changed before we get them? They will have a small chicken door that opens into an outdoor pen.



The redneck wood pile. We haven’t figured out where to stack our wood in this big mud hole and we needed to try out new chainsaw so we cut up some branches.



finally, the nicest part of outside our redneck home. The front stairs. Aren’t they pretty? (my parents built them not us lol). And yes I need to pick up my garbage around the steps, one of these days when it’s warm I’ll clean out and stack all those buckets and take the trash to the dump.



Well that’s the official redneck tour of our Wyoming farm, we hope you enjoyed it and stay tuned for more…

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