What we live now, is not a "normal" existence. To really give you a good look at things, I would have to back up 3, maybe 4, years to when I had a "normal" life. To start things off, I am a teacher by trade. And looking more closely at it, maybe by breeding... My parents are teachers. My grandmother was a music teacher. My dad's cousins are teachers. My aunts and uncles have been teachers. I went to school and got a degree in Agriculture Education and yet... Oddly enough, I teach math. Basic and remedial Algebra to high school juniors and seniors. I teach a "hard" set of students that I absolutely love (98% of the time). I spend 7 hours a day pushing, pulling, encouraging, scolding, teasing, and using any other tricks I can come up with to get students to do and learn math. Then I spend another 2 hours after class time, helping students improve their grades and using any tool I can think of to give them a reason to work hard... Which brings me back to the farm...
Our school got an invitation to attend a junior college wildlife field day and our counselors were clueless as to what that meant. SO, being the helpful person that I am, I volunteered to take the 3 students that we were allowed to said field day. A full day of hands-on learning and out of the box thinking and the kids were hooked! BUT... our school doesn't have an type of agriculture program... No FFA or school based agriculture education at all. SO, after talking it over with the kids, we started an after school student club focused on Agriculture.
Around the same time, a friend of a friend of a cousin of my husband's (say that 3 times fast) was doing a egg to chick project with her 2nd grade class and had 17 chicks that needed a new home. One thing led to another and POOF! We now had chickens to start giving our high school students some hands on experience with. The students were overly excited and we went to work building our very first chicken run and shelter... A very rough excuse for a coop, I guess. Although, I would have to admit that we did a fairly decent job because nearly 4 years later it still stands and is a very useful enclosure for transitioning birds as needed. The following school year we added more students to the club, and more projects, and more lessons, and more livestock... and then we evolved to start with Agribusiness teaching about cost and profit (all the while doing fundraisers for the club members' activities), and then my husband I decided to keep the chickens (now laying eggs) as a learning/teaching tool for the students. In order for this to work, I had to separate it out of our regular household budget... Sort of.
We separated everything out so that the students could get a clear understanding of how the farm budget works anyway. So I took over managing the "learning tool" and we marketed and sold eggs locally donated back whatever money we made to cover the shortcomings of the school club fundraisers and paid ourselves back for feed (mostly). But then we quit paying ourselves back for feed and paid the income forward to cover new project and lessons... Forward to add new breeds so we could do genetics lessons... then forward so we could expand the coop for the new breeds... then forward so we added a new run... then we added our own second generation chickens(genetics lessons paid off!)... then we added our own third generation(new combinations, more different egg colors, right?)... then we added ducks... and more ducks (who knew there were so many breeds????)... then we added a duck run... and a duck house... and then we added rabbits(super cute and fuzzy!)... and a rabbit room(it's too hot to maintain fertility rates)... and more rabbits(we got more breeds!)... and more ducks... and geese... and more rabbits(we had babies!)... and an incubator... and chicks... and a website(with a blog)... and now we have plans for a rabbit barn(shelter, storage, can't go wrong there)... and another dog(because... a litter of farm puppies isn't bad, right?)... and a duck/geese pond(I mean, they need water to play in... their kiddie pool just isn't big enough)... and...? Can't wait to see what the future holds for us now!
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