{31 Days} Intentional Living – Day 15

Find the rest of my {31 Days} Intentional Living series here.

This month seems to be going quite quickly considering I am writing every day.  At the beginning of the month I was a little concerned about whether or not I could actually write every day.  But, now I have realized how long winded I actually am 🙂

I think that one of things that has been holding me back, as far as intentional living goes, is the fact that I have never felt entirely settled in my house.  I know that seems silly, especially considering we bought our house six years ago, but it is true.  We have spent so much time trying to make this into an investment property – always dreaming of the next phase, that we forget to live where we are currently.

This year I finally decided to take charge of where we live.  Obviously we won’t be selling this house in this market, and we aren’t going to rent it with no place else to live…so our only other choice is to make this house our home.

The first step for us, for me, was to get chickens.  I have been wanting chickens for a few years now.  Well, technically I wanted little pygmy goats (I used to show them in 4-H when I was younger), but since goats are not allowed in town (although they are considering a new ordinance for small livestock!), my next choice was chickens.  We got the chickens in the spring, and we love them.  Even my husband who swore he would have nothing to do with them.  He declared them “my thing” and left me to it…until we picked up the adorable chicks, and then at that point he was on board.

I have been “gardening” since we moved into the house several years ago.  First starting with containers, and then moving to a largish garden in the ground.  Unfortunately, it seems that every year some sort of pest seems to get to the garden before I can.  But, with the addition of the chickens, I am hoping for a better outcome.

Currently, we are letting the chickens go through the garden.  I want them to turn up all the weeds, and hopefully eat the bad bugs – although they could possibly eat the good bugs and worms as well.  But, at least the ground will be turned up.  I am very excited to say that the chickens are doing exactly what I hoped, and they seem to be quite excited by it!  This weekend, Matt put up a little garden fence around a portion of my garden, and then put the chickens in to go to town.  That is exactly what they have done.  In two days they have pretty much destroyed all weeds in the section that was fenced off.  Tomorrow I hope to move the fence to a new section of the garden for them to go at it again.  I wish I had put them on a little earlier at this point, but they seem happy so far!

I really hope to be able to plan out my garden this winter, really plan it out.  I tend to order seeds, start seeds, then lose focus – whether due to outside forces (like the year the town ripped up our yard to replace the water lines) or due to my own circumstances (ie being pregnant, or having a 3 week old during planting season).

It may seem like such a small step, but it is a move in the right direction for my intentional living.  Do you have chickens?  Do you put them in your garden at the end of the season?  Does it help?

I am linking up at the Barn Hop and Rural Thursday