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The old chicken coop is officially starting to look like a quail hotel. I’ve been slowly converting this little building into a practical setup for my Coturnix quail, and this part of the project was all about getting the cages organized, turning the old window opening into working shutters, and finally giving the outside a…

I run a goatscaping business, which means I need a practical way to get goats to jobs, goat parties, and events. For a while, I was hauling them in my 1994 Chevy Suburban. I would fold down the seats, cover everything with tarps, put up a barrier so nobody could jump over, and hope for…

If you own goats, you already know the pain of filling a hay feeder only to come back a few hours later and find half of that expensive hay scattered across the ground. Goats are incredibly talented at turning perfectly good hay into bedding. And once they have stepped on it, slept on it, or…

You don’t need a heated greenhouse to keep growing vegetables when the weather gets cold. One of the simplest ways to extend your garden into winter is with a cold frame. A cold frame is essentially a bottomless box or enclosed growing area covered with a transparent lid. Sunlight enters through the top, while the…

When the first hard freeze hits in Zone 6, the vegetable garden doesn’t necessarily have to close for the year. With a cold frame, low tunnel, hoop house, or other simple unheated cover, it’s possible to keep harvesting certain cold-hardy vegetables during the winter months. But there is one big catch: Not every vegetable described…

Looking back now, the red flags were everywhere. The problem was that I didn’t know they were red flags. This was my first horse, I was excited, and I thought I was doing everything right. I wasn’t just randomly buying the first horse I saw on Facebook. I had talked to different rescues, looked at…

There is a point in horse ownership where perseverance stops being admirable and starts becoming a problem. It took me almost a year to figure out where that line was. When I got my first horse, I was determined to make it work. I wasn’t looking for a perfect horse, and I certainly wasn’t expecting…

Budget level: LowDifficulty level: Intermediate DIYBest for: Miniature goats and small herds Some goats appreciate a carefully designed shelter. Other goats will spend an entire afternoon standing in the rain before suddenly deciding that all of them must squeeze through the doorway at exactly the same time. And I think I speak for all of…

Goats have an impressive ability to ignore the expensive shelter you carefully prepared for them—and then squeeze underneath a wheelbarrow as soon as it starts raining. Thankfully, goat housing does not have to be fancy. A simple three-sided shelter can give your goats a dry place to sleep, protection from wind and rain, shade during…

A garden can become a serious learning laboratory once children reach middle school. Students in grades 6–8 are ready to move beyond simple nature observations and begin conducting controlled experiments, analyzing data, comparing sources, building mathematical models, debating real-world issues, and designing solutions to practical problems. Harvest season provides an especially useful setting for this…