If you didn`t know already, Shaylah is our family`s biggest animal lover.
Animals of ALL kinds.
Critters of all kinds really.
Here`s Shaylah`s newest purchase from funds she`s worked hard for.
(I love the things my kids spend money on!)
A backyard safari for her frog.
I found her a nice sized snail in our yard, to keep the frog company in there.
We wouldn`t want a lonely froggie.
Shaylah also loves her duck, Shivers.
She wants you to know it`s not just `love`. She ADORES Shivers. She says it`s also a strong friendship. He`s her best friend. (She`s here helping me write this post and thought it was important you know this. hee hee.) She says words cannot describe how much she loves Shivers.
Shivers has grown up.
He`s trying hard to become a daddy right now. He`s been very busy protecting Cocoa and her eggs. However, even though he`s not fond of Shaylah checking on her eggs, he still allows her to come in and see.
Sometimes however, farm life can be difficult for Shaylah. This can make it difficult as her mother to help foster that love for animals, while helping her understand why we do what we do here on the homestead.
For the most part, she understands, and we also compromise. Some things we`ll never raise for meat. Shaylah really wants sheep, I promised her that if we get to a bigger farm one day she can raise sheep, for wool. We`ll never raise sheep for meat out of respect for Shaylah.
She`s still struggling with the idea of our own cows, but she`s got some time to work on that. They really are very cute, and I totally understand her difficulty there. However, she does love steak, it`s her favorite food, so there`s her dilemma. She`s smart enough to realize she can`t say it`s cruel to eat cute cows when she loves steak so much, just because she did not personally know the cow she`s eating. She also understands the importance of knowing what`s been fed to the meat you are eating and what a benefit it is to raise our own meat. She also likes that we can control how the animals we eat are cared for, until their time here is over. There really is some peace in that.
I let her know that I struggle with these same things. You won`t find many who love animals more then I do. However, I also love feeding my family well, and I won`t be becoming a vegetarian, so I have to deal with my own internal struggles when we raise our own meat animals.
However, when it comes to meat chicks, even Shaylah has to admit that by the time they grow up to become meat birds, and are no longer cute little chicks, and she`s ready to see them go. If you`ve never raised meat birds, you can`t understand this reasoning. It`s one of those `you have to be there` kind of things to truly understand.
They aren`t the `brightest` creatures. I swear that as their bodies grow bigger, their brains must become smaller.
Really.
But they sure are darn cute as chicks!
As much as Shaylah loves animals & critters, she also loves drawing.
She`s very good at it too!
I asked her to draw me horse, a fancy horse like we saw on the cover of a magazine.
Gorgeous!
She loves drawing animals and flowers best of all.
But will stretch herself to draw other things.
And mostly she draws in pencil.
But once in a while she`ll add some color.
At the moment, she`s working on a comic strip. She wants to share it here on the blog when it`s complete.
It`s called Katie Kat.
Stay tuned for the adventures coming soon.
