:: Farm, Homestead, or a personal Petting Zoo ::

This morning I drank my coffee staring at this beautiful scene ...

Last night was one of my insomnia nights. I can't seem to shut my brain off when I'm supposed to be sleeping! Ugh! I know I'm not the only one right? Alls I know is, I'm not cut out for only 5 1/2 hours of sleep. I know, I know, that's alot for some people; but I'm not a morning person as it is! I need my pot of coffee dang it! (Yes, I said pot & somedays it IS that much! Oye!)

Yep, the pictures blurry & I'm okay with it because this is pretty much how I feel this morning.

Okay, back to a few of those darn thoughts that keep me up at night.
Last week I attended a Women In Agriculture Conference with three of my favorite friends, my mom, and a few of her friends. It was a fun day! It was a day out with just adults! We laughed & ate and learned a few valuable lessons. (Like how many people you can count that didn't wash their hands as we were waiting in the always long line to the women's bathroom.)
It truly was an interesting day. The first few hours included breakfast & a guest speaker. This gentlemen was amazing at what he did and included humor into his lecture, which meant I only found myself checking & answers emails on my phone a couple of times. Multi-tasking | it's the name of the game right? Anywho, he mostly spoke about economics which had me sitting there thinking: Yay, I pretty much don't belong at this table with these other "farmers wives". Most of what he was talking about was hog prices, beef prices, and other stuff you hear on the farm report. It just has honestly never made any sense to me. Because, I didn't grow up on a "farm" and because well we don't technically have a "farm". Now that's not to say I didn't dream of being a part of that. I used to beg my friend, Angie to go do chores with her and I'll always remember the times she let me help her wash her sheep at the local county fair. I grew up jealous of all the "fun" she was having!
Maybe that explains why I'm always saying "We should get the kids a bucket calf, or don't you think it would be fun to have turkeys?"
So, this brings me to the question. Do we live on a farm, a homestead, or a personal Petting Zoo?
What really qualifies a farm to be a farm?
Wikipedia says : A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes or an area of water that is devoted primarily to aquacultural processes, in order to produce and manage such commodities as fibres, grains, livestock, or fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production.^[1] Farms may be owned and operated by a single individual, family, community, corporation or a company. A farm can be a holding of any size from a fraction of ahectare^[2] to several thousand hectares.^[3]
 Well we produce food for ourselves, so maybe we qualify under the "any size from a fraction of an acre" part.
Then, there's a homestead. To be honest, I like the sound of this better. It makes me feel like we are saying we live on a piece of land that we plant things, grow things, raise things, for our own personal use. Sort of more self reliant.
Again, wikipedia says : a lifestyle of agrarian self-sufficiency as practiced by a modern homesteader or urban homesteader. 
Then there's the Petting Zoo part. Ha! Most days I sort of feel like this is where we fall in. A goat here, a calf there, chickens running around the yard, with eggs almost ready to hatch in the incubator, and don't forget about the five rabbits!

Yay, maybe we have a petting zoo; because if we added up the food bill verses any income we get from the eggs, vegetables, etc we'd probably cry. 
But all in all, it comes down to HOME. Whatever it is we call it; it's where we are creating memories & living adventures together as a family. 

Now that I have all of that out of my head, maybe I'll be able to sleep tonight. We shall see...