Cabin

The cabin is coming along nicely!

 New next door neighbors!

Wildlife

Spring at Little Frog Ranch is always beautiful!  

Indian Paintbrushes

My favorite tree and cactus

We planted two new Burr Oak Trees on each side of the cabin.

Another view of the newly planted Burr Oak Tree

The pond filled back up!  We love to see the animal footprints in the mud around the pond.  There are often deer prints.  

Strange web-like nests in the trees. 

We were nervous that these were spider nests or something, but it turns out, they are caterpillars!  Eastern Tent Caterpillars to be exact!  We saw a few hanging around on the cabin before we saw the nests by the pond. 

We also met our new neighbors to the left.  They helped us solve a mystery! Every now and then we notice some dirt has been disturbed, like animals have been digging there.  We thought it might be moles, but we didn't see any tunnels.  The neighbors saw the rascals in action one night!  It was a herd of about 30 pigs, or maybe hogs!  They had some babies with them.  Once our cabin is completed we'll be able to stay overnight and catch them in action- that would be neat to see in person, but from a safe distance!

January Update

Things are moving right along at Little Frog Ranch again.  Work had to slow down in late summer and early fall due to the heat and rain, but things are moving again!

This is the back corner where the bunk beds will go.  We installed USB outlets so people can charge their electronics easily.

Radiant barrier over the insulation

Ceiling is getting ready for lights and insulation.

This is the view from the front door of the cabin.  Just beautiful, no matter the season!

The pond is looking a little sad these days.  We need to run new pipe from our well to keep it filled for the animals.  There were animal prints in the mud so we know it's being used.  

The pond is down so low that we discovered this!  It's been there awhile, we just couldn't see it before!  

City kids checking out the tractor!

Insulation

We've been working on adding the insulation to the walls of the cabin.  Rockwool insulation was pretty easy to work with overall.  The electrical boxes have now been installed and the interior electrical wiring is coming along as well.

before

 Rockwool

installing the insulation, adding outlet boxes, and electrical wiring

view from the front of the cabin

another front view (tractor parts will be moved)

cute Thirty-One Gifts Large Utility Tote- perfect for taking things to the cabin!

https://www.mythirtyone.com/us/en/392407/product/9463/large-utility-tote-barnyard-buddy

Thirty-one Gifts Insulated lunch box!

https://www.mythirtyone.com/us/en/392407/product/9426?defaultSku=9426AG580000

Four New Things!

Things have been moving right along on Little Frog Ranch over the past few months!  Four big things have happened!!

1.  We have water!  We had a well dug, and now we're building a 5 foot well house to keep it secure.

It is a work in progress. This will have a roof and will be completely enclosed with a door for access.  

2.  We have a right fence!  A new neighbor moved into the lot on our right and he installed the much needed fence so he could have cows soon.  We are thankful for the new fence!  One less thing on our to-do list!  And now we can look at getting animals soon too- maybe cows, maybe goats, not sure yet though...


3.  We have a tractor!!!  This was a great deal and works great too!

4.  We have a cabin!!!! (well, actually a shell)  So there is a lot of work to do to make this livable, but things are already underway!

There is a lot of beauty on Little Frog Ranch!  I was amazed at the flowers I saw on the last visit: bluebonnets, black-eyed susans, fluffy purple things, plenty of wildflowers, and of course, the cacti, which have yellow flowers blooming!  We call this big one near the cabin "Cat's Cactus", after a friend who claimed it.

DIRT

Little Frog Ranch is still coming along!  Chris took a break from the never-ending fence project to extend the driveway to the back of the property.  The front will be for the animals, but the back will be our home.  There is already a fence separating the two areas. 

This land originally had a railroad line running through it.  While the railroad is long gone, one previous owner decided to use that space to install crawfish ponds, now dried up.  We have decided to keep 2 of those ponds/empty ditches for future use, maybe even for Koi fish, who knows!  But in order to get to the back of the property easily from the entrance, we needed to fill in the last old crawfish pond and extend the driveway.  (picture cropped to show crawfish ponds)

The skidsteer was great to move the dirt to fill in the last crawfish pond/ditch.  We are having gravel delivered next week and this area will be evened out and a layer of gravel installed.  

 Chris enjoyed playing with the skidsteer again and had fun getting rid of a dead tree that was in the way too.

Next up we're planning for the cabin! The pieces of wood on the ground are marking the area, approx 12x32, tucked in the back right corner of the property behind the pond area, but far enough away to not have to worry about any flooding.  

 This is my favorite part of Little Frog Ranch.  It really is such a peaceful place.  The frogs are still hibernating, but we'll hear them again in spring.  I would love to install a deck so we can sit and enjoy the beauty and peace.

MOVING ALONG

Things slowed down at Little Frog Ranch for awhile.  Summer was too hot to work outside, then came a crazy amount of rain making it too muddy to work too!  But things are finally moving again!

The barbed wire fencing project has taken much longer than we had expected, but with some new tools in place it is going much better now!  Chris is just about finished with closing up the entrance, and then he will finish up the left side and move to the right side.  Thankfully the back and front were already fenced!

Barbed wire is not easy to work with!

 Front entrance 

TXDOT told us where the entrance had to go since we are on a 2 lane highway.  

Once the house is built we'll change the gate to an automatic one, but this works great for now!

We have been debating on whether to remodel 1/2 of the shipping container into a small cabin (8x20), or buy a portable building and turn it into a cabin (14x30).  Right now we're leaning toward remodeling 1/2 of the shipping container because of low initial cost and proximity to the electricity.  In the long run a bigger cabin would be much more usable and would be in a better location with a view of the pond.  But we still need to think about this more. 

This was an awesome surprise!  Our back neighbor has cows!  This will be part of our view from our back porch and we are excited!  We plan to have our own cows in the front pasture eventually (once the fencing is complete), but this was neat to see!