I can’t imagine a busier month. Preparing my home of 9+ years for the market, ferrying our hopes and belongings to our “farm” a little over two hours away, and wrapping up my work at a job I have held for more than a decade – I am always moving, always planning. It’s stressful and … Continue reading »
When you are designing your homestead, you are not only designing a way of life but also the functionality for every component of that life. Let us break it down together and consider the larger pieces that comprise the greater design. In Designing Your Homestead Vision, I listed seven topics for us to consider when … Continue reading »
What have you been dreaming of lately? I’ve been dreaming of coops and greenhouses, garden beds and greywater systems, passive solar and root cellaring… In Designing Your Homestead Vision, I listed seven topics for us to consider when envisioning your future homestead: poultry flock, poultry management, animal housing, horticulture, permaculture, sustainability, and other. Last week, … Continue reading »
This spring, we’ll build the chicken coop on my new property. My goal is simple: Build a coop which will serve my needs and last at least 40 years. With this as my goal, my requirements were clarified: Room for enough chickens to provide meat and eggs for at least six people (my husband and … Continue reading »
The antitheses of Anthropologie’s $3,000 reclaimed lumber A-frame chicken coop is a coop that you make in your own yard with lumber you have reclaimed yourself from an old construction project, broken furniture, or wooden pallets. A $30 bucket of dried mealworms can be replaced by worms from your own vermiculture bin or homegrown mealworms … Continue reading »
In light of my upcoming move, I’ve decided to hold off on my aforementioned “grand plan” until next spring. However, I do have other exciting news. I’ve been invited to join the team of bloggers at Community Chickens! You can check out the bios of all Community Chickens contributers here. You’ll find me down the … Continue reading »
This time of year, many poultry keepers drag out the heaters, cover the coop in plastic, and batten down the hatches with the goal of keeping their chickens warm and preventing frostbite. However, the effect is just the opposite. By not allowing the chickens to become naturally accustomed to the dropping temperatures, we undermine the … Continue reading »
At the same time I purchased the side table to create Rosie’s broody coop, I also bought an old desk for $9 to make a small grow-out coop for the 7 non-broody-reared chicks. After a rather annoying week where I was catching seven chicks each morning, carrying them outside to a run for the day, … Continue reading »
As the weather cooled, we decided it was time to get the windows up on the coop. We found a number of windows in the crawl space under the house, and I chose the ones with the six separate panes. Using two hinges per window, we hung them from the top, allowing them to be … Continue reading »
The Easter chicks are not the only ones who’ve just had a big move – the little Ameraucanas came just after them! At 5-weeks old, the same age as the Easter chicks when they moved to the little coop, the Ameraucanas are significantly smaller. Of course, what they lack in size is made up … Continue reading »
