Starting Over - Again

You may have noticed that it's been quiet on the blog for a while. Part of that is because I've been putting more effort into my Ruth's Homemade business (click the link to see what I've been up to over there), but mostly it's because (surprise!) we moved again. Our last move was only three years ago (just enough time to start to get things humming on the homestead). The log house, though beautiful, ended up needing a lot more money invested in it than we had anticipated, and so one June evening we decided we should try to sell it. The very next day, a friend asked if we knew anyone in the area who was selling a home in the in our area with some acreage! One thing led to another, and in a matter of weeks we had a buyer lined up (after explaining very carefully just what they were getting into! We didn't want someone else to end up unprepared like we were).

Unfortunately, the market that made it easy for us to sell made it more challenging when we were looking for something to buy. "In the country with a little land" seemed to be what everyone was looking for in the summer of 2020 (one house we looked at - on the day it came on the market - had three offers (over the asking price) before we looked at it at noon!) But eventually we found a place with some acreage, a few outbuildings (including a chicken coop and garden shed!), and a house that all seven of us (plus our German shepherd and two cats) could fit into.

We hadn't been planning to move; our first really serious thoughts of selling were on that June evening. So in the spring I had planted the garden, bought feeder pigs and meat chickens, and generally did all of my normal spring homestead planning. When we closed on the house mid-August, all of that needed to be either moved or harvested – which meant that in addition to packing, I needed to do all of the canning, freezing, dehydrating, etc. that a normal garden season required. I didn’t get many tomatoes, but I put up all of the carrots, potatoes, cucumbers, beans, onions, and herbs that I could (I am so thankful for my five helpful teenagers! I don't know how I would have done it without them!) We processed the meat chickens the weekend before the move, but we had to move the pigs to the new farm (that ended up being quite the story! We’d never moved pigs before (we’d always put them down on-farm) so although we’d read horror stories of moving pigs, we didn’t really know what we were getting into!)

Finally, the closing date came, and whatever we hadn’t harvested had to be left behind. But now we had to put in the perennials we’d dug up to move with us – I had a couple elderberry bushes and an ice cream bucket full of Egyptian walking onions from my brother (the granddaughters of some I’d given him a couple years ago), and my 14 year old daughter had been assiduously tending a few dozen "daughters" from her strawberry plants. So now we had to hurry up and prepare a place for them!

I saved all of the cardboard moving boxes that I could, and a friend had some old, otherwise-useless hay. I used these to cover a 50'x40' patch of grass for a new garden spot. We laid out the basic plan for the new garden beds and put up fencing to keep the chickens out (otherwise they would make a mess of the mulch, not to mention digging my daughter’s strawberries!) By the time the ground froze, we had a good start on the spring garden. We were even able to get in a late planting of spinach!

We spent the winter settling into the house - and of course, planning for spring! We have apple, plum, and pear trees ordered, as well as cherry bushes, blueberries, raspberries, and a mulberry tree. It's hard not to try to replace everything we had built up at our old house right away - we'd like to get our new place producing food as quickly as possible - but we can only afford to do so much.

We're hoping to set up a permaculture food forest, following some of the ideas on Stefan Sobkowiak's YouTube channel (although I still have to sigh every time I realize that even though he's in Canada, he still has a better growing zone than I do!) The east side of the property was planted in field corn when we moved in, leased to a neighboring farmer. He harvested it in November, so now we have almost 5 acres of blank slate to fill up this spring. Only a small part of that will be orchard; we're also hoping to use some of it for pasture and a start to a future woodlot (including maple trees - it broke my heart to sit on the sidelines during maple syrup season this year!) My daughter is planting a corner of the old cornfield into a food plot for the chickens, rabbits, and pigs - and also hoping to keep the local deer population coming around (she put two of them in our freezer using her crossbow this fall!)

And now, ready or not, it's spring - I have eggs in the incubator and trays of seeds coming up under grow lights in the sunroom. My homestead project list is a mile long (which is a good thing - if I wasn't keeping busy with infrastructure work, I'd be planting seeds outside much too early - again!) 

As much as I hate losing all of the work I put in at the last farm, I'm trying to focus on the excitement of setting up our new place - fresh with no mistakes in it (yet!) I keep reminding myself that each time I start over, I have the chance to make the garden better from the start, with nothing to re-do or fix later. My daughter commented this spring, "This is our best garden ever!" - and it was. It took three years to get it to that point - maybe on this property I'll make it there in two. Sounds like a worthy challenge to me!

Have you ever had to leave a garden behind? What was the first thing you set up on your new place? Comment below and let me know how you made the transition!

Homestead Holiday Letter 2019

It’s the time of year when cards and letters from family and friends start dropping into our mailbox. My favorite letter each year is always from an older couple who have a hobby farm on the other side of town. We don’t see them often, but we exchange letters every year. What I like best about their letter is that it relates what none of our other friends write in their letters – how their garden did, projects they’re working on, and general home-spun humor.

So, in case there’s another crazy farm lady (or guy) out there who thinks the same, here’s my Homestead Holiday Letter for 2019.

My 2018 garden - adding more space for 2019

This year was our first full year on the homestead. In 2018 we basically had a smaller version of what we’d left at the old house – our laying hens, a batch of broilers, a couple of pigs, and a little bit of a garden (a few cucumbers, a butternut squash, and just enough tomatoes to keep up with what my daughter would grab and eat when she walked through the garden). Most of my energy was spent on getting settled into the house.

In 2019, with the house a little more organized, I got more serious. The fall before, I’d expanded my garden footprint to about three times its previous size by laying down cardboard and covering it with a deep layer of leaves and grass clippings. I let the chickens run through it all winter, so the soil was well fed and ready to plant in the spring.

Planning the 2019 garden

I rebuilt my mini-greenhouse (the flimsy metal frame had crumpled under the weight of the squash I tried to store on it over the winter in 2016) and started most of my garden seeds indoors, since I’d learned that transplants are easier to plant into deep mulch. I’d only done this haphazardly before, starting what I guessed would be a good number of seeds about 6 weeks before our last frost date. This year I took some extra time and planned out how many of each plant I needed for each bed, which companion flowers and herbs would benefit each vegetable, and made a seed starting schedule.  (You can see my basic seed starting plan by clicking here). I really think planning made the biggest difference in the garden this year. It may seem counter intuitive, but my work indoors in January had the biggest effect on my harvest in the fall.

Making maple syrup in the snowy March weather

With my seed schedule set, starting my seedlings was easy, which left time in March for trying something new. I’d taken a class on making maple syrup, and I’d tagged as many maple trees as I could identify in the fall, so it was time to put that information into practice. I set up a little trial-size boiling station in the garden (hoping the ash from the small fires would help fortify the soil even more) and set to work. It was fun to try something new, and a great excuse to sit around a campfire two or three times a week. When all was said and done, I’d made a little over 3 gallons of maple syrup, which was just enough to cover the cost of the supplies I’d purchased. I look forward to making even more syrup this year - now that I know what I’m doing! And this year, it will all be free, since I saved enough making syrup last year to offset the cost of the infrastructure! (You can read about my maple syrup adventures by clicking here, here, here, or here).

Getting the garden ready

Syruping finished up in April, which left a little time for Easter travels before it was time to start garden prep. We needed to mark off the garden beds (I used as many straight(ish) logs from the woods as I could haul over for borders for my beds), scrape the good compost off of the paths and into the beds (it was all one big chicken-scattered bed after the winter), lay down another layer of paper mulch (we’d saved up our feed sacks from the pigs and chickens the year before, so we had a good stash – but even so, we didn’t have as many as we would have liked), cover the paper on the paths with pine needles, and add strips of compost where I was going to be planting seeds (a friend from church brought over a dump trailer full of broken down manure from their beef cattle barn – leading me to wonder what exactly it said about me that one of my most-appreciated gifts of the year was a literal load of crap!)

Apple blossoms on our one year old tree

May, as always, came with a rush – baby bunnies and baby chicks to cuddle and care for, baby garden plants to be hardened off and planted outside, homeschool classes to finish up and field trips to take. It was a wet spring, and the wildflowers were spectacular (the not-so wildflowers on the apple and plum trees were also wonderful). In the middle of all of this rush, I injured myself (not moving logs or hauling feed bags, but moving furniture to wash the living room floor!) I had a herniated disk in my lower spine, which put me out of commission for most of the summer.

Thankfully, my daughters really stepped up and helped out. My youngest daughter, in particular, took on the bulk of the outdoor responsibilities. She fed the laying hens every day, collected eggs, and raised the broilers pretty much single-handedly (and did a great job – probably better than I’ve done!) 

Harvesting wild strawberries

She also took upon herself to forage as much food as she could, hunting out wild mushrooms (after carefully identifying them, of course!), wild strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, elderberries, rose hips, and hazelnuts from our property and along the side of our country road.

My oldest daughter decided that she would be in charge of the tomatoes (which only made sense, since she ate most of them!) We had a little under 20 plants this year, and although she didn’t tend them as carefully as I would have, she did a good job and we ended up canning a good amount (read: it’s almost January and they aren’t all gone yet – a new record!)

My middle daughter took over raising the pigs, which was a major undertaking, since we move our pig pen (four 16-foot hog panels lashed together at the corners, with an old truck topper for shelter) at minimum every 10 days, depending on how much they tear up the ground (toward butcher time it’s almost every day). The pigs ended up a little smaller than usual, but without her help we wouldn’t have had them at all, so I’m very grateful for her efforts!

As you can imagine, with four teenagers in the house (all five will be teenagers this coming year!) we had a busy summer. They discovered sailing, and took their little boats out as often as they could manage. We also took a stay-cation this summer, seeing as much of our little corner of the world as we could fit in over the course of a week. On our last day, a record-breaking storm went through our area, so after our relaxing week we had a week of hard work cleaning up downed trees (a task my husband is still working hard on – turning all of that destruction into firewood!)  

In August, our energy turned to harvesting and enjoying the fruits of our labor. We had enough corn for two big meals of corn on the cob, quarts and quarts of pickles and dilly beans, and just when we thought we could handle the bounty, the apples were ripe. Our own trees are too small to bear (we planted them in 2018 – the first spring we lived here), but friends offered us their surplus and we took advantage of the opportunity. What the kids didn’t eat out of hand we made into applesauce, apple jelly, apple cider vinegar, and apple pie filling  until we ran out of jars, and made the rest into cider. The skins, cores, and wormy apples went to the pigs and chickens to be turned into bacon and eggs.(You can read my post about how many things you can make all from the same apples by clicking here)

Our last harvest of the year was our pumpkins. My middle daughter (who also tended the pigs this summer) always claims the privilege of raising our carving pumpkins every year. They must have liked the mulch, because they were huge – too big to reach my arms around – and prolific – we ended up with about a dozen that size! Needless to say, the kids had a great time carving those giants this fall!

Now the garden is all snug under its blanket of snow, waiting for spring so that the chickens can again clean out all of the over-wintered bugs and add their little packets of fertilizer before I shut them out for the summer growing season. I love how God made all of the seasons so different, so that we can enjoy each one as it comes around again. Each has its own challenges and joys, beginning with hope and excitement and usually ending with an exhausted farmer ready to move on to the next thing!

I’d like to wish each of you reading this a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – may your harvest be bountiful, your animals stay healthy, and your family grow in love and productiveness!

Drop a line in the comment section below and let me know how your homestead did this year, whether it's a pot of herbs on your windowsill or a farm on 100 acres! I love to hear what everyone is up to!

2019 Chicken Harvest - The Good, The Bad, and The Numbers

I think this was our best year yet raising Cornish cross meat birds (aka "broilers"). The birds grew out well (dressed out weight averaged over 4 pounds per bird) and looked happy and healthy. Best of all, we didn't lose any to predators, weather, disease, or "sudden chicken death syndrome" (AKA "it just died").

As we have for the last few years, we ordered the broilers through our local feed mill, who get their chicks from Sunnyside Hatchery in Beaver Dam, WI (which is about as local as I can get). I've ordered directly from the hatchery before and had them delivered through the post office, but the price is the same, and I like that I can pick up their first bag of starter chick feed at the same time I'm picking up my birds. I bought straight run, which means I get both pullets (girls) and cockerels (boys). Pullet chicks cost less because they don't grow as large or as quickly, which of course means cockerels are more expensive because they produce more meat more efficiently, so straight run seemed like a good compromise between cost and efficiency.  

We kept them in the same old cobbled-together wooden brooder we've used since we got our first batch of chicks years ago (the picture above is of our broiler chicks from last year; the picture below is of our laying chicks from this spring). This year we used wood shavings for bedding instead of the newspaper and paper towels I've used before. It was slightly more annoying because the shavings got into the water fountain and food trough, but not enough to be a real problem. 

At two weeks old, we moved them out into their "halfway house" - an ark-style small chicken tractor a friend gave us a few years ago. This way the chickens had access to fresh air and sunshine in the daytime, but still had a solid wooden covered area for nights and inclement weather. 

At four weeks old the chickens outgrew this pen and went into a rectangular 4'x8' chicken tractor (click here to see how to build your own). This year we switched to white tarps instead of blue, which made my husband happy (apparently blue plastic tarps in the yard look a little too redneck; white plastic tarps are much more classy) 😉. Although these homemade shelters may seem pretty flimsy, we had some major storms in our area this year while the chicks were growing out (there were many, many large trees down across the state from the first storm, and our power was out for five days while the electric company repaired broken power lines and blown-down poles) and even though their only protection from the weather was the tarps (and the fact that their pasture was in a slight depression on our land), the chickens all came through just fine. 

The main difference this year, other than the pine shavings, was that we were able to give them a lot more space to run. We had a 4 feet high by 50 feet long garden fence that wasn't in use, so my daughter claimed it to build a pasture area for the birds.  We moved them to fresh pasture every few days as the grass got beaten down and covered in manure. They still had a chicken tractor in the center of the pasture for protection from inclement weather and for shade from the hot July sun, but for the most part they spent their time outside in the fresh air. This was much more room than we'd been able to give them before (usually we've kept our broilers confined to just two 4'x8' tractors) and it seemed to really make a difference. The birds were much cleaner, and were able to be more active (well, as active as a Cornish cross chickens ever will be . . .)

All well and good, but what about the bottom line? We had happy, healthy chickens, but how expensive was it to raise them this way? Since we didn't have to buy or upgrade any infrastructure (other than the tarps, which were about $2 each), the purchase price of the chicks and the cost of their feed were our only inputs. The chicks cost us $1.40 each, plus a $6 fee for buying less than 50, for a total of $76. They ate 700 pounds in the 8 weeks we raised them, which cost us $380.50, or a little over 54 cents a pound. Those together add up to a total expense of $456.50. Divide that by 50 birds and you end up at $9.13 a bird. They were all right around 4 pounds each when we put them in the freezer, so for an easy estimate let's say that's 200 pounds of meat. A little more simple math, and I figure we're around $2.28 a pound. Not bad for locally-sourced (doesn't get more local than your own back yard!) organic-fed pastured chicken! The closest organic chicken I could find for comparison was over $3 a pound (and that wasn't local or pastured, plus I would have had to pay for shipping). Local, pastured, but not organic chicken was $2.18 a pound. There really is no comparison for meat you've raised yourself, to the standards you want for your family - but it's still nice to know you're not paying much more than you would for second-best!

How Much Money Can You Save By Raising Your Own Food?

For many people, one of the main reasons for rasing your own food is to save money. Taking out the middle man, cutting out the costs of labor and transportation - it only makes sense. Add to that the idea that foods harvested right from your back yard can be richer in flavor and nutrients (saving you money in health care costs) - and of course gardening itself can be a great form of exercise (saving you money at the gym, too!)

But how much money can you really save raising your own food? I ran the numbers for last year (which are lower than they'd normally be, since I only had a minimal garden as we worked to set up our new homestead), and found it can be a lot!

Our biggest savings was from our pork. We raised two hogs this year, which we purchased for $100 ($50 each). They ate about 2,125 pounds of organic feed, bringing our total cost up to $1156.28 (this is actually about $300 more than we would usually spend because of an unforseen delay in our butchering date - you can read about that here). We butchered them ourselves and will be smoking all of the meat at home, so the only processing cost will be for the equipment we purchased (this was our first time butchering our own pigs) for $296.20. So our total cost was $1452.48 for 300 pounds of meat in the freezer, not counting the bones (which we'll make into broth) and lard. We'll be making all of this meat into pork chops, bacon, ham, and bratwurst (this is Wisconsin, after all. We love our brats!) From our normal sources, we would have paid around $3,140 for that amount of meat (in those cuts), so by raising our own we saved just under $1,700 (again, that's counting the price of the processing equipment and the extra feed from raising them longer than we expected). If you'd like more information, you can read more about how much we saved by raising our own pork in this post.

We also raised a batch of 50 broilers this year, each bird averaging 5 pounds. Purchase price was $71 ($1.42 per bird), and total feed cost was $458.84 (about $9.18 each). That price is for organic feed, which is generally about twice the cost of regular. We did the butchering ourselves and used chicken tractors we had already built (you can see my post with building plans here), so our total cost was $529.84 (or $10.60 per bird; about $2.12 per pound, dressed).  Our normal source for organic chicken charges $3.50 a pound, which would come out to $875 for the 50 chickens we raised. So our savings was $345.16, or $1.38 per pound.

From those chickens we also made broth (also known as stock). The cheapest source I have for organic chicken broth is Walmart, which charges $2.50 for a quart. I don't usually measure exactly when I make broth, but a conservative guess at how much we made would be a gallon per bird, which would multiply out to 200 quarts a year, or $500. Since I already calculated the cost for the bones in the meat total, there was no additional cost for the broth.

Our free range hens (which we only had from May to December in 2018 because of our move to the new house) gave us 2,235 eggs this year, at a cost of $297 in organic feed.  If we had paid $4 a dozen (the going rate for organic eggs around here), those eggs would have cost us $745; a savings of $448.

So the animals on our farm alone saved us around $3,000. We weren't able to have much of a garden this year, but we did raise about $116 worth of butternut squash (our cost was just $5 for the seedling plant) and $30 worth of mushrooms (which cost $25 for the spawn, but will give us harvests for years to come). I didn't add up how many tomatoes we harvested (the kids ate most of them before they made it into the house!) so I can't calculate the value of those. Conservatively, then, our tiny starter garden netted us only $121, but obviously that number will go up significantly when we're able to garden more extensively this summer.

But what really surprised me was the amount of money our countertop microbial "farm" saved us. We have kefir smoothies every morning for breakfast, using 3 pints of kefir per day for all seven of us. Using a supermarket price of $4 a quart for plain organic kefir ($6 for our 3 pints) times 365 days a year, that would cost us $2,190. Making our own from organic milk that costs us $1.50 a day instead of $6, which saves us $1,642 over the course of a year - all for less than a minute or two of work per day.

We also make our own homemade kombucha (you can find my recipe here). You can get kombucha at Walmart for about $3 a pint, and we make 2 gallons every week. That would cost us about $2,500 over the course of a year. The tea and sugar required to make that same amount at home would cost around $150, for a savings of  $2,350 (we flavor it with raspberries harvested for free from a friend's garden, so that added no extra cost).

When you add those it all up, our total savings, even without much of a garden, was over $7,000. Our total expenses for all groceries over the past year was around $14,000, so we cut our grocery bill by a third! I can't wait to see how we do next year!

How about you? As you can see, some of the biggest cost savings were "raised" right on our kitchen counter (ooh, that reminds me - I didn't count my sourdough bread! I'll have to calculate that out next . . .) How much do you save by raising your own food?

The Best Laid Plans . . .

In Literature class recently the kids and I were reading poems by Robert Burns, and one of the selections was "To a Mouse." While the kids loved his description of the "wee, sleekit, cowran, tim'rous beastie" (and laughed at my terrible Scottish accent while I read to them), I was sighing in commiseration with the line, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley,/An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,/For promis'd joy!"

It seems that all my careful planning back in January might turn out to be a bigger mess than that mouse's nest. April 15th was suppsed to be my first round of putting transplants out in the garden, but this is what the broccoli bed looked like yesterday afternoon:

Obviously, the ground is not warm enough to plant in - even for a cool-weather tolerant plant like broccoli. And the beds, though well mulched with leaves over the winter, need a little TLC before they're ready for the summer.

The other problem was that the garden I laid out on paper, with carefully spaced gridlines and exact spacing for each plant, didn't exactly line up with the more organic reality outside. For example, here's a picture of my asparagus bed (with a wire tunnel over it to keep the chickens out of it) and the wood-bordered raised garlic bed next to it (there's fence wire on top of the garlic bed - also to keep the chickens from digging - and the logs on top of the bed are to keep the fencing down)

The strings show where my carefully planned gridlines say my beds and paths should be - unfortunately, that puts a path straight through my garlic plants, and the asparagus row is completely katywampus to where the strings say it really ought to be.

So there was a little re-thinking to be done. Thankfully, I had plenty of time to stand around and contemplate garden layouts while I was boiling down my last batch of maple syrup, and I think I've figured out a way to make it work. Instead of four three-foot garden beds in the middle of the garden, with two-foot beds along the fences, I have three beds in the center of the original size with a two-foot bed on either side, plus the original fence-edged beds. So I actually ended up with an extra, smaller bed and one slightly shrunken bed - even better than my original plan!

We'll see how this plan holds up to reality as the summer unfolds . . .

Signs of spring

According to the calendar, it's officially spring! Around here, there's still about a foot of snow on the ground, but it's melting fast, with temps getting up into the 40s during the day. So we can't get in the garden just yet, but there are other signs that winter is on the wane.

One of the first signs is that the hens' egg production is picking up. Last month I'd feel lucky if we got 7 eggs in a day, this week we've gotten 11 eggs twice. The hens are also showing signs that they might be feeling like going broody (which would be awesome! In all my years of chicken raising, I have yet to have a hen hatch out chicks).

Another sign, which is good for the chickens but not so exciting for the rest of us, is that the insects are back, particularly the flies. While this is an annoyance for us, it's a sign that the natural food sources for the chickens are coming back (which means a major reduction in feed costs!)

A new sign in our yard this year is the blue bags hanging in the woods - we're trying our hand at making maple syrup this year. We tapped 10 of the maples on our property, with very mixed results. One tree is giving us about a quart of sap a day, while we're barely getting a dribble from the others. I'm not sure what's going on there (more research!), but I'm thinking now that the snow is dwindling and we can actually get to more of our trees, I might tap 7 more on our northern property line.

My least favorite sign that it's spring is that the whole family cought a chest cold. It's mostly just annoying (I was the only one who was really laid out by it; the rest are just dealing with a nagging cough and never-ending sniffles), but it seems like whenever there's a major turn in the weather in the spring and fall our bodies succumb to some kind of virus to transition to our summer or winter metabolism.

But on the bright side, despite the snow, it's warm enough to hang out our sheets on the clothesline, so the sunshine and fresh air can clear away the feverish residue and leave them smelling fresh and clean. That's definitely one of my favorite things about spring!

How about you? What are sure signs of spring around your neck of the woods?

Feed Pan Update: Found It!

I know, you were all holding your breath, wondering what would happen to my feed pan, hopelessly lost somewhere in the garden under three feet of snow.
But hope was not lost - my husband was scrolling through pictures on my phone and found a one from before the snow, and I saw that the pan should be just past where I had already dug. So, armed with new information, I set out to vanquish the powdery foe and rescue the feed pan in distress.
And I did. It was only a foot or two east of where I'd previously dug, so it didn't take too long to find.
There's such a satisfaction in checking off all of your boxes, no matter how inconsequential the list, don't you think?

It May Look Pointless, But I Have My Reasons

Cabin fever makes you do strange things. Today, I shoveled a ten feet square patch of three feet deep snow off of my garden (that's 300 cubic feet of snow! Go me!) I didn't even get down to the leaf mulch layer, but I did make a level area that the chickens can stand on. 

Why, you ask, would I shovel off a section of the garden when there's no chance of growing any vegetables any time soon? I have my reasons:

Reason 1:

The kids and I had just finished reading through our lesson on Napoleon's campaign into Moscow when we heard a crazy cackling right outside the kitchen wall. When we looked out the door, we saw Buxtehude, one of my daughter's guinea hens, sitting in the only patch of grass in the whole yard - right in front of the dryer vent. The other guinea and the majority of the chicken flock were exploring the trails around the yard (my son had run the snowblower around the lawn to make paths for his airsoft wars). The poultry clearly needed somewhere to congregate that wouldn't be in everyone's way (and likely get them shot!)

Reason 2:

I always save our kitchen scraps for the hens, but the only spot other than the paths where I could put them out was right in front of the coop. This means that the hens all hang out in that one spot, leaving their messy (but fertile!) manure there. It would be much better to have that manure, and the compost from any of the scraps they didn't eat, in the garden.

Reason 3:

I need exercise. Cabin fever is definitely setting in. Plus it's a beautiful sunny day, and the thermometer reads 22 degrees (heat wave!), so I need to get outside (instead of staying in and munching on another bag of trail mix . . .)

Reason 4:

Remember that feed pan I mentioned in my seed starting post? It's still out there in the garden somewhere - I should really try to find that . . .

So I grabbed my shovel and went to work. I got my heart rate up, I made a space for the chickens to congregate to eat the kitchen scraps (and fertilize the garden while they're at it) - but I didn't find the pan (oh well; ya win some, ya lose some). It really wasn't something that desperately needed doing, but it was a good excuse to get outside and get some exercise on a sunny day!

And look how happy my chickens are:

Fresh from the Coop Hard Boiled Eggs in the Instant Pot

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an egg collected straight from the coop and then hard boiled is a pain to peel.

I try to be pretty open and inclusive on my blog, sharing ideas without handing down pronouncements about how your farm SHOULD be run. I'm a firm believer that everyone has different circumstances and dispositions, and so there aren't one-size-fits-all ways to raise your food. But there is one topic on which I will make a clear and and firm statement: Everyone who raises laying hens and enjoys hard boiled eggs should have an Instant Pot.

I know there's a lot of hype about electric pressure cookers lately - and honestly I'm always a bit leery of things that are popular - but the one thing that finally got me to try one was the repeated stories of people raving about their hard boiled eggs. Sure, you can make refried beans from scratch in under an hour, or bake a cheesecake without heating up your house, and even cook a piece of meat straight out of the freezer because you forgot to thaw it out the day before (not saying that from experience, but I've heard it works . . .) but for me, finding a solution to making hard boiled eggs without waiting until they were old - that was it. The holy grail of kitchen appliances.

"But boiling eggs on the stove is so easy!" you say. "They're ready in minutes! I don't have time to do it a different way!" "I don't want to wash extra dishes!" Let me show you how easy this is.

Step 1. Wash your eggs. Unless you're Martha Stewart, there's poop on them. Admit it. Get 'em clean. You'd have to do this either way.

Step 2. Put about a cup of water in the bottom of your Instant Pot insert (you don't have to measure - just make sure there's some water in there). Set the little grill tray thingy in the water and put the eggs on top (see? Easy peasy. You can even use words like grill tray thingy and they'll still come out perfectly).

Step 3. Put the insert into the Instant Pot and close the lid. Make sure the pressure valve is in the sealed position.

Step 4. Set the control to manual and the time to 4 minutes. Then go away until it beeps.

Step 5. When it beeps, set a timer for 4 more minutes. When that timer goes off, flip the little knob to release the pressure (I generally put a towel over it so I don't steam the veneer off of my cupboards).

Step 6. Remove the insert from the machine and put the eggs into cool water. My mom always put them in the sink and ran a thin stream of cold water over them until the water was cold to the touch, and who am I to question my mom?

Technically, they're done now, and you can dry them and put them in the fridge. I like to add one more step (I know, I make things so complicated!) and peel them right away. I like to marvel at the amazing ease and lack of swearing, and also I just find it easier to fit them in my overstocked fridge if I store them in an upright mason jar rather than an egg carton. Fun fact - a dozen eggs fits perfectly into a quart-sized canning jar. Don't believe me? Here's a picture:

Alright, fine, you have to squish that top one down a bit, but you can get the cover on. It's all good.

Anyway, this was not just a shameless plug to get you to click on the link below and buy an Instant Pot (even though I would get a small advertising fee for your purchase, while your price would still be the same). I really think this is an awesome tip, and will make your life that much easier. Anything to reduce swearing in the kitchen, right?

Sprouted Corn and Soy Free Chicken Feed

Confession time: It's been just over a year now since we moved, and while we've worked hard to make this place our home, I haven't done much to make it a homestead. We have the laying hens, and we raised a batch of meat birds and a couple pigs last year, but honestly I feel like I've been on auto-pilot as far as homesteading is concerned.

Then a few weeks ago I discovered Justin Rhodes' YouTube videos, and in particular the Great American Farm Tour. I've been binge-watching obsessively ever since, trying to stave off cabin fever  by seeing how farmers all around the country manage their farm systems. He calls his videos "edu-tainment", interspersing information about permaculture, seed saving, and animal husbandry with clips of his adorable children and "the Beautiful One" (his wife Rebecca). Even my husband will watch them with me! Mostly to humor me and because the Rhodes kids are so cute, but still . . .)

One of the things in the Rhodes' routine that reminded me of something I needed to start doing again was soaking chicken feed. He claims you can feed 30% less feed if you soak it, due to the higher water content and higher digestibility. While I don't soak/ferment my chicken feed the same way he does, I do like to mix my own corn- and soy-free ration (I posted the recipe here), and this time around I'm stepping it up and doing a four-day sprout on my whole grains.

My Sprouting Station

I re-use old lettuce containers as my sprouting trays, and they work great. On day 1, I put 4 cups of wheat seeds and 2 cups of oats into the container and cover them to about an inch over the seeds with plain water. In the picture above, you can see that I've also been adding some dried pea seeds I had leftover from a couple of years ago - just trying to use them up. I should note that you should only use seed that is meant for animal or human consumption, to be sure that they haven't been treated with chemicals to inhibit sprouting (which of course would defeat the purpose, and also possibly make your animals sick).

On day 2 and 3 I rinse the seeds using this strainer from Amazon, which I bought for straining chicken broth in my Instant Pot (but I use it much more often for rinsing sprouts!) I let them drain out a bit, then return them to the container and put it back on the shelf until the next day. (In case you were wondering, that orange clip is there so that the handle doesn't fall in and stick to the seeds - it just makes things go more smoothly.)

On the fourth day, I pour the sprouts (which have little white seed tails by now) into my feed mixing bucket and add 2 cups of black oil sunflower seeds, 1 cup of ground flax, and 1/4 cup of Fertrell Nutribalancer. I mix it all together and feed it to my birds - 13 old hens, 6 just-starting-to-lay pullets, 1 rooster, and 2 guinea hens. Out of this mix of birds, eating just this home-mixed feed and kitchen scraps, I'm averaging 7 eggs a day, which I think is pretty good for our sub-zero, three-blizzards-last-week mid-February in Wisconsin!

Looking so majestic, standing in his feed trough! Ha!

The links to the seeds above are just for example; this is definitely not the cheapest way to purchase these seeds! I would recommend contacting your local feed mill, buying club, or even Walmart to find what's available in your area. I did buy my Instant Pot and strainer on Amazon, though, so go ahead and get yours there, too. 😉

Also, please note - the links above are affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking I will receive a small commission, but your price remains the same. Thank you for your support!

A New Adventure

It’s been a while, dear reader (to put it mildly), and so much has happened since my last post! One of the biggest changes is that we’ve moved to a new house. We left our old manufactured home on just under 8 acres and purchased a full-log home with 22 acres - half wooded, half pasture. The kids are loving the woods to roam in, my husband is enjoying the verdant views and wildlife (we've seen whitetailed deer, turkeys, hawks and bald eagles, bear tracks; we've heard barred owls hooting in the night; and a pair of phoebe birds are building a nest above our porch), and I’m having fun trying new things in the house and garden. I’m also enjoying the rich deposits of Obtanium we have in the woods on the property (“Obtanium” is a word I learned from a teacher at the Hay River Traditional and Green Skills Event a year or two ago – the definition being, roughly: “that which is found, gathered, or bartered for - not purchased - and put to good use”. See also “Redneck Recycling”). The fallen leaves, old dead wood, and abundant rocks have all found uses in the gardens - and the morel mushrooms my daughter discovered were a welcome addition in the kitchen!

We moved in mid-February, for which I am heartily grateful. It was a challenge on our actual moving day (I remember temps of -17F as friends helped us transfer furniture from the old house to the new), but after the heavy lifting was accomplished, it was nice to have time to set up the house while the yard waited patiently under a foot or so of snow. We had a late winter (on April 16^th I posted a shot on Facebook of the hill outside the kitchen door where I was planning to put the garden – the yardstick measured a 16-inch snowbank there!) and the snow stuck around until the end of April.

I was very blessed to have a friend who was willing to keep my hens for me during the transition. It’s not many women who will add a friend’s 18 chickens to a coop that previously only held her 7 birds! Obviously, this created a major egg surplus compared to what she was used to, and even supplying us, she was able to have a little fun selling eggs on the side (she bought a dozen or so more chicks this spring, so I think it’s safe to say she liked the experience!)

We finally brought the hens to the new property in May, thanks to another friend who offered us her old coop – which is actually an old pickup-bed camper converted for the job. It works great, and I certainly couldn’t complain about the price (free)!

Gotta love that Obtanium!

We also picked up our new pair of feeder pigs just this Friday: Maple (the brown girl) and Hickory (the black male). This year’s names reflect my hope that I’ll be able to try my hand at smoking our own bacon this fall (I took a class on home smoking at the event I mentioned above, and I can't wait to try it out!)

Little by little, our new farm is taking shape!

Broccoli Three Ways

Just had to share this picture I took with my phone when I went out to check for eggs this afternoon. Although it looks like a mess, this is actually one of the most productive parts of my garden. I planted broccoli (and other things) in the chicken run this spring, while the chickens were out in another pasture. When I'd harvested all I wanted, I let the broccoli flower, and eventually let the chickens back in to that pasture. Now the bees are enjoying the late fall nectar from the broccoli flowers, the chickens are feasting on the broccoli leaves (and any cabbage worms that may fall off of the broccoli), and the plants are enjoying the fertility left behind by the chickens. It was one of those scenes that made me stop and think, "Yup, God knew what he was doing!" It all works together so perfectly!
Not to mention we humans get three harvests from one plant - the broccoli florets, the honey from the bees, and the eggs from the chickens (four if you count the meat and broth from the chickens when they're done laying!) So much abundance from one small space!

The New Girls

For my daughter's tenth birthday, we gave her 5 bantam hens (purchased from a local chicken keeper). I've been thinking of getting some banty hens for a while now, since they have a reputation for being frequently broody and great mothers (I've tried to hatch eggs in an incubator three times now, with no success). We really want to be more self-sufficient as far as the chickens are concerned (it really burns me that we feed a rooster all year so we have fertile eggs, but haven't been able to hatch any chicks!) The woman we bought them from said they've all set chicks for her, so we have high hopes for some cheeping babies from our own chickens sometime soon!

Without further ado, here are some pictures of our new girls:

(Sorry about the "blue screen" effect on the pictures; it was a hot day today, and they wanted to stay under the tarp and out of the sun!)

Millie the mille fleur





Minnie the game hen (Minnie is for "miniature" - they're all small, but she's tiny!)





Nellie is a cochin/silkie cross (she looks pretty chubby, but she's all feathers!)





Marsha (short for "Marshmallow") - another cochin





And, last but not least (my favorite!) - Mrs. Blewett (another cochin)





Welcome to the farm, ladies!

Hanging Chicken Feeders

I like my chicken feeders - they're cheap to make, work well, and are easy to use. The one drawback was that, since I set them on the ground, the chickens would often knock them over and spill their feed. Worse yet, they would also more often than not knock them over onto their waterer, which would tip it enough to make all of the water slowly drain out.

So I headed to the hardware store to get some more U-bolts and S-hooks, thinking I would hang them the same way I had hung the waterers. Scanning the aisles for the S-hooks, however, I saw these bicycle hooks, and the lightbulb went on:

They work perfectly - the feeder hangs off the ground, so the birds can't tip them over, and the hooks screw directly into the frame; no extra hardware needed. I've been using them for almost a month now, with no problems. What a simple solution!

Wild Winter Chicken Feed

I almost forgot - there's one more unlikely wild food we've been harvesting lately: Dandelion seeds!

I have about a dozen family-size spaghetti sauce jars full of them. The kids think this is great fun!

So why, you ask, am I harvesting dandelion seeds?

I have this crazy plan to save all of this free seed, store it until snow falls, and then sprout it and feed it to my chickens as winter greens. For the last two winters, I've been sprouting purchased wheat berries for my hens; I realized finally that I could save that seed money and simply save what grows free as a nuisance in my yard!

Of course, before I saved jars and jars of the stuff I tested a little bit to see if it would sprout indoors  - it worked wonderfully!

Of course this wouldn't work on a large chicken operation; there's no mechanical way I know of to harvest dandelion fluff. And that's probably why it isn't recommended in all of the chicken farming books. But for our small-scale, pancake-powered child labor force, it's perfect!

This post is part of the Homestead Barn Hop

UPDATE:
Well, it sounded good anyway. When I went to sprout the seeds in the winter, I couldn't get them to germinate. Add to that the fact that half of the jars had gotten slightly moldy, and this experiment was a bust! Back to the drawing board . . .

Simple, Light Chicken Tractor DIY Plans

I have to admit, I've been reluctant to post directions for my chicken tractors (sorry, Lori!) because, honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed by how simple - and, frankly, redneck! - they are. Blue plastic tarps and zip ties aren't generally featured in Better Homes and Gardens! But, on the other hand, they do make it possible for a wimpy, carpentry-challenged girl like me to achieve my pastured poultry dreams.

So, excuse their homely appearance and simple construction - they really are useful (and cheap!)



This tarp is two years old, and obviously needs replacing.
. I haven't gotten around to refurbishing this pen for the current year yet.

 Materials:
10 2x2 furring strips
1 1x2 furring strip for door frame
8 corner braces
25 feet of hardware cloth
cable ties ("zip ties") and galvanized deck screws
6 foot by 8 foot tarp
2 carbiner clips or double-ended snap hooks
All of these should be available from your local home improvement store (Lowe's, Home Depot, Menards, etc.) I included the links in case you weren't sure what each item was.

You will also need some kind of saw to cut your lumber to size (I used my brother-in-law's compound miter saw, which was a lot more tool than necessary - but it worked pretty slick!), and a drill for driving the screws.

First, you need to cut your furring strips to size. You'll need 4 in their original 8' length, cut four others in half for seven 4' pieces, and cut the extra 4' piece and the two remaining 8' strips into 2' pieces (nine total) for the 4 corner posts, 4 roost supports, and one for the door frame. Also cut the thinner strip into four 2' pieces.

Once you have them cut to size, you just need to screw them together. Use the metal corner braces and 1" deck screws to make two big rectangles, then join these to the 2' uprights with 3" deck screws. It can be pretty tricky balancing everything, so if you can get someone to hold them for you that will be a big help.

Once you have the basic frame put together, add the roost supports, and then the roosts (you don't have to be too picky about the height of the roosts; I usually go for about 1/3 of the way up the supports).

Now it's time to add the wire - simply wrap the wire around the perimiter of the pen (leaving an opening for the door, of course), connect it to the wood with zip ties (or whatever other fastener you prefer), and trim it to size. There should be enough left over to cover the door. You can also add wire over the top of the pen (which I would recommend, but I didn't add that wire to the cost/materials list), leaving room of course to open the pen from above to add water and food (and a nest box, if you have laying hens). Add the tarp (also connected to the wood with zip ties) to the back of the pen, being sure to cover the back and sides.

Next put your door together - simply screw the 2' strips of 1x2 into a square, with the hardware cloth sandwiched between. Connect the door to the frame (I usually have to use two zip ties per "hinge" to make them long enough to go around both strips of wood, with a little play so the door can swing).

Once the door is finished, swing it to the "open" position and add your water support bar just behind where the door rests, so that you can swing the door freely without hitting the water bar (I have learned to add this step from frustrated experience). (See picture at top of post to see the water bar if that description doesn't make sense to you.)


To keep the door closed, I like to use either carbiner clips (pictured) or double-ended snap hooks. I can usually get a tighter close with snap hooks, although I haven't had any problems with either predators or escaping chickens with either one.

Obviously, this design is not going to win me any awards for beauty, but they are functional. Of all of the different styles of pen I've tried, these are the only ones light enough for me to move without straining my back.

And believe it or not, in the three summers I've been using these pens, I haven't lost any of my chickens to predators (while the chickens are in the pen, anyway - if they are out of the pen at dark, they rarely see the light of day again. There are plenty of coyotes, owls, hawks, skunks, raccoons, and other varmints around who love a free chicken dinner.)

So, even though they're pretty redneck, they're also pretty useful. I'd love to hear any ideas for improvement you might have (that preferably don't add any weight - I am still just one wimpy woman!)

This post is part of the Homestead Barn Hop and Morristribe's Homesteader Blog Carnival.