Hatching Eggs Under a Broody Hen
I’ve been wanting to try hatching chicks under a broody hen for awhile now, since last year when we moved out here from the suburbs and brought home our first rooster. At first, it didn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon since most of the ladies in our flock were made up of older hens and breeds that don’t tend to go broody, but as luck would have it, my dad and stepmom were looking to rehome a bantam hen named Dany who was constantly broody, so it ended up being a win-win situation for all of us.
Except Dany came home with us and never went broody.
Perhaps it was due to stress from a new environment, or maybe it was the wrong time of year, but we watched her closely after she had settled in with our flock and… nothing. So, eventually we gave up on the idea and ordered chicks from a hatchery (which involved a several months-long waitlist during the pandemic), and by October we found ourselves building a brooder to raise 25 incoming baby chicks.
Before we knew it, spring had rolled around, and our chicks had grown into pullets and then young laying hens, and Dany, who was living in a mobile chicken tractor at the time to recover from injuries due to bullying (she’s our smallest hen, after all), finally decided it was time to go broody again.
See what happens next in the vlog below:
Collecting Cashmere & Spinning Yarn
Homesteading has its seasons, and early spring always feels like an intense jump in productivity after the last few stagnant winter weeks. In addition to starting seeds and garden planning, this is also our season for collecting cashmere and keeping an eye out for incoming baby goats.
This spring in particular is about learning new skills that we can continue to build off of in years to come, such as good practices for collecting and processing fiber, and learning how to spin that fiber into yarn. I’ve also been teaching myself how to milk goats, process and store that milk, and how to make cheese and soaps later down the road once our baby goats are weaned. Eventually, this will all feel like part of a normal seasonal routine for us, but for now it’s a whole lot of learning through research, trial and error, and talking to mentors.
Click the video below to see our new goat babies, and some of my first attempts at spinning yarn:
First Goat Births on the Farm
We reached a major milestone earlier this month with our first Nigerian Dwarf goats born on the farm.
Fig and Fern, the first two goats we ever brought home with us after moving here in 2020, were bred last fall to our buck Thomas, and were due to kid within about four days of each other in late February/Early March. Fig was the first of the two to deliver. She was due February 28th, but didn’t give birth until three days later on March 3rd, right in time for morning chores. It was a fairly quick, straightforward birth with no complications, and although mama was exhausted from pushing, she bonded with her baby right away.
Like Fig, Fern would wait three more days beyond her due date to actually give birth (March 7th). It was trickier to spot labor signs with her because she seemed so uncomfortable. Her belly was much larger than Fig’s and she seemed to need more rest, so us newbies had a hard time discerning between discomfort and signs of early labor like pawing, nesting, staring off into space, getting up and down, and so on.
As it would turn out, her belly was larger because her baby was about twice the size of Fig’s 3.5-pound doeling. She delivered a healthy 6lb buckling, and although it didn’t go as quickly as Fig’s delivery, it was still a very smooth birth experience for all of us.
We named the kids Olive and Otis. They are both beautiful, and look exactly how you might imagine a split down the middle in appearance between their respective dams and our buck Thomas would be. It’s been a lot of fun to watch them play and grow.
We’ve opted to dam raise our kids, so because both mamas only had one baby this time, we are already milking the does in the morning and evening to help keep their milk supply on par with how it might have been if there had been multiples. As a result, we’ve had a chance to taste Fig’s milk and compare it to the raw milk we buy from our local dairy (From the Field Farm in Oregon City), and it’s incredible. Sweet and creamy and so, so good.
Fern’s milk still tastes a bit like colostrum, so we’ll get back to you on her in a few more days. In the meantime, if you’d like to see the footage we were able to capture of our first goat births on the farm, watch our YouTube video below here:
Preparing for Our First Kidding Season
When I say out loud that we’ve lived here for nearly two years, I can’t quite believe it. Has it really been that long? The time has flown by. But I have the footage to prove it, and when I look back on everything we’ve done so far, it makes a little more sense in my head.
Soon we will have baby goats hopping around and does to milk out each morning. That’s when things will get intense, and we will have to give ourselves the grace to feel overwhelmed and the time to deal with all the inevitable curveballs. Maybe we’ll decide we hate this lifestyle, and that we want to sell all our animals and scale back so things aren’t so busy. We leave ourselves that option, always.
But I think after the initial transition, we’ll settle into what we’re doing with great satisfaction. Most of what we’re producing here on our homestead is for us, but maybe we decide to open a little shop and sell what extra we don’t need. Extra soaps, candles, yarn. I have no intention of growing beyond a small scale operation because I want most of my time and energy right now to go towards my kids, but maybe all of what we’re doing here is to their benefit in ways I haven’t yet fleshed out.
Maybe my kids decide they want some pocket change, so they learn what it takes to sell some of our extra chicken eggs. Maybe they learn to wittle or knit and want to sell their wares in our family shop. Maybe they just grow up having had a childhood spent mostly outside, amongst animals and plants, and can take what they’ve experienced here to the next phase of their life all the more enriched by it.
In any case, we are diligently preparing for kidding season. We aren’t scrambling, thank goodness. The weather has been nice, so we are ahead of schedule.
Want to see the new shelter for the wethers and catch up on what I’ve been knitting? Check out our latest vlog below:
January Catch-Up
Kidding season is coming soon, so we’ve been organizing our outbuildings and getting ready to move our wethers to a different sheltered area. This will give our pregnant does space to give birth, and plenty of room for their babies once they’re born.
Unfortunately, before we can start building the shelter for the wethers, we need to backtrack a little and disassemble the buck house we built last summer.
Why? Because almost as soon as it was built, we realized the space it occupied would be better utilized with a lean-to off the big barn. We hemmed and hawed over this decision for awhile, but ultimately decided that we could very easily incorporate a stall under the lean-to, which be more beneficial than the little buck shelter for all kinds of reasons.
First, It would be more spacious, which means we could easily house more animals there if needed. Second, it’s easier to access and much easier to clean. And third, its new location meant we could easily create a gravel path just outside the stall for human folk and goat friends alike, which I’m hoping will help prevent hoof rot and overly muddy conditions.
Granted, winter is not the most ideal time to be working on big outdoor projects like this, but Matt and his dad got to work on it sometime mid-December. They had to pause for a few weeks due to inclement weather, but then the sun broke through again and they were able to finish the job by early January. This gave us plenty of time to put up the stall for our Buck.
Next: the shelter for our wethers, and a huge cleanout of our barn in preparation for the kidding to begin. We may decide to install some birthing pens in the main barn now that we have the space for it. We’ll see.
To see our new setup and to catch up on what I’ve been knitting + some of my goals for 2022, check the video below:
Garden Notes, In Retrospect 2021
It’s November now, and the garden is mostly put to bed for the winter. I planted a few garlic bulbs for the first time this week from Filaree Garlic Farm. They went in the raised bed nearest our front door, though I didn’t get them in the ground as soon as I might have liked. I had a really hard time finding a company that wasn’t sold out of seed garlic until I stumbled upon Filaree, which happens to be a local(ish) company located in central Washington.
The main thing I want to express about the 2021 garden season is how glad I am that we took the time to do it at all. We initially weren’t going to because we had so many homestead projects on our to-do list that we didn’t think we’d have the time or energy for it.
But as the weather got warmer, something shifted for me:
It was a hot evening in late June, and I was out in the front yard eating dinner and chatting with Matt while the girls were running around in the sprinkler to cool off, and I looked around at our situation. The porch was a mess, there was a patch of bark dust with weeds overtaking the area by the house, and the shrubbery along the fence needed some major TLC. It wasn’t pretty, but we were outside together, and I suddenly realized how much we needed to prioritize that. To slow down, relax now and then, and play outside together as a family.
It seems pretty straightforward thinking about it now, but we had just spent the past year in go-go-go mode, scrambling to get our homestead up and running, so it took some thought and intention to slow things down.
And then I realized how much more we would enjoy our outdoor space if we could get things cleaned up a little, paint the deck (still hasn’t happened), plant a garden, maybe use that sprinkler the girls had been playing in to also water said garden... everything just clicked.
So although we were in the middle of a big project, I asked Matt if he wouldn’t mind side-tracking for a few days to build a few (or 8) garden beds. I already had my seeds ordered, and my MIL had very generously brought over a few extra tomato and pepper starts a few weeks prior, so we got to work designing and building and planting.
Sure enough, this little bit of work made our outdoor space instantly more enjoyable for all of us. We ate most our meals outside when it was hot while the kids played in the water. And when the plants grew, the girls loved watching the progress. Later, once the peppers and tomatoes had ripened, they helped me harvest. I even wrangled my older daughter into helping me weed here and there too. My kids really seemed to enjoy the garden as much as we did.
That said, now that it’s November and we are eating our preserved garden food on a regular basis, I can tell you there are a few things I really wish I had done differently. So here are some things my November self would like to express to my future gardening, harvesting and preserving self:
Start earlier - plant cold weather crops in Feb & March (peas, lettuce, kale, beets)
Schedule out succession planting or you’ll forget
In the front yard: rip up sod on the back side of porch, design space for more garden boxes and gravel/brick pathways
In the backyard: set up boxes along the fence and shade line by the house + privacy wall
Build all garden boxes two tiers high minimum to ward off wild rabbit population
Add wood + bark chips to the bottom of the garden boxes to fill in space and top with soil and compost
Plant more full-sized tomatoes, hot peppers (including cayenne), tomatillos, basil, cilantro, calendula, carrots, beets, sunflowers…
Plant potatoes in the grow bags
Always have the dehydrator working: greens powder, herbs, green onions, garlic, apple slices, tomatoes (to make powder which can be used in lieu of tomato paste)
Completely restock vinegar pickles: dilly beans, bread and butters, spicy dill, candied jalapeño
Plant your own green beans and cucumbers even though we have some growing in the family garden, just in case
Use green tomatoes and tomatillos for salsa verde
Make more pear and apple butter
Try some new jam recipes (caramelized onion, fig, balsamic, rhubarb)
Fermenting: sauerkraut, carrot + beet kraut, fermented salsa
Freeze: rhubarb (harvest continuously), zucchini (try again), greens, corn (immediately after harvest for better flavor), roasted tomato puree, basil pesto, other pesto varieties, zucchini bread and garden-based baked goods
Foraging: hawthorn greens for tea + salad + tincture
Juice and freeze: apples juice (save pulp for goats), crabapples (make jelly), pears
If you can’t grow it, buy from a local farm: strawberries, peaches/nectarines, blackberries
Stock up well on fresh lids, pectin, freezer containers, vinegar, sugar, salt and lemon/lime juice, herbs and pickling spices well before canning season
Harvest and process daily so it doesn’t get overwhelming
Plant calendula everywhere
Fig tree and dahlias to be brought out front
Cut plants at the end of the season at the base and leave the roots to decompose in place
Use fall leaves as bed mulch
One thing to note: while we do have lots of yard space, our septic system wraps around the house, limiting where we can dig and plant directly in the ground. Because of this, we’ve opted to go with raised beds for most our gardening needs, though it might be useful to find a little patch for growing potatoes in the ground next year.
I plan to continue adding to this list as I think of things to reference later, but this is a good place to start.
Willow and Aspen
A few weeks ago, I was perusing Craigslist when I came across a listing for a sweet Nigerian Dwarf mama and baby duo from a farm nearby. The mama was a bit over-conditioned, as was outlined in the listing, but I felt hopeful she would do well here at our farm. Plus, both she and her baby were listed as registered ADGA purebreds with solid milking lines, so Matt and I jumped at the chance to bring them home with us.
It’s a funny thing, when Matt and I first decided we wanted goats, we weren’t at all concerned with their registration status. In fact, I’d read about how folks often get lucky with unregistered goats, and find nice animals of good quality without the steep price tag. This very much appealed to me. Besides, we figured the ADGA (American Dairy Goat Association) was something we could always explore in the future, but we had a long road ahead of us before we even had to think about breeding our animals, much less daily milking and everything that’s involved with that. So when we purchased our first two Nigerian dwarf goats (Fig and Fern) last year as 3-month-old doelings, the seller told us their mamas were good milkers, and that was good enough for us. After all, our primary concern back then was blackberry bramble control.
Let me be clear, I don’t regret bringing home Fern and Fig. I’m very fond of them, but the fact of the matter is they aren’t registered and could never be. And as for whether or not they will be good milkers with sound, healthy bodies? It remains to be seen.
What I do know is the closer we get to breeding our own animals, the more I can see the value in investing our time and energy wisely, doing justice to the animal, and getting back what we put in. I’m a practical person, and although I don’t just think of our animals here as commodities, I do find myself making calculations in my head about which things are worth my time, because for me this lifestyle is less about money and more about enriching our experiences together as a family. What we consume, where it comes from, how we spend our time together…
All of this to say, I think we’ll be sticking to ADGA registered goats from here on out. Not just because we want good milkers, but because I can see us diving deep into the world of goats, and it’s all happening a lot sooner than I thought it would.
Would you like to meet Willow and Aspen? If so, check out the video below:
August and Bear
Fire damage in the trees seen on the drive to Bend, OR.
At the end of November (2020), we made the beautiful four hour drive (one way) to Bend, OR to pick up our newest family members, two fluffy French Angora bucks. If you’ve been here for awhile, you have probably heard me ramble on and on about wanting to get started with Angora rabbits, and although we weren’t completely set up for them, I honestly just couldn’t wait any longer.
So without further ado, meet the newest members of our family, August and Bear.
August is the black self, and although he’s the smaller of the two, he’s definitely the sassy one. Bear is the chestnut (though don’t ask me anything about rabbit colors because I still know next to nothing) and he’s a bit more cautious and sweet. We really love them both, and would eventually like to get a doe or two, but we aren’t in any hurry.
This coming spring or summer, we plan to build a rabbitry either on our front porch or back deck (or both) to keep the rabbits outside, but also right near the house so we can easily bring them in for grooming and handling. As it stands, our front porch roof leaks badly, so we keep them in the house and only let them outside in their pens when it’s nice and dry, but they still get some supervised exercise in the house every day. I’ve really enjoyed having them in here with us, but they’re definitely a little stinky, being that they’re bucks, so it’ll be nice to get them out of the house and settled into their new homes once we reach that point.
If you’d like to see footage of all this and more, check out our latest vlog below. Enjoy!
A Productive Season
One of our biggest issues to deal with since moving here has been our pasture. When we moved in, it was late April, there was trash everywhere (and I mean everywhere), deep ruts in the ground (probably from a bulldozer), giant mounds of fill dirt, blackberry bushes that were out of control, and lots of tree debris from several of the dead trees we had to cut down. Worse yet, because the drainage in our pasture was so bad, we weren’t able to access most of it until the ground had dried out mid-August.
To be honest, we weren’t sure how much we would be able to accomplish in the pasture this year. We wanted to smooth out the random piles of dirt and fill in the ruts, especially the piles that were up against the creek, keeping the groundwater from flowing in. We wanted to pile up the brush and debris for burn season, gather all the trash (which continues to unearth itself) to take to the dump, and we wanted to reestablish the creek so water could flow through. Basically, it was our goal to restore the land to how we imagine things originally were, and then to get our perimeter fence built so we could rotate the goats around in the pasture to help control the brush. Believe it or not, we may actually accomplish our goals by the end of fall.
But once again, we had a lot of help from our family members. My dad lent us his bobcat, my mom brought her excavator over, and Matt’s parent’s came in to help us cut down trees, paint the house, saw up logs... We absolutely could not have accomplished what we’ve accomplished without their help. So what started as an ambitious list of projects for spring/summer has turned into something beyond what we could have imagined, and yet we were able get so much done.
So no, we still haven’t finished our End of Summer to-do list, and now that it’s raining and dark and cold outside, we definitely have to slow our pace down, but I really have no complaints. I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished in the six months we’ve been here, and grateful for the people who helped us make it happen.
If you’d like to see some of the changes we’ve made to the pasture to get things cleaned up and (hopefully) help with our drainage issues, check out our latest homestead vlog below.
End of Summer To-Do List
Most people I know are talking about how summer is over already, and while I can’t deny the change in the air and the pull to switch gears, we are sincerely hoping the weather holds out for us for another few weeks. This feeling is new for me as I’m not typically a summer person, and usually can’t wait to pull out my cozy knits and huddle in for the year, but moving here seems to be changing everything.
When I think of summer, I think long, lazy, carefree days. On the contrary, our summer this year has been highly structured and efficient, but I still feel like we’ve had our share of that carefree vibe in the in-between moments, in filling our bellies with fresh blackberries and apples straight from the tree, and long visits with the chickens and baby goats after dinner. I think it’s part of what has kept us going, especially amid this pandemic and not being able to see people like we usually would or go places we normally would go.
It’s starting to feel like crunch time now, though, as the days are getting shorter and the sun is hanging lower in the sky. And somehow we’re finding the wherewithal to push ourselves further with the promise that we’ll give ourselves a break once mother nature tells us it’s time to pack up our tools and go inside. So, like we do every weekend, Matt and I sat down last Sunday evening and plotted out the broad strokes for September and October, and it looks a little something like this:
SEPTEMBER
Finish painting the house ✓
Cedar trim for windows ✓
Shelter for the water softener system (paint house color) ✓
Spray + paint the barn roof before it rains ✓
Organize milk parlor (get the alfalfa out, build shelves, install mini fridge) ✓
Set up the brooder for incoming October chicks ✓
Clear out remaining brush along the property line ✓
French drain to the creek for drainage ✓
Put up perimeter fence for the pasture ✓
Seed the pasture ✓
Get a generator for well pump in case the power goes out ✓
Remove remaining old fencing along driveway ✓
Sort out scrap piles: metal, good wood, burn, dump ✓
OCTOBER
Build chickshaw #2 for the pasture flock ✓
Build a portable shelter for rotating the goats ✓
Cedar window boxes for the house
Finish the privacy fence ✓
Put up insulated walls for the well pump house ✓
Find a buck for the does ✓
Carport lean-to ✓
Fix or replace big barn door ✓
Set up compost enclosure ✓
Privacy fence near goat barn and hay barn along the road + gate ✓
Enclosure for the well itself ✓
Set up a lean-to (or something) outside the goat barn for the generator
Honestly, I don’t know how people get things done without a system for remembering. We are completely reliant on to-do lists around here, and so much of our ability to get things done seems as if it’s simply a matter of writing things down and placing those written words somewhere we’ll actually see them.
I don’t know if we’ll manage to get all our September items done before it starts raining, but we’re going to try. And hey, if we don’t make it in time, we’ve worked in the rain before.
Homestead Beginnings
It’s been awhile since posting here on this poor, neglected blog. In case you don’t follow me elsewhere online, we moved out of our little old home in the suburbs back in late April and into a manufactured home on four acres outside town. It was a spontaneous decision in some ways, and long overdue in others, and if we had waited even just one week longer to list our house, we would have chickened out entirely because the week we accepted the offer on our old place was the week social distancing and empty toilet paper shelves at the grocery stores became a thing.
Fast forward five months into the future, and here we are at the new place, having mostly settled in with several major projects knocked off the to-do list. Sometimes we drive by the old house when we’re in town and feel grateful it’s no longer where we pull in the driveway, hang up our keys, take off our shoes… I thought I would miss it more than I do, and maybe I will feel more nostalgic about it in the future, but for now I’m just so grateful that this is our home and that we’re here, pouring every ounce of energy into this place every single day.
On Sundays, Matt and I huddle together at night before bed with our phones and plan out the minute details of every moment of every day for the coming week. Somehow we manage to fit in an hour or two here for this project, 20 minutes there for that one. It’s not a sustainable way of existing, but there’s so much we are hoping to accomplish before the weather turns on us, and time, as usual, is just flying by. The light is already changing. How is it already August?
Anyway, if you want to know what we’ve been up to, I’ve got a couple homestead vlogs up on YouTube (see below). They aren’t very long, but of course they take an enormous amount of time to edit, especially because so much of the footage is old or taken by Matt (he has been filming too!), so I have to go through it to make sure I’m not missing anything. Hopefully I’ll have you all caught up by the end of the month so they aren’t so hefty to edit and I can publish them a bit more consistently. That’s the hope, anyway. To settle down a bit in the coming months and establish more of a routine.
For those of you who have been following along, thank you so much for your support and your encouragement. It means a great deal to us. We have big plans for our homestead, and I can’t wait to share them with you and take you along as they come to fruition.
P.S. Some of you have been asking if I’m planning to start a Patreon account. I feel like it’s not the right choice for us right now, especially while the kids are so little and my posting is so sporadic, but if you’d like to support our work, please know it means so much just to have you following along and interacting with our content.
That said, I have opened up a Ko-Fi account here where we can accept donations. Anything you donate will go straight into getting our homestead up and running. Please know we appreciate any and all forms of support more than we can possibly say. Thank you for being here.