There is nothing like witnessing the birth of new life. It never ceases to amaze us. Every year we try to hatch some of our own fertilized chicken eggs. This keeps our flock young and is often necessary because of predation. For many years we used two old styrofoam incubators, one with an egg turner, the other without. We have
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We have been homesteading for quite a while now and we have our system of chores down pretty well. Letting chickens in and out of the coop every day is one that we really hadn’t given much thought to, unless of course you are lying in bed and think “did I shut the chickens in?”. Then it’s on with the
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Spring farrowing (when piglets are born) is always a challenging time. Getting the houses ready, making sure the heat lamps are working, and preparing creep areas are just some of things that need to be done. We then need to separate the sows so they can be alone when they farrow. We always have had a love hate relationship with
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I was recently at our favorite family owned feed store with the brains of this crazy operation, when I put my hand in my pocket of my winter coat (yes, we are still dealing with winter temps here in the Northeast) and I felt something unusual. I thought “what the heck?” and I pulled out my pocket findings. The gentleman
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For years we grew cabbage and other greens in our garden, but we always ended up with the same result. All of our cabbage and greens would be riddled with worm holes. It was always so disappointing to remove the outer leaves of a cabbage to find it full of holes, or pick a bunch of spinach, lettuce, or kale
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two branches homestead 