Self-taught farmers confidently raising chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs. Our focus is on practices that are environmentally harmonious and respectful to our livestock. We appreciate the beauty around us, clean eating, fermenting, and responsibly utilizing the bounty of the land. If you like thinking for yourself, continuous learning, and connecting with the homesteader lifestyle, check us out.
So the fun part of incubation is over: the chicks have hatched, and you’re looking at an incubator full of empty shells and hatching gunk. What now? Clean it, thoroughly. Keeping your incubator clean will help ensure that you have successful hatches and that your hatchlings will be healthy. Continue reading “After The Hatch: Cleaning Your Incubator”
I have a jar that’s devoted to making kombucha vinegar. It began that way, not as a jar of kombucha tea that fermented for too long. Why do I make vinegar? Let me count the reasons…
Continue reading “Farm Ferments: Why You Should Start Making Vinegar”
You probably know that I’m constantly making water kefir. We love it! Aside from its probiotic payload, it just tastes great. I try to keep coming up with new flavors to keep it fresh and fun…today’s flavors are pine-lime-ginger and pineapple-coconut. You can make these yourself by using the recipes below! Continue reading “Kefir Madness: Something Green and Something Tropical”
The first hatch of the year was an unusual one: the bulk of the batch was shipped Cream Legbar eggs – and shipped hatching eggs typically have a low hatch rate (for a number of reasons). We also put in a couple of our own Black Copper Marans eggs – early in the season, for them – and hoped for the best. Continue reading “First Hatch 2018: Final Count And Recap”
It’s hatching time! We have several incubators here on the farm and we like to keep them busy – we typically hatch eggs during spring, summer, and fall, so we’re starting a little earlier this year. We have Crested Cream Legbar (shipped eggs) and French Black Copper Marans (our own stock) eggs in the incubator and they should be hatching in the next couple of days. This point in the incubation process is called lockdown. Continue reading “In The Incubator: Chicken Eggs On Lockdown (Hatch #1)”
So I had a few cans of fruit cocktail that I purchased with the idea that I’d make “rum pot”, yeast-fermented fruit cocktail that is a little like Amish friendship bread: once you get it up and running, you can give some away to your friends. I specifically purchased a tropical fruit cocktail because it didn’t include the unnaturally red cherries with their beetle-derived color (carmine), and it had no added corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup. Realizing, though, that I needed to keep feeding the living rum pot with more fruit cocktail to keep it going, I decided to go in another direction…what kind of wine could I make? Continue reading “Wine Chronicles: Why Not Apple-Fruit Cocktail?”