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.
I can honestly say that I have numerous hatches under my belt: chickens, ducks, geese, and guinea fowl. Each hatch is different, and, sometimes, they don’t have good outcomes; fortunately, that’s not how they usually go. The last duck hatch, however, resulted in just one duckling emerging from five developing eggs. What in the world do you do with a single, lonely, duckling…in winter?
If you’ve followed us or just taken a look around, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that this blog is replete with posts about fermentation. I ferment things, different things, and often. But I’m not the only fermenter in the family!
Nature’s at it again with a fanciful display of hoar frost…how appropriate to usher in the (recent) official start of winter!
Another hatch is over, and there are six tiny chicks in the brooder. All hatched without assistance, and all are Olive Eggers…except one!
So maybe they’re not technically fossils yet, but the descendants of the dinosaurs clearly left their prints in what, the preceding evening, had been soft mud. Aged a few thousand years, they might become an exciting find for some future paleontologist.
It snowed yesterday. Just a dusting – but for a while, the sodden landscape was transformed into something peacefully beautiful. To me, snow is one of those arguably ordinary events that is rarely fully appreciated: what other natural occurrence can transform unappealing objects, like rusty old gates, into something worth capturing? When it snows, really snows, the world’s frenetic pace slows and it grows quiet, as if there’s a reverent hush. Watching the snow is a bit hypnotic, too – as it swirls gracefully to the ground, it’s easy to engage in a bit of reverie: snowball fights, patiently rolling big snowballs to make a snowman, dogs cavorting in the snow…cherished snow memories.
May the wonder of snow be with you this holiday season!