Meet our chickens by name...also confession, it is really hard to tell Astralorps and Barred Rock baby chicks apart for me as a newbie...so inadvertently family and friends named chickens not necessarily according to the original assignments. But it turns out the names suit each chicken well... Australorps - Ellie, Dessie, Rosa, and Amelia Eggheart Barred Rock - Lafawnda (Napoleon Dynamite favorite), Girl George, Agape, and Pickle Pee (video game character) Brahmas - Kalico,

Sad and good and hard and productive day here on the homestead... As we anticipated, it is possible to lose baby chicks and indeed we did today. This little chicken nugget was one of our mystery birds and never quite got the hang of drinking and eating. We tried to help, but it was very weak and slipped away this morning after a last-ditch effort to revive it. We buried it in our homestead cemetery with our feral cat, Finnbogi and the Bina bees. However, homestead life goes o

I did not begin my day thinking that today was the day I would get the call that our chickens have arrived in NoVA... I received an email that they were at the Minneapolis Airport last night and delivery was set for Friday. Great, we have time to finish getting ready! This morning at work I got another notification that our chickens had arrived at Dulles and delivery was going to be tomorrow (Wednesday). No sweat! Just before lunch, the post office called and said, "we have y

When you are the set designer and stage manager for an upcoming Easter Pageant, one of the unforeseen benefits of said role is being able to rescue foam boards that have been used in productions from days gone by that were headed to the dump (good call Peter!) in order to insulate your chicken coop. If these set pieces could tell the story...they would say how blessed we are at our church to have a music and drama tradition of excellent and creative events that share the Good

Confession...I almost gave into temptation yesterday. Chicken temptation. The newest Murray McMurray catalog arrived and page after page it showed the loveliest chickens and even some Swedish ducks. I got hung up on the Orpingtons and found myself on their hatchery website with chicks loaded in my basket. The chicken math in my brain was working like this...my sweet Peter is building us a coop that can hold 12-15 chickens, and we only have 9 chicks coming in May, so there is

Well maybe not actual farming, but we are prepping to bring down more creepy crawlies to the homestead this weekend. ore creepy crawlies...

Today is the day! Peter met a fellow beekeeper in the Northern Virginia area, and through sharing our story of our homestead and new...

We have another new critter on the farm, Black Soldier Flies (BSFs). Our goal is to create food for the chickens we plan to get next...