Learn the pros and cons of providing supplemental heat for chicken coops during cold weather to help you decide whether your chickens truly need heat in the winter. As winter’s chill starts sweeping across the land and temperatures take a freezing plunge, a debate begins brewing among backyard chicken keepers about whether it’s necessary to provide supplemental heat in the…
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These mocha chocolate chunk cookies are soft, chewy, and filled with coffee and chocolate flavor enhanced with a sprinkle of sea salt. If you love chocolate and coffee, you have to try these cookies. This final recipe for chocolate chip cookies is several years in the making. We don’t eat cookies often. But when we do, we want them to…
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Want to make your own bread? There’s just nothing like a warm slice of homemade bread fresh out of the oven. Once you start baking bread at home, you’ll never go back to store bought loaves. In addition to the delicious flavor, homemade bread is also much less expensive per loaf than supermarket bread, and there are no additives or…
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Introducing new chickens to the flock can be stressful for your hens and their keeper. These tips will help make the transition easier and with less turmoil in the hen house. Adding new chickens into your backyard flock is not as simple as placing them in the coop. There really is a “pecking order” among chickens, which is an established…
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Spinach is an ideal crop to grow indoors in containers. The spinach plants stay small and continue to grow and produce numerous harvests. Learn how to setup your containers and grow spinach indoors. Spinach is a cool season crop that adapts well to indoor growing conditions, including cooler winters, and air-conditioned summers. Given its compact size, and love of cooler…
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A broody hen is an ideal way to hatch eggs and raise baby chicks naturally. The broody hen will do all the work for you, and her success rate will be higher than yours. Even though the hen knows what she is doing, she can still use a little support from us to hatch eggs and raise her chicks. Use…
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Whether you mail order day old chicks from a hatchery, choose peeps from your local farm and feed store, or hatch eggs in an incubator, use these guidelines to raise chicks the first 6 weeks. Raising chicks is a fun and rewarding project for anyone but for a homesteader, it’s also a necessity. Those baby chicks will be needed for…
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If you are looking for a fun family project that will increase the number of animals on your homestead, try hatching chicken eggs in an incubator. Hatching eggs is also a great way to start a flock of chickens for a minimal investment of time and money. Since our flock is getting older, we wanted to add a few new…
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Baby chicks are so small, so cute, so soft, and so fun to watch! They are also noisy, dirty, hungry, and needy. Before you give in to the emotions stirred up by their cuteness and bring a dozen home, get prepared for baby chicks so both you and they can be happy. Springtime is the ideal time to add baby…
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