It is not a day you look forward to. Particularly the first time. I am fortunate that my husband is clinical and that science aids in a clean, direct approach. By clean, I only mean the cut. There are still a mess of feathers in the yard that will take time to flutter away or return to the earth. We decided to use a simple implement and gravity. We saved everything. Nothing was wasted, thanks largely to Auryn, our big dog. Blood was cured and...
Read MoreAfter harvesting nearly 2 gallons of elderberries this weekend, this line from Monty Python’s Holy Grail came to mind…”Your mother’s a hamster and you father smells of elderberries!” We have a new appreciation of what raw elderberries smell like…canned peas. Like most berries you expect a nice fragrant sweet smell, but no not elderberries. Besides the raw berry smell they taste great when preserved as jam,...
Read MoreWe are mere days from culling our first home grown broilers. And it’s kind of a BIG DEAL. We took the advice of a friend to try Cornish Cross. I am not impressed. Well, by literal definition, that is not entirely true, it has affected and deeply influenced me, just not positively! The purpose of raising our own meat birds was, like many things on our farm, designed to reconnect us with our food source to gain better understanding and...
Read More
Heirloom turkeys, Black Runner and Magpie Ducks, Lionhead Bunny, raised bed gardens with hand-painted signs, chocolatee mousse birthday cake, bobbing for apples, cornhole, chicken handling, goat feeding, Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog, photo ops in the hay barn, and hide-outs in the bamboo thicket… A good time was had by all. My cousins on the Blair side of the family, now the Custers by marriage, brought a slew of kids and parents...
Read More
The Valley Permaculture Alliance is having their 4th annual Tour de Coops this year. Here’s a slew of media links and some sneak peaks of coops on the tour… Come on out and see if you can catch a chicken! Downtown Phoenix Journal – Friendly Feathers Green Living Magazine – Green Thumb – Urban Chicks Echo Magazine – Coop Tour The Phoenix New Times – Tour de Coops – Preview 3 Awesome...
Read More
It’s all a blur. I remember my life before the farm, and I know that it wasn’t all that long ago. This is fair warning, chickens are the gateway farm animal… you cannot have just one, once you have one you are hooked and more than likely a chick will lead to other farm animals in your future. So many farm animals that for us this past summer as we settled into our new digs, “fence” became our new “F”...
Read More
Recent Comments