Getting Started with Chickens (and Ducks) Part 1: Why and How?

So you want to get chickens? In a city? With a small backyard? So did I, about a year ago!

Well, to be honest, I wanted to get bees (for honey that I use in bread and wax that I use to make candles) but my husband compromised with me and he told me that I could get bees if he got chickens. The deal was that I would take care of the chickens (which would only be about 5 feet away from our two story suburban house) if he took care of the bees (which would be in the furthermost corner of our 1/3 acre lot and might -- okay, definitely would -- involve stinging).
It seemed like a good compromise!

Before the bees arrived (which never did because we later realized that I was pregnant and didn't want to take the chance of an allergic reaction), we began the chicken project.

First, I joined several chicken groups on Facebook. I found them easily by typing in keywords like "Alabama" "Chickens" etc. I found one that had chickens for sale and began watching pictures for ones that seemed popular or that I liked the look of. I also began messaging my friends who I knew had chickens to ask what breeds they had and recommended. The OVERWHELMING favorite was Buff Orpingtons. After a year of owning 2 Buffs, I wholeheartedly agree. They are kind, fluffy, pretty, and predictable layers over the winter (more on that later). Initially, I planned to buy 3 Buffs that were laying from a man on the Facebook group from Birmingham for $30 each but, before the weekend came to meet him, I found some 9 week old Buff pullets (young female chickens who are not laying yet but old enough to be outside) just south of Huntsville for $15 each. In the next day, I read about Easter Eggers which produce colored eggs and are also pretty idiot-proof for beginners. I decided to get two Buffs and one EE.

When I pulled up for the chicken exchange, we chose the pullets and headed home with the chickens in a rubbermaid tote with a breathable blanket on top. We had ordered a coop on Amazon (that my husband had ordered after reading reviews https://www.amazon.com/Pets-Imperial-Chicken-Poultry-Rabbit/dp/B076JHDYCN) but the chickens needed somewhere to sleep for two nights. We let the three chickens stay in a nice clean dog kennel in the garage since it was mild temperature and they were too big to escape through the slots. The kids quickly got acquainted and "claimed theirs." (More thoughts on this later.)

The first day involved lots of chicken holding and feeding them grass and feed. It also involved cleaning up a lot of chicken poop, which is not granular like mammals and they like to step in and track across the floor. 😆 The next day, we realized that, in order to have three chickens, we needed to get three more pullets because the chances of all of them surviving were low. (This was true.) Off to see "the chicken man" we went the next day again and got 2 more EE and one Barred Rock.

The coop indeed arrived in two days and Matt and our son got to work building it. It was super easy to build and only took about 4 hours. The chickens went in and spent their first night.
Not just one night but a whole week, would be needed for the chickens to stay in their coop to "home" or realize it was their safe spot. It was a long week waiting for them to come out to play but this technique is essential and important to do -- we also did it with our new flock this year.






So, to recap in Part 1, to prepare for my chickens to come to our home, I:
1) joined Facebook groups and messaged friends for info on breeds
2) found chicken sellers on Facebook groups and arranged for cash sale (choose one and stick with it -- do not mix chickens from different flocks; different germs/parasites)
3) ordered a coop online
4) kept the flock safe and warm inside until coop arrived
5) went to Tractor Supply and got a chicken waterer and chicken feeder and LAYER MIX food. I would later add PetRX and chicken grit to my routine... more about that later)
6) shut them up tight in their coop for their first night (and first week to "home")

Pressure Canning Part 1 -- Making the Most of Your Pantry to Free up your Freezer!

Pressure Canning/Cooking used to be a term that most people had no relatable experience with. The sound of it brought back memories of grandmas or great-grandmas who would make jam, or jelly, or tomatoes that they had made from their garden fruits and vegetables.
Then the Instapot came on the scene a few years ago and suddenly EVERYONE started pressure cooking, making meals in half the time and cooking meats that were both tender and quick! Now when you Google "pressure cook," almost all the entries involve an Instapot or a knockoff.

Pressure Canning or Cooking in the way I'm talking about is both and neither of those. It involves putting fruits and vegetables (from your garden or the store/freezer) into a Ball jar and making sure the lid gets sealed, but it can also involve the most tender and juicy meat that you can make in bulk in half the time of normal -- and it all can sit on your pantry shelves for almost a year!

In a time when most people's freezer are full to the brim, this art of pressure cooking is the perfect opportunity to learn to keep up your food supply in a safe and delicious way!

So what do you need to pressure cook?
1. A pressure cooker like my All American Pressure Cooker (or borrow from a friend -- we pressure canner types like to show and share!)

2. Jars

3. Lids and Bands

4. A food item from the list of acceptable foods (pretty much the rule is nothing with rice, noodles, flour or cornstarch to thicken)
              Some of my favorite items to pressure cook:
              -hamburger
              -chili
              -chicken noodle soup (without noodles -- you can pour it over noodles when you eat it!)
              -spaghetti sauce with eggplant
              -kung pao chicken
              -chicken pot pie (thicken and pour in a pie pan when you eat it!)
              -applesauce
              -pie filling (apple, cherry, peach, berry)

How do you do it?
Easy! Get some instructions on how to prepare the food before you put it in the jar. You might be surprised to see that you can put raw chicken and beef into a jar right away but you might want to cook applesauce before you can it.

For Beef Stew, I prepare it like I would if I was making it for dinner that night minus the corn starch or thickener. Then I make sure I wipe the top of the jar mouth clean with a paper towel and put a clean lid (just rinsing it in soapy water is good!) and ring on top of the jar. That one is ready to go. Often, you want to put 5 quart jars in a pressure canner at once so doubling the recipe helps with that. Once all the jars are filled, wiped, and lidded/banded, you are ready to pressure cook!

The Residents (Human and Non-Human)!

The Children!

We have 6 children, aged 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 4 months. With our first farm animals arriving in spring of 2019, the older children have been a huge help in animal feeding, watering, and most of all entertainment!

The Birds!

We began with 6 nine-week old pullets in April of 2019: buff orpingtons, a barred rock, and easter eggers. We added three ducks later that month. Unfortunately, by June, we were down to just three "insurhens" that we learned to keep in an enclosure at all times. Their names are Cruella DeBird, Waffles, and Rapunzel.


"The original six and ducks"

The "Insurhens"

The new chicks on the block!

9 new three-week old pullets joined the flock in March of 2020. They spent some time inside and then moved outside at the end of the month! These will have a rooster added to them and will be allowed to roam in summer! Their job is to cut down on fleas and ticks on the property :)

The Rabbits! 

On Easter Day 2020, the New Zealand rabbits arrived to herald in spring and the next part of the homestead, the meat production. We started with three females and one male, all 5 weeks old. Their names are the following:

Flopsy (blue NZ), Cadbury Cottontail (white NZ), Mopsy (blue NZ), and Peter (red NZ



While the children are very excited for their new pets (which I promised them would stay pets; their offspring will be the meat/sale rabbits) our oldest daughter is already excitedly looking up the American Rabbit Breeders Association and how to join their youth program! She hopes to train and pose with "her" rabbit, Cadbury Cottontail.



I plan to do a post called "Getting Started With Rabbits" about how we are... getting started with rabbits.

The Goats

Victoria is our LaMancha doe in milk that arrived mid-May 2020. She brought her son, Henry, who is a neutered male or "whether." They live out back and I milk her one to two times a day to get fresh milk for our family! Plus, they're fun to give treats and play with!

When Do You Become a Homestead?

Today is the day that we now classify our home, house, property as a homestead and dedicate it to the service of our children, ourselves, our neighbors, and, most importantly, to the Two Hearts that sustain the world: the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

What makes a homestead? Well, last spring as we bought our first set of chickens, I would not have considered that a "homestead situation." In fact, that home was one that we not only did not want to set up to sustain us for a long time, it was one we were hoping we would leave as soon as possible. At 1550 square feet for 7, soon to be 8 people, it was too small for us and brought up more stress than joy. There was more to fix than to appreciate. The yard was more restrictive than freeing. Yet, at the time, we felt an urge to begin learning and raising animals that would ultimately lead to feeding and nourishing our family.

With a bit of patience and after touring and loving two properties out of state that we wanted to own and build on but not live on, we found the perfect hybrid: a home that had 1 acre of land and 3 surrounding acres for sale. To be clear, we do not own those other three acres yet, (a disappointing encounter with the landowner who will not budge on her price per acre yet,) so this homestead is being cultivated and grown on one rectangular acre. This new home was all we dreamed of with an open concept layout, close bedrooms, and a pool! Better yet, the lawn was plush enough for the kids to play and had a sprinkler system that we hoped would help us finally achieve a good garden! Finally, the cherry on top is the wraparound deck that allows us to feel that we can watch all areas of the property easily and "walk around the yard" daily without setting foot on the grass.

That was last fall. We got to enjoy the pool, deck, and lawn, but the gardening and spreading out our animals was set to the side. Our three original hens, which we call "insurhens" (aka hens that are fully enclosed at all times to prevent predator loss), took up a small amount of space behind the carport.

As the days became longer and we were put into a quarantine situation due to coronavirus, we began working on our long-awaited summer plan! We moved the insurhens to a prominent spot on the northeastern quadrant of the lawn. We finished moving the 9 new pullets into their henhouse and placed them next to the older gals and we began fencing in those pullets, as they will have a bit more freedom to achieve our purpose of pest control on the property. Finally, on one long, long day, Matt dug up our first healthy-sized garden (we were very limited in the old yard in the city) and it all began coming together into a beautiful site!

In line with our goals for the property, getting chickens that provide eggs for ourselves and to sell to neighbors led to the idea of raising meat, the easiest and most compact option being meat rabbits, which we purchased last weekend and gave to the children on Easter. We plan to breed the first of the three females in July and then sell half of the offspring and process/harvest the other half for our freezer.

This brings me to the next piece of the puzzle that we are putting in at the end of next month: we will be securing dairy by getting a goat doe in milk and a companion. We have already selected her; she is named Victoria and is a registered LaMancha dairy goat. There are many reasons why this will be a good fit for us, (the seller is someone we know and trust; this breed has higher milkfat, the size and daily output of milk, etc.) and we are very excited to secure her purchase and then spend the next 6 weeks preparing a shelter and fence for our new tenant to arrive!

Building fences and pastures on this piece of land is something that both intimidates and excites us. Matt began his first fence around the new pullets and we have mapped out where we will put our first goat pasture and where we will probably extend another pasture in the fall to rotate to. A shelter for the goats and rabbits is something that is also a new challenge to us that will stretch our natural abilities and we will keep you updated as we find plans and attempt them.

That's all about the animals -- not even touching the topic of the gardens yet! Whew! As you can see, we have many different balls in the air that all converge into our main purpose and the reason why I now consider ourselves a homestead: with the gift of this home we have been blessed with, we are seeking to turn it into a place of love, laughter, health, joy, knowledge, and work, using the Lord's gifts of nature and animals that will serve those purposes.

I hope you will join us as we record and write about snippets of running a one acre homestead with now *three* types of animals (which is the magic number that I decided qualifies us as a homestead/small farm now!) and our gardens/kitchen/artisan projects. For now, I will leave you with a prayer that I found that is ironically translated by a priest in my hometown of Peoria, IL:

Bless, O Lord, Almighty God, this house and farm. May health and purity, goodness and meekness, and every virtue reign here. May all those who dwell here be filled with faithfulness to Thy law and with thanksgiving to God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. May this blessing remain on this house and this farm and all who dwell here. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Translated by Most Reverend J. H. Schlarman Bishop of Peoria

Do You Even Compost, Bro?

Composting is something I was initially reticent and intimidated to do when we lived in the city until our neighbor explained how easy it was with her backyard that was the size of mine!

First of all, I loved the idea of composting but wasn't sure I had the right "scraps" to do it. It seemed like people who composted made everything from scratch and lived on lettuce and homegrown tomatoes. That IS NOT us!

Second of all, I was scared of the mess/smell that it seemed it would attract -- flies, maggots, animals, etc. That is not the way I wanted my backyard to look.

Finally, to have a "closed compost" that would thrive without mess and super amazing scraps (which I will explain that you don't have to have), you would have to buy a plastic composter that was hundreds of dollars and only could hold about two groceries' bags worth of scraps. When the chickens arrived, it was clear that we would have that much within a month and have to wait until it broke down in a super fancy ready-bought composter.

When my neighbor showed me her compost pile(s), I realized I could DO THIS! She showed me how she had two piles of scraps right up next to her fence on her property line (as far from the house as she could get) and there were all kinds of things decomposing in there that I already had in my TRASH CAN: orange peels, apple cores, eggshells, almost-rotten blueberries and grapes that you pull out, tomato tops, cucumber ends, banana peels, you name it. Those were all the things that I was already using/consuming and then just throwing it away.









Here is our compost bucket (which we keep on the porch outside the door so we can throw stuff in) of stuff since yesterday!

In her first pile, there was no fruit to be seen, to be fair. She had started it last year and now it looked like fine, good and dark dirt. She explained that she would put her scraps from last year and then "stir" it with a shovel every couple weeks and then placed on top dirt/pine needles from under her trees, and that my family could even use our used chicken bedding. Then she put more scraps, repeated the process until it got as high as she wanted it to be from the ground without falling over. Then she placed one final coat of dirt (or brown) on it and moved onto her next pile, separated with a log or even some chicken wire if you want.

Her second pile was her "new pile," and it looked pretty much like mine (that we started in February once the weather got nice) at our new house.

The cool thing is that her first pile would be ready to use for fertilizer for her garden in just a few months once she was sure everything was good and broken down! Free fertilizer! Less garbage to take out! And even some BABY PLANTS that had popped up in her dirt from the seeds from her fruits and veggies (which she carefully removed those and transplanted for new plants and to give to neighbors)! (The other upside is you know those seeds are "proven" because they grew a previous fruit versus seeds from the store. I will do another post later about how to save seeds from your food to grow more food!)

I was hooked! Let's face it, it feels bad to waste half an apple, or a banana peel, or even throwing away rotten tomatoes and celery you forgot was in the back of the fridge ;) This is a way to make those things work for the environment, the worms/grubs outside, and eventually for your own garden, either fertilizing or growing new plants.

So, who's in? Who's already been in? Do you have a different way to compost to share? Tell us in the comments below or post a pic. Either way, if you have a backyard, start investing in it by sharing your waste scraps! :)