Weekend activity...

                                                             Two weeks, 3 days old

Feathers coming in...their now trying to fly around the brooder.  Or fly out as soon as you open it!
        Getting quite tired of being in the brooder...they really need a place to get out and forage.

 

Dan getting to work...planning

A little left to do before the chickens can start traveling around the yard in the new Hen Hilton...hopefully they'll be out in it tomorrow!

Thank you to those that donated puzzle pieces...it is really encouraging to see our chip-in button starting to move upwards- thank you so very much for your generousity!

Now that the chicken tractor is almost done, we can hopefully  get back to some of our home study tasks.

Blessings,
Kimberly

Chicks in the garden...

Taking the ladies out for a stroll in the garden last Sunday...they are 1 week, 4 days old in these pictures.  Today their actually two weeks old.  They love being out and foraging for their own food...they were looking for bugs while we weeded and put in some corn.

Chicks and news...

Our homestead is official!  Our chicks are here!

Don't worry...I'm sure there will be LOTS more pictures of our newest additions to the homestead.




As far as adoption, we have some really great news to share with you all but it will need to wait till I can post tomorrow.  Its big, though, so make sure you check back :)  Right now, I've gotta go check the heat level on the chicks...and take a break...


Blessings,
Kimberly

Our chicken order is in!

Putting in our very first order of 25 of these beauties....

We will be getting our 1 or 2 day old chicks around Mid-April...we are planning to split them into two groups....half for egg laying and the other half for meat birds.  The kids are doing a 4-H project attached to these chickens where they will need to return a couple birds for auction as well as keep a record book and "show" a chicken at a chicken show.

So now Dan has some more building to do with the boys.  This is most likely what our two chicken tractors will look like:

We are very new to all this....so we're doing our best to read up as much as we can and I guess we'll be learning a lot by trial and error! 

We are very excited to be making our homestead more official by adding some farm animals to the mix.  So far we have 8 fruit trees, 3 blueberry bushes and recently we put in 8 little raspberry bushes as well.  Adding the chickens is definitely a big step towards our own family farm :)

Now that the chickens are ordered, I need to start figuring out the garden.

Blessings,
Kimberly

Aquaponics Primer

So as Kim has mentioned in previous post I've been interested in starting up an aquaponics system at out new house.  So I thought I would spend some time putting my thoughts down as a introduction to those visitors that are un-familiar with it.
Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture ( the raising of aquatic animals like fish ) and hydroponics ( the growing of plants in  nutrient rich water instead of soil).  The advantages of combining these two techiniques is that the fish, plants, and some benifical bateria work together and form a symbolotic relationship.  Plants take in water and carbon dioxide from the air to create sugars but require nitrogen from the soil to grow.  Fish need oxygen and clean water and their excrement and urine contain nitrogen.  So with the help of bateria the fish refuse is converted into a form of nitrogen that the plants can use and the plants help to clean the water for the fish.
There are a lot more details which I'm learning but that's the basic gist of it.
So in later posts I'll be going over my design and progress of building my aquaponics system.

Dan's first mini-homesteading project

When we first moved in to our new home, Dan knew he really wanted to get the compost going.  The cost of buying a fancy, rotating compost bin is ridiculous so Dan got to work making us one.  He bought a couple used  55 gallon barrels for $23 each and used Google Sketchup to design it.  Here's a pic of it as well as the sketch up file of the frame to hold to barrel.

Compost Bin Sketchup file

Notes from Dan: "I used a galvanished steel pipe with two plywood discs on each end bolted to the barrel.  Drilled holes in to let air in and cut a door on the side.  Bought hinges and a latch to keep it closed.  Overall, it cost us about $50 to build it instead of $190.00 to buy one locally."

Happy Composting!

Blessings,
Kimberly