Author: Anna & Mark

Win a free review copy of The Weekend Homesteader

September 5, 2012 Posts No Comments
The Weekend Homesteader cover

Building a coopSeveral of you wrote in with photos
of your coops and tractors, to be included in my new
book.  So I thought it was only fair to give you a chance to win a
free review copy of the paperback before it hits bookstores!



But first, a bit about The
Weekend Homesteader
so you’ll know whether you’re interested in reading it:


The Weekend Homesteader is
organized by month—so whether it’s January or June you’ll find
exciting, short projects that you can use to dip your toes into the
vast ocean of homesteading without getting overwhelmed. If you need to
fit homesteading into a few hours each weekend and would like to have
fun while doing it, these projects will be right up your alley, whether
you live on a forty-acre farm, a postage-stamp lawn in suburbia, or a
high rise.  

You’ll learn about
backyard chicken care, how to choose the best mushroom and berry
species, and why and how to plant a no-till garden that heals the soil
while providing nutritious food.  Permaculture techniques will
turn your homestead into a vibrant ecosystem and attract native
pollinators while converting our society’s waste into high-quality
compost and mulch. Meanwhile, enjoy the fruits of your labor right away
as you learn the basics of cooking and eating seasonally, then preserve
homegrown produce for later by drying, canning, freezing, or simply
filling your kitchen cabinets with storage vegetables. As you become
more self-sufficient, you’ll save seeds, prepare for power outages, and
tear yourself away from a full-time job, while building a supportive
and like-minded community. You won’t be completely eliminating your
reliance on the grocery store, but you will be plucking low-hanging
(and delicious!) fruits out of your own garden by the time all
forty-eight projects are complete.

Chickens help with seed saving

If that description
takes your fancy and you
have a blog to review the book on, drop
me an email for a
chance to win a free review copy.  (My publicist says he also has
some copies to send to bloggers as giveaway items.)  I’m not sure
how many review copies will be sent out, so be sure to include the URL
of your blog and
any relevant statistics in your email — I suspect my publicist will
choose bigger blogs first.



For the rest of you, I’m
afraid you’ll have to wait until the middle of November to see The
Weekend Homesteader. 
I’m very impressed by the beautiful job my publisher did formatting the
book, so hopefully it’ll be worth the wait.


Our chicken waterer keeps flocks healthy with
unlimited clean water.

Prepping the brooder early

September 3, 2012 Posts No Comments
Clean brooder

Our chicks are due to
hatch today, so I prepared the brooder…a week ago.



Space heaterAlong with my lesson on taping
the incubator plug,
I learned the hard way that you shouldn’t wait until hatch day to get
their new accomodations ready.  In the summer, things dry faster,
but our first batch of chicks of 2012 were not at all thrilled to be
turned out of the incubator and into a still-damp rubbermaid bin. 
Even with the brooder turned on full strength, a little bit of water
can make it hard for chicks to dry off and warm up, which meant pitiful
cheeping until Mark dug
out a space heater to speed things up.



Meanwhile, it’s a good
idea to test your brooder heat source to make sure it’s still working
several days in advance.  In our energy-efficient household, we
don’t even have incandescent bulbs around as a backup heat source, so it’s best to know early
if you need to replace heating pads or heat lamps.  Even though
chicks are supposed to pop out of their shells on day 21, day 20 is
quite common, and you could possibly see one even earlier if a hen has
been setting on the sly.


Hatching chick

With the rubbermaid bin
clean, dry, and full of leaves; the Brinsea
Ecoglow brooder
heated up; and our chicken waterer and a simple feeder in
place, we’re ready for chicks.  This photo is from a previous
batch to prime the pump, but hopefully cute balls of fluff will be
gracing the brooder soon.


If you’d like to learn
additional simple (and not so simple) techniques to streamline
incubation and early chick care, check out my ebook.

Cutting pasture weeds

August 31, 2012 Posts No Comments
Ragweed in the pasture

‘Tis the season to cut
ragweed. 



In a perfect world, our
pastures would be so well-mown that big weeds couldn’t pop up, and
they’d never get so over-grazed that bare patches give ragweed seeds a
spot to sprout.


Chicken dust bath

But here in the real
world, chickens scratch the ground bare so they can dust
bathe even if I’m
rotating them through the pastures perfectly (which I never am). 
And fences create locations where the mower can’t reach, so those weeds
just keep growing until we root them out.


Pulling out ragweed

Back in that perfect
world, we’d dig up tall weeds in the spring and cover the bare earth
with mulch to keep new seedlings from coming up.  But I figure I’m
doing a good job as long as I don’t let tall weeds go to seed.



So we’re out in the
pastures just as the ragweed starts to bloom, digging them up or
cutting them off at ground level, then applying that biomass as mulch
around our raspberries.


Pasture renovation

Even though weeding-type
tasks seem a bit Sisyphusian, when I take a step back, I can tell that
we’re making solid progress.  The photo above is from last year’s pasture
renovation day,
which took ten times as much effort as this year’s.  I suspect
that in a few more years, these pastures will be spic and span and full
of life.


Our chicken waterer never spills in coops or
pastures.