It’s been a while since I’ve written anything homestead related, so I thought it would be nice to post a little update.

I thought for sure I’d miss the rabbits by now, but I really don’t. The chickens are so much less work, and so much more friendly! Ryan bought a 10ft x10ft dog run to use as a chicken coop, and that’s been really nice because we can actually go inside and interact with them. They were a little nervous at first, but once they realized we were bringing them food, they were ok with it.

Now I’ve got my very own lap chicken, and her name is Queen Anne. Whenever I’m sitting outside enjoying the sun, she likes to hop into my lap to say hello and see if I have anything yummy for her. She especially loves it when I share my apples.

We originally had six chickens, but our rooster randomly died so that was a bummer. Then Ryan and I forgot to close the coop one night and coyotes got all but the two you see pictured above. We like to let the chickens roam on nice days when there isn’t anything in the garden we have to worry about them destroying, but there are definitely downsides.

New Chickens

We were hoping to hatch our own chicks with that rooster we had, so we were pretty disappointed when he died. After we lost the other hens, Ryan ordered a new batch of chicks — 15 this time for good measure. We lost two within 24 hours of them arriving, but the rest have thrived. Now we’ve got two roosters and a variety of hens and I can’t wait to start getting close to a dozen eggs per day!

Ryan and I started planting our 2024 garden a couple weeks ago, so for the time being, the chickens are staying locked in the coop. It would be nice to have a free range flock again, but it might be overwhelming now that our flock is so much bigger: I’m picturing 15 huge birds flying at me whenever they see me walk outside holding a bowl. It could be fun or it could be horrifying. They also like to hang out on our front porch and in our garage and poop on everything… Like I said, there are downsides to the free range life.

Garden Glory

Well it took about a year and a half for me to recover from my last gardening endeavors. In 2023 I got bit by the gardening bug in January, which was unfortunate. I battled with Mother Nature for months trying to get my seeds started outside, which was dumb, but I’m pretty stubborn and I wanted to put Mother Nature in a headlock and make it happen.

Spoiler Alert: It did not happen.

I mean, the garden did eventually grow, but only after I fed an army of slugs and replanted 500 times. When it came time to harvest, I was so burnt out I pretty much gave up and let everything go to seed.

This year, I told Ryan he was in charge of the garden. He wanted to wait until May to plant anything, which drove me crazy, but it ended up being the right call because of all the bipolar spring weather.

It’s finally warming up again, and our seeds have sprouted! I’m officially excited about gardening now. I’m super excited about our perennial plants this year, mainly the berry varieties and fruit trees. We have an entire bed of raspberries now, and they are thriving!