her thoughts | KW Homestead

Category: her thoughts (page 12 of 21)

homestead wedding tips: using straw bales and boards to make wedding seats!

November 5, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

when we got married 5 weeks ago, we really wanted to make the whole ceremony, including what would be under our guests’ butts, as representative of jason and me as possible.

we started brainstorming what wedding “gear” we would need early on in the year, but since we were on the fence about whether we should have our reception at our house or another venue, we didn’t commit to renting any seats and tables. this just didn’t seem quite right to us, for some reason. we really wanted to make even this portion of the ceremony personal and “homemade” in some way and so once we decided to hold our reception elsewhere, we felt more open to other ideas since we no longer needed to rent 100 chairs and tables to seat everyone at the house. we decided that the primary seating would be set up for the ceremony, with other seating around the yard. time to get creative…

we thought about things that were important to us, making the seating:

fun and homemade
meaningful
reusable
as inexpensive as possible

we settled on wrapping boards in fabric and laying them on top of straw bales in a semi-circle pattern. after doing some shopping around it became clear that the boards that were the best deal for the footage and were also sturdy enough to support 6-7 butts, were 10 foot boards that were 8 inches wide. the store clerk that approached my mom and me as we were measuring our butt sizes and averaging them, certainly was a bit confused.

photo by Jenny Tenney Photography

we also did the math on how many straw bales we would need under each board to make the boards sturdier and less movable, determining that 3 under each board was sufficient. jason found a local farmer and he delivered our bales to us a few weeks before the wedding. it was serendipitous when the farmer showed up and told us that our house and land had been owned by his grandparents. the person who sold us our home was his mother!

photo by Jenny Tenney Photography

we were really excited about using the wood and straw as seats because we knew that we would reuse these materials later; the wood for building or repairing structures, and the straw for mulching beds or providing padding for the chickens’ nest boxes. right now actually, some of the straw bales are weighing down sheets that we’ve laid down in the garden to keep the sweet potatoes from freezing before we harvest them all this week.

we were concerned about wedding guests sitting on bare boards (who knows what could stain a light colored dress?), so we decided to wrap them in colorful fabric. since the wedding colors were loosely “fall colors,” my mom dug out some of her old bolts of fabric and we were able to choose some patterns that suited the wedding colors. my mom helped me cut the fabric to length and wrap the boards tightly. i used a hammer stapler to secure the fabric on the bottom side on the board, and after a lot of stapling and one mashed toe (mine) we had the boards done. two of the boards were wrapped in a different pattern than the others, and these were the two boards placed in the front-right-center and front-left-center of the seating arrangement and meant for our parents and grandparents.

i also placed the awesome stepping stones that we made at my bridal shower on each end of all of the rows, placing the ones made by my mom and jason’s mom, right beside where they would be sitting during the ceremony. they noticed this addition, and it made me feel great that the decorations were made by some of my closest loved ones!

the day of the rehearsal dinner, our family used the board/bale seats as places to sit, eat pizza, and get to know one another.

the day of the wedding, our family used the board/bale seats to watch jason and i walk out of the woods and get married and afterwards the benches were once again seats for sitting and chatting with family. other smaller straw bale seats around the yard were used too, and blankets spread out on the grass served as nice places to stretch out and watch the trees and the garden before the ceremony began.

3 cheers for board/straw bale seats: a homemade, cheap, and reusable option for your own wedding!

photo by heidi’s dad

.:.

kuska wiñasun’s official farm bandanas: by 100% gdk!

October 31, 2014 / Emma / 1 Comment

my amazing friend georgia, who is a fantastic artist and as jason puts it, “an awesome gift giver,” has given us 6 fantastic bandanas!

she completely designed these bandanas herself, using photographs she took of our chickens feeding and our chia growing. the images of the chickens make radial blossoms and the chia leaves form bright pathways of green. she also included images of violets, petunias, and marigolds.

they are 100% cotton, machine washable, and she even stitched the seams herself!

as georgia wrote: they are our very first farm-issue work bandanas… for sun and sweat and messes!

amazing!!! be sure to check out her other creations at 100% GDK.

you can see the radial “chicken” blossoms in each of the 4 corners.

if you look closely at the chickens, you can recognize roosty, the bantam rooster, eating with the standard sized barred rocks and buff orpington.

if you look closely at the chickens, you can recognize roosty, our bantam rooster, eating with the standard sized barred rocks and buff orpingtons.

this is the third of her three designs. she made two of each!

.:.

geese vs. chickens: which to choose?

October 29, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

an unlikely duo: a bantam and a standard.

chickens vs. geese…

if you live outside of the city limits, and are looking to raise some birds, you might be wondering if you should begin with geese or chickens (or both!) as you begin your homestead.

here’s a few things that we’ve learned about chickens and geese, and hopefully we can provide some insight and help you make the choice that is best for you and your life!

self-sufficiency–winner: it’s a tie!

geese and chickens are both great at scrounging up food to eat. geese go for grass and greenery and chickens eat greenery and any random bugs, seeds, and tidbits they can find.

ability to protect themselves/immunity to predation— winner: geese!

geese win this one, by a long shot! our geese have never been threatened by any predators, unlike the chickens. geese are so much bigger and they are excellent at ganging up on a potential threat and flogging them (sometimes to death). chickens simply think of themselves and run, although depending on predator size, a rooster might do a nice job protecting his hens. geese are a formidable threat, and since they operate as a team, they are far more frightening!
even if you have a mostly predator-proof chicken house, if you ever let your chickens roam free, there is a chance a hawk could swoop in for the kill. you also have to be sure to safely secure your chickens at night, but not your geese. we often close the geese in their simple pen at night, but the cage is by no means completely predator proof (it doesn’t need to be!) and sometimes the geese even spend the night out in the yard.

intelligence–winner: geese!

the geese are, by far, smarter than the chickens. you can tell that they are greater strategists, have better memories, and are much less frantic when escaping human contact. the geese will look inquiringly at something new, craning their necks around, whereas the chickens will either run from it or peck it. on a related note, the chickens are much less social with each other than the geese, and you can really see the link between intelligence and having a more complex social communication.

personality–winner: geese!

largely due to their intelligence, the geese have much more entertaining personalities. jason and i feel that they are similar to dogs since each goose has their own fun attitude and temperament. they act offended when they don’t get their favorite food, sometimes follow us around like dogs, and even honk at us when we get home as though they’re bolt greeting us at the door.
we’ve decided that the coolest thing ever is going to be letting our future kids raise a few goslings and letting them imprint on them. then they’ll having a fantastic, protective companion to follow them around!

body size (for meat purposes)–winner: geese!

although goose meat is different than chicken, you’re going to get twice or three times as much meat from a goose!

egg laying–winner: chickens!

geese lay large eggs, but they taste different than chicken eggs and since they taste so rich, you might not want to eat them everyday. chicken eggs are great for so many things in the kitchen, and to cook a large goose egg you really need to be committed to getting stuffed!
geese only lay during one season of the year, and chickens lay nearly all year round with a few slow-down periods in production.

space needed–winner: chickens!

since geese are so much larger and really need a lot of grassy pasture if you plan to fatten them up for cheaper, chickens win in the space competition.

noisiness–winner: chickens!

you might be surprised about this, but the geese are exponentially louder than our roosters. their honk has the weird ability to literally cancel out all noise in the vicinity. when i’m trying to talk and the geese start honking, i cannot hear any of the words coming out of my own mouth, even if i yell!

guardian ability–winner: geese!

as i mentioned before, geese are good at watching each others’ backs, but they are also great alarms if a new person approaches your house… another way they’re like dogs! some geese (not ours) will even charge strange people and flog them until they leave. it all depends on what you want your geese to be and how you raise them (breed also matters, too). they can be anything from a warning system to an attacking flock!

overall, we recommend raising both geese and chickens, just like we recommend raising both standard and bantam chickens! each has their own pros and cons, so why not dive on in and reap the benefits of both?

.:.

naming the new bantam chickens!

October 24, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

i spent part of the afternoon outside, sitting on an indian blanket from the wedding, looking at our new bantam flock. they seem to be having a fine time inside of their new bantam mobile, and since their space is small and contained, i was able to get a really close look at all of them.

first of all, roosty is the leader of the new flock, and he has 4 of his old ladies with him: brin, who is brindle and just had a brief stay in the chicken spa because she was molting and looking ugly; q, who looks like a quail and is named after one; vanna, who has a white neck on a black body and is named after vanna white; and cleo, who is very broody and has a long black tuft on her head and a bright golden neck (so we named her after cleopatra).

i wanted to give the new hens names, but first i had to spend some time observing them and taking notes. at first they all looked alike to me, except for the hen now named perry, who has no comb or tuft of hair on her head and seriously looks like she is a sneaky hawk who has gone undercover with the chickens! some of the new hens have features that distinguish them from the rest of the flock–features that are very unique and noticeable in the crowd–but others have features that are similar to their mobilemates and thus needed to be observed more closely to tell them apart from one or two look-alikes. so i made this chart (i am an organizational nut at heart):

S Gray/S Black = speckled gray/speckled black

Neck color	Body color	Tuft on head?	Comb type	Other	Name
Gold	S Gray	Yes	Pink, big, crooked, floppy		Elvis
Gold	S Black	Yes	Pink, small, crooked, floppy		Presley
Gold	S Black	No	Pink, small	Orange wings	Red Wing
Gold	S Gray	No	Pink, small	Orange breast	Robin
Gold	S Black	Yes	Pink, small	Ring of missing feathers around her neck	Ringo
Gold	S Gray	Yes, very small	Pink, big	Orange spotted wings	Poka
Gold	Black	No	Pink, big		Oro
Gold	Black	No	Gray, small		Churo
Gold	Black	No	Gray, small	Small bodied	Teeny
Gold	S Black	No	None	Looks like a hawk	Perry

The traits that are highlighted in blue are the traits that played the largest factor in giving them their name. For example, the two with the very floppy combs were hard to tell apart until i looked more closely at comb size and the direction it flopped over their face. they both looked like they had elvis-like hair to me, so i named the one with the largest comb elvis and the one with the smaller comb, presley.

red wing, robin, poka, and ringo were easy to tell apart from the crowd, since they had deep orange wings, a deep orange breast, deep orange polka-dotted wings, and a ring of missing feathers around their necks, respectively. ringo‘s missing feathers were from getting her head stuck through chicken wire for an entire day before my dad noticed and could free her. hilariously, she still has the featherless ring!

oro and churo look very similar to the matronly cleo, so i decided to give them names with similar sounds. neither have black head tufts like cleo, but they both look like less regal versions of her anyway! teeny is the smallest-bodied of all, and has a really tiny gray comb, and perry, like i said, looks just like a hawk (named perry after the peregrine falcon).

and there you have it… our new chickens’ names. proof that even within a batch of seemingly similar things, you can tell those things apart if you sit and look long enough!

.:.

making a bantam chicken tractor!

October 22, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

yesterday i finally finished our bantam chicken tractor! very exciting!

it all started with an old truck camper with 1/2 of the roof removed.

the old truck camper, about to get re-purposed!

it took a little while for me to decide what design would be best for our new birds (bred by my father), and i thought about it a while. ultimately, i determined that having two “stories” to the structure would be the way to go, so that they could roost higher off the ground and not have roost bars on the lower level getting in their way as they spent the day grazing around the grass inside the tractor.

in order to make the second story, i added bent and molded electrical conduit which, once screwed together with self-tapping screws, was very sturdy.

screwing in the bent electrical conduit as a frame… tedious and exacting!

this process took the longest of all, since i had to hammer out certain portions of the conduit so that it was flatter and easier to drill into, and i also had to clamp the conduit to the camper framing so they it wouldn’t slide about while drilling (which it still wanted to do anyway!).

hammered out electrical conduit… flatter is always easier to drill into!

whew! the frame is finally done!

once the two conduits were attached, we decided that removing another 1/2 of the roof (3/4 now in total removed) would allow for more sun and fresh air to reach the bantams. the nest boxes (3 of them, made out of an old plastic planter) are attached to the tractor itself so that when the device moves, the egg box does too! we applied the same concept to the platform that holds their waterer.

now the egg box is firmly attached…

once these were secured, i started attaching hardware cloth to the open sides and open roof on the half of the tractor with just one story.

hardware cloth… be sure to wear gloves!

attaching the hardware cloth…

then i attached hardware cloth to a portion of the roof of the second story, leaving space for most of the second story to be covered in the sheet metal i removed from the camper. i added more sheet metal (that we found while cleaning out our woods) as the sides to the second story and finished level 2 off with some more hardware cloth that was woven to the top piece with electric fence wire.

i added hinged doors to the side with the nest box, so that we can open them up and get the eggs without any trouble. this also has a latch that locks so that if any clever raccoons get brave, they shouldn’t be able to get inside. we spray painted the whole contraption white and drilled holes in the sides of level 2 to slide in three nest bars. i added a rope to the front of the tractor so that we could easily slide it along to a fresh grass spot each day.

opening the nest box door to collect eggs!

and that was it! it was a three day project, but it was fun to make. we’re proud of our “chicken hotel,” and now all we have to do is convince all of the hens that they should roost instead of giving up and sleeping in the nest boxes. at least roosty will enjoy having his own flock without having to worry about rex bullying him!

.:.

goodbye, sweet bridey: the best friend anyone could hope for

October 19, 2014 / Emma / 4 Comments

dear, sweet bridey!

what can i begin to say about bridey, the most wonderful dog? i guess i can begin by saying that on september 7, she stopped living. it’s been hard to process because jason and i had to launch ourselves into wedding preparation, and at first i felt like i didn’t get enough time to properly mourn her death. then, the more i thought about it, the more i realized that she would have wanted it that way. given a choice, and knowing her, she would have rather the world continue on around her, just as she always preferred. let me explain further…

ever since i “inherited” her from my friend and roommate who moved to mexico, she and i have always had a quiet, “no need to discuss it” relationship. she never really liked a lot of attention, and when i had friends over she would visit with them for a minute and then promptly dismiss herself and go find her solitary corner to lay in. she never really followed me around the house like bolt does; she always did her own thing and enjoyed her alone time. “strange for a dog,” i always thought. she always seemed so solitary and certainly didn’t like people hugging her or getting too close to her face.

we had an understanding, she and i… we were best friends, but we didn’t need to constantly hang out or be on top of each other (as some dogs like to do). she never slept in the bedroom with me, always preferring to stay on her bed by the front of the house and guard the door. she would bark when she heard strange noises and walk around the house all stiff-legged, just ready for the bad guys to come in. they never did, of course, and i’m sure that’s due largely in part to her bravery and commitment to protecting her house and her friend.

she didn’t care much for other dogs, and just like she was with people, she would visit with them for a little bit and then walk away for some alone time. she and i were partners, best friends, companions. she was always there, no matter what and during my entire adult life, beginning when i was 18, she lived with me and watched over me.

she died on a saturday, about 3 weeks before jason and i got married, almost as though she knew she didn’t need to stick around to take care of me anymore. she was 15 years old, and she had a good long life for a dog. right up until the last few weeks she continued to have fun. her hearing was mostly gone, and jason and i spent many an afternoon laughing at the funny antics that an old, deaf dog can get into. she had certainly gone a little bit senile (who can blame her, living with me for almost a decade?), and would forget that she was walking sometimes and just stop and stand. she had also started to become restless in her old age, and would walk around and get her feet tangled up in her leash. up until the end, her eye sight was alright and that was our best communication with her, that and petting her.

i’m also grateful to her because she taught bolt a little bit about how to be a good dog. she had to put up with a lot from him, and even though i know she secretly enjoyed it, it was still tiresome.

when i walk around our land, i can see her everywhere: in the briar patch where she got lost one morning in the predawn and i had to crawl in and rescue her; on bridey’s run which is named after her because once she started going downhill on that trail her legs would take over and she wouldn’t be able to slow down or stop until she fell over; by her grave, which is at the end of bridey’s run covered in hay and waiting for the clover to grow next spring.

she was such a good friend to me and my family and i will never forget her. i know that her patience, calm demeanor, and laid back and fun-loving attitude will never be matched in another dog that we may have. she was unique and kind and understanding.

the day we decided to put her to sleep was a hard one. we knew that it was coming, because for months she had been wearing diapers (she could no longer control her bathroom urges) and weeks before she had started walking around in the kitchen when we were at work and getting horribly stuck in furniture and spending all day stuck. even after we confined her to the kitchen, and tried to move furniture around, she would find a way to get stuck under the dining room table or even under a regular chair.

we knew she was near the end when she stopped wanting to eat bread, her favorite food of all time (once, she stole freshly baked bread from the counter and hid pieces of it in the sofa and under my pillow for later). she stopped eating everything, couldn’t stand up or support herself if we stood her up, and couldn’t get her mouth to work to drink water. we didn’t want her to dehydrate or starve as her last experience on earth, so we decided to put her to sleep.

i was able to talk to her before the end, thank her for all that she was and that she had done for me, and tell her how much i loved her. i was able to lay with her and pet her and just love her and be with her.

afterwards, i was able to carry her body in my arms down to the grave and lay her in with her favorite rug, some flowers, some bread, a chew toy, and her favorite stuffed animal from years ago. we also sent her with some chicken feathers, since she used to love to chase chickens.

bridey is laid to rest.

jason and i dug the hole and we covered her up together. her grave is right at the end of bridey’s run, and will forever be visible to anyone walking the path to our pond. she will always be here with us, on our land.

bridey was an amazing friend and companion for so long, and we will miss her.

we will miss her, and although we’ve said goodbye, we’ve not said goodbye forever.

.:.

the complete history of our ochre way!

October 15, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

this is a recording/podcast that i recorded in march of this year! it details the history of our ochre way, kuska wiñasun homestead, and the jason and emma partnership that just became a legal one!

click on the link below to hear the details!

A History of Our Ochre Way

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dr. seuss flowers: cosmos flowers are saving the bees!

October 14, 2014 / Emma / 1 Comment

this spring we placed a few old tires at the end of our beds to help block the hose from dragging over our crops while we walk around watering.

we filled these tires with dirt and in two of them, we planted a “save the bees” flower mix, planting sweet potato slips in the other 2 tires. during mid and late summer these “save the bees” flowers really took off, particularly the cosmos flowers, which grew to be over 6 feet tall! most of the flowers are pink, and they were in full bloom right around the time of the wedding, which was nice. they are on their way out now, and i’ve been picking some periodically to enjoy them in a vase inside the house. i think they are fun, funky, and very dr. seuss-like! they don’t really have a smell and their stems are a little curvy and crooked at the top, but the bees sure love them. an added bonus: they have light green, hairy/fuzzy stems that make them look even more fantastical!

don’t they look like they are straight out of the lorax?

I recommend growing cosmos flowers to anyone who enjoys a fun, funky, colorful, bee-filled garden or yard!

.:.

processing and freezing jalapeño, aji, and cayenne peppers

October 13, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

our peppers are still coming in strong and we just picked a lot of them to prepare for our first frost which usually comes in around this time. although our weather has been warmer than the norm for this time, we could have our first frost anytime in the next few weeks. last year our first frost was mid-october, so we’re getting ready for it!

many of our peppers were ready to be picked: red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, aji peppers, and cayenne peppers. the spicy peppers have certainly done better than our sweet bell peppers this year, which is fine with us. although we love eating sweet bell peppers in stir fries or in roasted dishes, our spicy peppers are easy to preserve and they are wonderful when added into soups in sauces throughout the winter. we still have a few “cubes” of jalapeño puree in the freezer, and it’s always nice to see that you have a surplus, even if it is just a surplus of 5 spicy ice cubes!

after we picked this batch of peppers, we rinsed them, and decided to process and preserve them separately. we have an awesome little food processor that fits about a cup of ingredients at a time, and it is great for processing little batches without much cleanup.

i began with the least spicy of peppers, realizing that if i began with the cayennes , all of my other batches would be equally spicy! so, jalapeños went in first, being chopped into quarters and tossed into the processor with some olive oil. once all of these peppers were pureed, i packed them into ice cube trays and stuck them in the freezer.

red and green jalapenos

after the jalapeños came the aji peppers, which are a little spicier and interestingly “empty” inside. let me explain… where green and red jalapeños are both very firm and meaty, aji peppers feel very flimsy and when cut open have such an open chamber inside that they resemble a smaller, wrinkly sweet bell peppers. after the aji peppers were processed, they were also added to the ice cube trays (taking up considerably less space than the jalapeños).

delicious aji peppers… introduced to us in peru!

after the aji peppers came the cayennes, and although i did my best, my fingers did start to burn after scooping out these pureed peppers and packing them into the trays. nothing like cayenne pepper juice to make your hands hot!

spicy cayennes

we filled up a little less than 2 ice cube trays, and oh, what a sight! the lovely green jalapeños (with some red flakes from the fully ripened red jalapeños), the carrot-orange aji peppers, and the bright red cayenne peppers make for lovely, colorful ice cubes. for now, if you include the other spicy peppers we’ve preserved so far, we’ve got a healthy store of spice for soups and sauce this winter!

jalapenos and aji peppers about to be turned into spicy ice cubes!

.:.

cleaning a lion’s mane mushroom

October 10, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

and yet another post about the amazing lion’s mane mushroom!

check out this video to learn more about how to prepare your mushroom for dinner!

enjoy!
.:.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013