her thoughts | KW Homestead

Category: her thoughts (page 16 of 21)

molting time is here in gooseland

June 23, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

about 2 weeks ago the geese started molting, dropping their old, tattered feathers and bringing in the new!

interestingly, i noticed that the white geese, audo and china, started molting a full week before the africans, houdina and iza.

china’s new-growth wing feathers… see how white they are?

you can see how iza looks a little scraggly as she loses her old feathers.

i collected the wing feathers that they dropped and now have a collection of lovely goose feathers! the pure white new-growth feathers are amazing to see. everyday they get a little bit longer. china and audo sure look like fresh, new birds!

how large and lovely goose feathers are!

my feather collection: goose feathers on the left and rooster tail feathers on the right.

.:.

red onions galore!

June 18, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

this post is to show one of the delicious crops that my father raised this year… red bulb onions!

he’s been growing onions ever since i can remember, and i have never seen the onions get as big as they have this year. impressive, dad!

in the past, he grew a red, a white, and a yellow bulb variety but after seeing how much larger the red onions got this year than the other varieties, he’s planning on only growing the red onions from now on.

my dad’s red onion and garlic crop this year, drying before being stored.

we went to visit for father’s day, and he sent us home with a bag of crunchy and intense bulbs. i’ve been enjoying them in salads and we’ve even munched on a few slices raw… they are so juicy and crunchy!

look at the size of those babies!

.:.

uncg family matters magazine features emma and jason!

June 16, 2014 / Emma / 1 Comment

thaks uncg!

i graduated from university of north carolina at greensboro (uncg) a little over two years ago. i made a lot of great friends there, particularly in my professors. one of my professors asked me if jason and i might be interested in being included in a small feature in one of the school magazines, family matters. family matters is a product of the human development and family studies department, and highlights important research and activities from the department’s faculty and past and present students.

we sent in a little blurb about ourselves and a photo, and you can see our cute little feature on page 10 of the june 2014 edition of family matters. thanks for making this happen, folks! and another thanks to my department and to uncg for taking the time to think of us since we graduated two years ago…

and what a two years it’s been! those of you who are new to our website will find some highlights of our homestead here…

when we first got our home and land in march of 2013, there were no gardens in place. we built our first beds and started with chickens as soon as we could. later we cleared more of our land and harvested many of our delicious crops! the chickens have taught us about the cycle of life and our dogs, bridey and bolt, and our cat, dodger, have made us laugh. we’ve started making videos to share our experience with the world, particularly in a way that is accessible to children, and we’ve started plenty of new experiments along the way with growing food and cooking new and exciting recipes.

thanks for your interest in what we do here… we can’t wait to share more with you in the near future!

.:.

sick chicken?

June 13, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

when i went into the chicken pen today to collect eggs, it appeared that one of our bantam hens was feeling sick. i could see that she was walking around under the house (while almost everyone else was outside eating) and hunkering down low to the ground. she would wander a little and then stop and crouch, all the while holding her beak open and panting. later, when she came out from under the house for a little while, roosty tried to jump on her (you know why!) and she looked so beaten by this. she kept her head down on the ground for a while afterwards, looking asleep.

i decided to go get the net and catch her to check out how she was doing and to put her in her own little cage to give her a break from all the other chickens. i also wanted to quarantine her just in case she was contagious.

upon further inspection, i saw that some of her feathers were missing in places and she looked a little scraggly. i think this is due to old age (she’s one of the older hens my dad had a while before giving to us). but, i also noticed that the area around her vent was missing feathers, and there was a little bit of goo in the area. it just didn’t quite look right.

the hen’s vent area. you can see that she is missing a lot of feathers.

our bantam hen, hanging out in her temporary cage.

i haven’t yet had the chance to look up more about what could be wrong with her, but in the meantime she is spending the night in the carport in her cozy little cage. she has food and water and a little roost bar. luckily, when i put her in the cage this afternoon, she livened up a good bit and walked around a bunch clucking. so, hopefully that is a good sign! tomorrow i’ll look into what her ailment might be, and go from there!

.:.

meet the big bird quartet: goose breed, personality, and style

June 11, 2014 / Emma / 1 Comment

we’ve had our geese for a little while now, but still haven’t talked too much about them. i feel like we’re often ranting and rambling about chicken-related activities, and since we both agree that the geese are more entertaining, i’m not sure why we haven’t given more air time to our four-part, feathery flock. here’s a little bit more info about our handsome and hilarious geese:

they finally have names, by the way! our gander is named audobon (nick name: audo), and he is an emden goose. emdens have lovely blue eyes, an array of feathers on their neck that make them appear to be wearing a wavy, ruffley collar. we’ve learned that his breed is generally more friendly and quiet, but he is the first to hiss at bolt if bolt runs up to the cage with too much gusto! right after we got him, he hurt his toe (it seems he ripped his toenail off climbing over and into the kiddie pool), and it took him a little while to heal. we think it helped that he is bigger than the girls and was therefore unable to squeeze through different escape routes that the ridiculous and maddening houdina would find periodically. this means he didn’t spend most of his days wandering all about the yard like the girls did, and his relative immobility likely helped the healing process. i also noticed that his healing toe was grayish, even after we put some antiseptic on it, and it wasn’t until the gray was completely gone (which happened after a few days of wet, heavy, constant rain) that he seemed to completely recover. anyway, i super enjoy audo, as he is a true gentleman and really the only goose that will let you pet him (unless one is collected by ambush and forced into a petting!).

from left to right: houdina (an african), china (a chinese), and audo (an emden) as he walks away, bored with us.

our two african geese are named houdina, a name that represents the fusion of her escape artistry (like houdini) and her thinking-outside-the-box nature (like my mother), and iza, a motherly and solid (neanderthal) character in one of our favorite book series, earth’s children series. our white chinese goose, also a female, is named china (pronounced chee-na) due to a memory that jason and i have from our time spent in peru. for more about the not-so-p.c. origin of china‘s name, you’ll have to shoot us a comment. african and chinese geese are much more vocal than emdens and although still friendly, less inclined to come over for human attention. the folks that we bought our flock from told us that audo and one of the africans had bonded as mates, and while he would breed with all of the geese, he and his mate would be the main partners in egg-sitting. that seems to have been mostly true, during the short time that the geese were interested in sitting on eggs. all four of them helped each other out, but the most memorable moment was one time when houdina led an escape. she found a way out (as is in her nature) and was followed closely by china. iza followed later on and all three of them had a great time walking around in the yard, snacking and pooping in really inconvenient places. when we later glanced at audo, we saw that he was still inside their cage sitting patiently on an egg in their nest, seemingly unconcerned by girls-night-out. this entertained me to no end!

iza (an african), sitting on one of her eggs.

our chinese goose, china, is by far the most ornery and the smallest. she is also white, and like the african houdina and iza, has a bump on the top of her nose. i would consider china our homestead mascot, actually, right alongside bolt the dog. though she is the smallest, she is the most offended by things (anything, really) and has taken to running at you with her nose down as through she plans to snow plow you out of existence. when this first happened to us, we were a little freaked out (would the lot of them flog us…?) but once we realized she was just bluffing it quickly became comical. endearing, actually. if she actually follows through with getting over to me, she’ll simply and gently bump me with her beak or have a dainty little taste of my outfit. she is definitely my favorite, and acts like everyone’s big sister. she also has blue eyes, although they are more gray-blue than audo‘s.

watch out for china, here she comes!

now that you know about their personalities, there is only one more thing to mention… the noise! it is honestly impossible to talk over them when they are honking for food. much louder than a dog’s bark, their tone is such that it not only covers up other noises, it cancels them out, like a high tech noise-canceling device. but, more on this later when we have a video to share!

.:.

cabbage: a salad and sauerkraut experience!

June 9, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

just the other day we harvested our first two cabbages from the garden. we were both surprised at how large they grew. we rescued them just in time–before the bugs really got them. for now, it looks like our other cabbages might not make it past the bugs.

but we’re glad to have gotten two of them to eat! we used the larger, nicer head for mixing into our salads and just simply munching. fresh cabbage sure is wonderful!

our first head of cabbage!

we cut the other head up into small strips and jason is using it for our first batch of lacto-fermented sauerkraut. my aunt makes awesome sauerkraut and she’s actually made some for our wedding (out of red cabbage). we can’t wait to try it! in the meantime, jason continues to check the progress of our little sauerkraut batch to see when it is time to take it from room temperature to the fridge.

slicing cabbage for salads and sauerkraut.

next up on the lacto-fermenting menu… tons and tons of pickled greenbeans! my favorite!

.:.

a lotta bit of happy and a lotta bit of sad: our first chick

June 6, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

on monday, may 26th, our first baby chicken was born here at the homestead. our first baby anything, for that matter, and it was all very exciting.

the dedicated hens sat on their eggs for 21 days (the incubation period for chickens) and even though we started with 12 eggs, only 1 baby was born. this is because not all of the eggs were fertilized and some of the eggs were busted over time as the many broody hens switched from nest to nest. next time, to prevent this egg-breaking issue, we plan to give the broody hens a better, more private space to sit. i was super excited about the baby being born because 2 fertilized eggs were accidentally crushed only a few days before their hatch date. while it was very interesting to get to examine the nearly born babies, it was also a little sad to know that they came so close to emerging into the world but just never got to. i conducted funerals for both.

so when the first chick was born, i just had to give her a name. i knew there was a chance that she wouldn’t make it (as is the case with all animal infants), but i just couldn’t help it. i named her primera, since “primero” in spanish means “first.”

another really exciting thing about primera, besides the fact that she was here (!!!), was that she was a cross between rex (our black and white speckled barred rock rooster) and one of the tan/golden buff orpington hens. this means that she was a kooky and amazing color blend! her belly was golden fading to bronze, fading to silver, fading to gray. her back was mostly dark gray but she had a golden “crown” of feathers on her head. i was lucky enough to hold her during her first two days and she was beautiful and lively.

interestingly, the mothers (yes, two!) that sat on her while she hatched and claimed motherhood, were two black bantam hens. bantams can be better mothers than standards and our bantams are older and a little more mature than our standards. i felt like it was lucky that she had a more experienced mother, and two of them… even better!

on wednesday, may 28th, her third day of life, her mothers took her out of the nest box and into the outside world (as is the norm for all chicks’ coming-out-parties). i have no way of knowing what her time was like in the outside world or how long she was outside (jason and i were both at work).

when i came home and went to feed the chickens that day, i found that she had died. maybe i’m too emotional (i really don’t think so) but it was horrible to see such a new little life no longer alive. her body was laying a few feet from the chicken house and all of the other chickens were going about their daily business. my guess is that her two bantam mothers brought her out in the world and the other chickens (the standards and maybe even some of the bantams) thought she was an intruder and attacked her. and what can two smaller mothers do against a bunch of bigger chickens? nothing really. afterwards, i read up on what could have happened, and i found that this behavior is not uncommon but also not expected. i can perhaps credit it to having the two flocks living together, creating an atmosphere of competition (?). i also think it was harder since there was only one of her, and she was not part of a group.

i was really mad at all of the chickens for a day or two, until i remembered that i can’t humanize them. they are animals. they are important animals–special things–but they are not human and therefore cannot be blamed for “blindly” following instinct. they are not truly guilty, just as i am not guilty for having failed to protect her.

it has been a learning experience, though, and this had taught me what to do differently next time we hatch chicks. for example, i am definitely going to fully separate the new mothers and their babies from the rest of the flock until the babies are at least a few weeks old and less likely to be assaulted. i am also learning something that i really already knew… that when you raise animals, some of them die. sometimes they die because of health reasons, sometimes they die because of circumstance or lack of understanding on your part. i do know now, that as long as we are trying our best to be good stewards of the animal families that we raise, it is okay. it is the cycle of life, after all.

some things die and some things live, and how can i presume to know the reasons why the universe moves the way it does?

primera’s funeral was conducted “peruvian-style” with jason’s help, and we buried her under a crab apple in the front yard. i thanked her for coming to stay with us for a while and i will not forget her and what she meant to us… that life is possible.

life is always possible.

.:.

we will be taking a break from hatching chicks for a few weeks, and then after that time, once we are better prepared and if some hens are still broody, we will try again.

.:.

the greenbean season begins: greenbean water!

June 4, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

time again for greenbeans!!!!

(for some background information about why i insist on writing greenbeans instead of green beans, click here)

what a wonderful day it is! the greenbeans that we cooked tonight did not come from our garden, actually, but from my father’s garden. our greenbeans went in a little later than his did and we shouldn’t be getting any from our plants for a week or so. we almost waited until ours came in to eat any, but we just couldn’t resist my dad’s offer of about 5 pounds of delicious, homegrown greenbeans!

we cooked all of them tonight, cooking them the way we usually do… boiling them in water with a dash of salt and olive oil or coconut oil. we’ve determined that it is a waste of time for us to snap them into “manageable” sized pieces since we enjoy them best whole, with just the stems snapped off. we usually serve them in a glass casserole dish because the beans fit in there perfectly and a dish that has a lid makes for excellent fridge storage.

freshly served, steaming greenbeans doused with coconut oil and salt!

when we serve the steaming hot greenbeans we add a dash of salt and drizzle some coconut oil over the top. so delicious! rarely do we use forks when eating such treasures and relish in picking up one at a time with our fingers and munching away! we’ve found that cooking the greenbeans without snapping them also makes for much better greenbean sandwiches with dill mayonnaise (it sounds bizarre but they are fantastic!). the long greenbeans rarely fall off of the bread this way.

an amazing bi-product of boiling the greenbeans is the pot liquor that is left behind. some foods, such as various greens, leave behind a liquid that is not beneficial and even harmful for you to drink. not greenbeans! greenbeans leave behind a pot liquor (we call it greenbean water) that is rich with the nutrients of the greenbeans, in a concentrated form!

greenbean water, still in the pot. though it may look funky, we promise it tastes amazing!

this might also sound bizarre but it is delicious! we save the greenbean water in the fridge and drink it, sometimes adding a little bit of soy sauce for extra flavor. such extra flavor is not required, by the way, because greenbean water (if you’ve added salt and one of the above-mentioned oils) is already refreshing and even creamy. you can feel the nutrients as you drink it.

cheers to that! perhaps we could toast with greenbean water sometime during the wedding?

.:.

yard work, brush clearing: revealing the barn

June 2, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

last weekend my dad drove up to help us out. jason was working and i often plan father-daughter workdays during these times, mostly because they remind me of working with my dad as a kid or of doing yard work with him as a side job as i got older.

we’ve done a lot so far, and i’m excited to share:

as we mentioned in our post about cutting down oak trees to make new space, dad brought the chainsaw and helped us clear an areas that now acts as a small orchard/food forest extension.
dad, jason, and i cleared the underbrush and trash from one side of our barn, and it looks so nice! i’ve even picked out a perfect limb in a big oak for a future swing!
dad and i cleared out around our corn crib, which really helps keep the shade away from some of our fruit trees and allowed me easy access to my mushroom logs and soaking station.
we cleared out under the corn crib and cut brush and briers all the way down to another shed we have. it was fun doing this because we found some valuable items (if funky metal pieces count) in with the trash. we saved some of what we found and we already have some ideas about to use them!
and last weekend dad and i cleared around the other side of the barn and half of the area behind the barn. now sunlight can come in back there, and we are already thinking about adding a greenhouse there eventually.

the side of the barn that we cleared last week. see the tires and other junk in the frint? that where we're keeping all things we want to save until we can get into the barn and start organizing!

this is the side of the barn that we cleared last week. see the tires and other “junk” in the front? that is where we’re keeping all things we want to save until we can get into the barn and start organizing!

all i can say is… thanks, dad! we couldn’t have done it without you!

.:.

jenney tenney photography documents our ochre way!

May 30, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

i’ve mentioned my friend, jenny, before when i wrote about the amazing experience of witnessing her giving birth to her daughter this february.

i wanted to take a moment to show my support for jenny tenney photography, her business that specializes in wedding photography, portraiture, and photography for other important events. she is an amazing photographer and i feel so lucky to have her as a friend… and even luckier for her to take photos of jason and i on our homestead (since we seriously had only 3 good pictures of us together!).

she, her husband, and her new baby visited us recently and we had a great time! here are some of the photos from that special day…

jason by the chicken house

dodger enjoying catnip

dear, sweet bridey!

as you can see, jenny is a very talented photographer. check out her website or her blog to find out more about her awesome business!

.:.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013