There is nothing more wonderful for a gardener than sharing the love of gardening with another. In this case, we are talking about sharing that love with your chickens! Not only will chickens love to be included in your garden, but they also can take some of the gardening work off your shoulders. In this post, we will go over how you can work with your chicken’s instincts to prep and clean up your garden during the growing season, fertilize your soil, and till your cover crops under when the timing is right.
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If you are curious to learn how to hatch chicks using a broody hen and how to care for mama hen and her chicks through their first few weeks then you are in right the right place.
In my previous post I shared with you everything you need to know on how to care for a broody hen and get her to hatch chicks. I highly recommend starting there first to learn how to support your broody hen for the 21 day incubation period and her hatch. In this post I am going to cover:
How To Hatch Chicks With A Broody Hen And How To Build A Brooder Box Out Of One Piece Of Plywood6/23/2020 
If you are trying to learn how to hatch chicks with a broody hen, you are in the right place! My first year of owning chickens I started with day-old chicks. Let me tell you it was a lot of work caring for those chicks (I don’t know how people do it who don’t work from home to be honest). Keeping poop out of the waterer, checking on chicks for pasty butt, adjusting the heat lamp, making sure they had enough food - it was constant work.
In this post I am going to teach you:
Don’t get me wrong, I loved having the hands-on experience and I adore my hand-raised hens. The thing is, once I let my very first hen go broody and raise her own clutch of chicks, I realized I am never going to raise chicks myself again. Why? Because broody mama hen was one thousand percent better at it than me! 
Figuring out how to use your existing property, or a brand new piece of land, and turn it into a homestead can be a daunting task. In this post, I’m going to share with you how we planned out our homestead on five acres over the course of five years. It’s so fun to see where we started when we first purchased our land, and then five years later, how everything turned out.
We’ll go over:
Welcome back to Week 4 of our 30-Day Food Security Plan. Can you believe it's been a month since we started learning about gardening, chicken keeping, foraging, and homemaking? I have been loving teaching you everything I know about food security and this week is no different. In this final post in our 30-Day Food Security Plan you will learn (click to jump!):
If you just found this series, be sure to head back to Week 1 so you can learn how this 30-Day Food Security Plan works and get started on the right foot! I want you to remember that you are completely capable of starting something new (like making your own yogurt). Sure, you're probably going to make some mistakes in the process as you learn but the payoff is worth it. Doing these things with a loved one or your kids will bring you some fun and purpose during this uncertain time. Let’s dive into Week 4! 
Learning how to hatch your own chicks using an incubator can be one of the most rewarding experiences as you start your first flock of backyard chickens. At Green Willow Homestead I’ve always let a broody mama hen do the work for me. While this leaves hatching eggs up to the true professionals (actual hens), the downside was that expanding my flock was dependent on my hens. What if I wanted a few clutches of chicks in June or July? That’s where incubating your own hatching eggs becomes necessary!
So today I’m having Erin Roy of The Harvest Trail Blog teach all of us exactly how to hatch your own chicks using an incubator. Erin is so knowledgeable about using incubators and hatching eggs and I can’t wait for you to learn from her! 
Welcome back to Week 3 on how to build food security for your family in less than 30 days. In Week 3 of our Food Security Plan, I am going to teach you (click to jump!):
If you just found this series, be sure to head back to Week 1 so you can learn how this Food Security series works and get started on the right foot! I want you to remember that you are completely capable of starting something new (like chicken keeping). Sure, you're probably going to make some mistakes in the process as you learn but the payoff is worth it. Doing these things with a loved one or your kids will bring you some fun and purpose during this uncertain time. Let’s dive into Week 3! 
Welcome back to Week 2 on how to build food security for your family in less than 30 days. In Week 2 of our Food Security Plan, I am going to teach you the straightforward step-by-step on (click to jump!):
To head back to Week 1 of this series to learn about food security, its inherent limitations, and how this four-part series works click here. I want you to remember that you are completely capable of starting something new (like chicken keeping). Sure, you're probably going to make some mistakes in the process as you learn but the payoff is worth it! Doing these things with a loved one or your kids will bring you some fun and purpose during this uncertain time. Let’s dive into Week 2!  As more and more of us are jumping into chicken keeping and raising chicks for the first time, I thought it would be helpful to have on an expert chicken tender to teach you why when you are shopping for chicks - you should skip the big stores and hatcheries and buy from a small farm instead.
Maeg Yosef runs Silver Fox Farm along with her wife, Sarah, in Greenfield MA. They are a very small poultry farm and humane hatchery who focus on selective chicken breeding for homesteaders, backyard chicken keepers, and small farms. Maeg is bursting with knowledge when it comes to starting your first flock so I can't wait for you to read on. Even I learned something new from this guest post! 
If you are here to learn how you can build food security for your family in less than 30 days, you are in the right place. When I started out with homesteading six years ago, I knew that food security was important to me. Never did I guess that our entire world would come to a standstill and leave the majority of our society scrambling to build food security for themselves and their families.
For decades, homesteading has been a way for families to increase their self sufficiency not just out of rejection of a failing industrialized food system, but out of our love for the land, our connection with animals, and our focus on growing nutritious and safe food. This 30-day Food Security Plan will be broken up into four weeks. We will focus on Week 1 in this post. For the next four weeks, I will share with you the simple and straightforward things you can do to boost your family's food security during this uncertain time. So if you are in need of guidance and help navigating how to get started with your first veggie garden or your first flock of chickens - you are in the right place! |
Meet Kelsey,Thanks for stopping by Green Willow Homestead! From chicken rearing to composting, we've got our hands full and we love sharing what we've learned along the way. Follow along as we strive to live sustainably and turn these five acres from just property to a fully functioning regenerative farm. 
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