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!
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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! 
You've dreamt about it. You've been pinning all the pins. You have got serious chicken fever. I hear you! Six years ago I was in the same place, my friend. The more I learned about these fluffy cuties, the more I fell in love. These amazing creature recycle our food scraps into delicious eggs, fertilize our yard better than any store-bought chemical, keep tick populations at bay, and provide us endless entertainment. So I put together a post that truly cuts to the chase of what you need to know to raise backyard chickens. We cover the basics, but I include tips that you may not have found thus far in your search. So read on my fellow chicken lover!
Here at Green Willow Homestead, we have 40 chicken mouths to feed (and counting!). Our chickens are definitely spoiled. We allow them access to pasture, they freely browse a MOSA certified Organic Chicken Feed, and we give them all our chicken-approved kitchen scraps. When I started to keep track of our expenses though, reality smacked me right in the face. We were spending nearly $175 a month on organic chicken feed! With 40 laying hens producing 3 dozen eggs a day, we technically can rake in $450 a month in egg sales, unfortunately, in the winter this just isn’t the case. Egg laying slows way down as we lose daylight, but the amount these cluckers eat stays the same. I had to put my thinking cap on. How can I cut my feed costs when egg laying can’t foot the bill? Enter a food waste recovery program!
To put it simply, a food waste recovery program is when you partner with a local business that produces food waste, i.e. a restaurant or food shelf, to collect what would otherwise go to a landfill and, instead, compost it or feed it livestock. This partnership can be set up however you want it to: you can volunteer for food waste, you can barter for it, or you can just take it off their hands no questions asked. There are two types of food waste in the restaurant business: pre-plate food waste, which is all the prep scraps that come before food hits the plate; and post-plate food waste, which is what the customer leaves behind instead of bringing it home as leftovers. Both of these options can be recovered in a food waste recovery program.
In this blog post, I’m going to take you through why food waste recovery is necessary, how we got started doing it at Green Willow Homestead, and what equipment you need for successful implementation. 
There are many reasons why homesteaders decide to bring a rooster into their flock. For me, there was a moment last winter where I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, “I want to hatch my own chicks.” In that late night epiphany, I knew I had to get a rooster in order to make that happen, because, well, mother nature. Now I have four gorgeous roosters and will never go back to having just hens. Let’s break down the pros and cons of owning a rooster to help you decide if having one is right for your long-term goals as a chicken owner.
I have sad news my fellow chicken lovers. We lost one of our Silver Laced Wyandottes last night. Cue the violin!
Paul and I have had the habit of going out to close up the coop around 7pm well after the sun has set, which I will admit was lazy on our part. Upon opening up the coop we found feathers everywhere, three chickens were cowering in the corner under the nesting boxes, four were hiding underneath the coop itself, and one was laying in the middle of the run with its head severed from its body. Clearly, there had been a predator through our chicken run. This incident was especially troubling because whatever it was, it was able to get through or over our fence. Paul likes to call our chicken run Fort Knox, but after last night we are questioning our perspective. What could have gotten through and killed one of our birds? 
Are you getting ready to own your very first flock? Congrats! I know exactly how excited and nervous you feel imagining those fluffy little chicks living under your roof. As someone who did her fair share of chick rearing research prior my first six chicks, there are seven very important things I wish I had known. This post is here to bring light to some very important factors I think a lot of bloggers miss out on when they write about the first few weeks of chick rearing. Read on to prepare yourself and your home!
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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 turn the 80 acres we call home into a farm that serves its community and a homestead that nourishes us throughout the seasons. 
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