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:

• How to encourage your hens to go broody
• What chicken breeds are the most prone to go broody
• The best place to let your broody hen hatch her chicks
• How to keep your broody hen on the nest
• The hatching options you have with a broody hen (how to latch day-old chicks and using fertilized eggs) 
• How to build a Brooder Box from one piece of plywood

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!

We’re having an important conversation today about the intersection of race and agriculture, the glaring issues within the clean food movement, and how regenerative agriculture keeps getting it wrong with Chris Newman. Chris is the co-founder of Sylvanaqua Farms, which is based in the D.C. region. They raise forest-raised pork, grass-fed beef, and pastured chicken and eggs.

A member of the Choptico Band of Piscataway Indians, Chris places a heavy emphasis on the indigenous ethics, values, and knowledge serving as the (often unacknowledged) foundation of the modern permaculture movement, and the decolonized worldview necessary to ensure the sustainable stewardship of natural resources. An engineer and technologist by trade, he also accepts and explores the potential of modern scientific innovation to address the gaps left by ecosystem farming in solving a sustainability problem wherein timeliness is a factor.

We’re heading to the polls and chatting all about voting today on the Positively Green Podcast! We interview Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that aims to significantly increase voter demand for environmental leadership by identifying inactive environmentalists and then turning them into consistent activists and voters.

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:

• How we utilized the existing land and outbuildings
• How we put in a homestead garden and orchard
• What tools and machinery we've found to be essential for homesteading
• How we integrated chickens over the course of five years on our homestead

We have another awesome lady boss guest on the Positively Green Podcast today! We chat with the CEO of Plaine Products, Lindsey McCoy. Plaine Products is a natural, refillable, zero waste body care brand that you will LOVE. Get an inside scoop of what it’s like running a sustainable business and learn how they have helped divert over 100,000 plastic bottles from landfills to date!

As someone who has suffered from intense period pain due to endometriosis, I am always on the lookout for natural and non-toxic period pain remedies. Before I dove into the holistic and natural remedies for period pain,  my menstrual cycle looked like three days on the couch with an electric heating pad, bottles of Ibuprofen, and non-stop episodes of Riverdale on Netflix. Now that I've learned to understand my cycle more and have peeled back the layers of why my period hurts so much - the biggest issue I had was finding a natural, non-toxic, and eco-friendly heating pad.

That's why I'm having Lindsay Clark of Handmade Heat on the blog today to teach us all about the unsung hero of dealing with period pain - heat! Lindsay is going to share with us why we should consider a natural heating pad, its benefits, and how it can help you give period pain the 1-2-punch. Welcome, Lindsay!

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!):

• How to fertilize and protect your garden from pests
• The top four medical supplies you need in your chicken vet bag
• How to locally source herbs, liquor, and baked goods
• How to make yogurt at home
• The absolute best organic gardening, chicken keeping, and homemaking books

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!

In this episode of the Positively Green Podcast, Becca and I have on Ratih Sutrisno, the Communications and Outreach Coordinator at Transition US. As the world is grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic, we thought it would be crucial to share a framework on how local communities have the power to come together using the principles of the Transition Network.

The Transition Network is a set of values and principles that empower individuals within a local communities to network with one another. In reaching out to understand the strengths each of us posses within a local community, we can create resiliency and envision a better future in the face of climate change, public health issues, and a failing economy.

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!):

• What seeds you can plant right now in your first garden
• How to design and build your chicken coop
• How to brew your first batch of Kombucha
• How to identify five of the most common local edible weeds

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!