Wins, Fails, and What we Learned
The other night I’m gathering chicken eggs from my bantam chickens and my 5 year old, Wally, comes flying out into the backyard in a buzz lightyear bathrobe asking if he can have a muffin. In this moment of distraction, my little d’uccle Rooster, Hei-Hei, attacks my arm in a flurry of wings and spurs. “Jesus Christ!” I scream and whack him off the roof of his coop with my hand.
If you aren’t prepared for random moments like this, you might not be ready for a backyard homestead. It is definitely a lot of work, but for us, it is worth it.
Suburban Mom
Our last two homes have been in the suburbs. First in Washington, we rented a home in a gorgeous HOA with a teeny tiny back yard but a park across the street. In Arizona we bought a very similar house with a slightly bigger yard and a neighborhood full of sidewalks. We were able to turn that backyard into our own little slice of heaven and spent a lot of time back there.
But living in the suburb and being surrounded by suburban moms I felt compelled to leave every weekend, explore something new, sign my kids up for every activity I could try because they were all 5-10 minutes away. We were busy and spending money and always rushing.
Travis and I have always had a dream of raising our kids to be little country kids. I grew up rural, he grew up in a city, yet both of us fell in love with Kansas and wanted our kids to have that country lifestyle. We knew 100% when we moved again we wanted to move to a home with at least an acre and we wanted to start our own little homestead.
Making a Dream our Reality
That’s how it started. It’s been about a year since we bought this house and Travis and I never do anything halfway. When we start something, we go all the way in full force until it’s set up the way we want. This might be military influence on us. We are so used to moving every three years that we plant our roots into the ground as fast as we possibly can to turn our house into a home and get the most out of our short time there.
But our little backyard homestead is not just these pretty pictures you see on Instagram. It’s a lot of work. For us it is worth it, but it definitely adds heaping servings of responsibility to our already overfilling plates.
We bought chicks. Four little black chicks that we had no clue what kind they even were. Next, we bought 2 ducks and 2 turkeys to go with it. This forced us to jump in right away. We set up little cages for them out of old Rubbermaid bins and home-made lids with chicken wire. We added heat, food and water and we were good to go. But now we needed a coop.
We started scouring facebook and eventually found a little red coop we loved with a capacity for about 12 chickens. And bonus- it came with a free chicken. An old Cream Legbar that we named Pepper because that night I had made chicken with a bit too much pepper on it!
Pepper didn’t lay though, and we assumed she was just too old. So I immediately went out an hour away and got 4 more pullets, 2 Rhode island reds and 2 barred rocks and added them in the coop with Pepper. Meanwhile I also went and got 3 baby guinea hens.
Expanding the Homestead
We went to the library and found a book about homesteading and used that to make coop number 2- a little chicken tractor. I also saw on facebook people making duck homes out of playhouses so I waited until the perfect one came up.
We snagged some fencing off of facebook too. The panels are a little rusty but they get the job done. Luckily, because of previous chicken experience in Kentucky, we added a layer of hardware cloth outside the fencing and put a bird net over the top to keep everyone contained.
One by one we were able to move the birds outside. We read online that turkeys help guinea hens stay in the yard so we built them a combined shelter coop and let them free range all day. The black chicks we moved in with the older chickens who started laying in December. And the ducks we moved into their little playhouse.
Learning as we Go
All of it is a learning curve. What to feed when, crumbles vs pellets, how to keep water from freezing. We tried building our own feeders and waterers and while it seemed like a good idea…. They ended up failing.
We have had a few different iterations on duck ponds and still don’t have a great solution. Hopefully that is to come in the next year.
And we have lost some birds along the way. We lost a turkey to a fox that figured out how to open the pen we had them in. It was latched up top but apparently the fox could open the bottom wide enough to slip in. We put a secondary latch on the bottom.
But the remaining turkey often liked to roost on a little fence outside. One night we both thought the other person had put her in and we found her beheaded in the yard the next morning.
One day I had the chickens free ranging and a black chicken just disappeared. No sign of her ever again. Maybe it was a hawk? Maybe she wandered off? I don’t know. Another time they were out and we didn’t realize my mom’s little Boston terrier was alone outside. By the time we realized, she had attacked two chickens and both were missing. I left the door to the coop open that night and Sofia came back with a giant gaping wound in her butt but Bella never did.
Sofia was a lesson in chicken health. Between antibiotics, wound care, and being egg bound I was proud of myself for working through it.
The guineas in the spring decided they had enough of my yard and started crossing the road. I thought they were lost forever but they actually had gone into a totally different neighborhood down the road. My daughter’s best friend’s family texted us to let us know they had them and we were able to get most of them back.
A second time, a neighbor showed up at our house to let us know one had gotten hit by a car. A third time, another one disappeared. Spring time is when they go to lay and I guess guineas are known for wondering out at this time. We realized that we couldn’t keep them from crossing the road so we decided to rehome them.
Springtime Babies
This spring I dove into incubating and selling chicks, as well as shopping for babies at tractor supply and online. I raised batch after batch after batch. We quickly found ourselves with way too many roosters. This led us to figuring out how to process birds for meat. Better than killing them for no reason I suppose.
We also planned and started a garden. We learned how quickly (and how not quickly) different seeds will sprout inside. We tried and failed to raise strawberries and broccoli. But meanwhile we got overwhelmed with tomatoes, cucumbers and squash.
We grew pumpkins out front and quickly realized if you don’t prop them up, they will rot. We had grapes already in the yard but learned a vine could quickly takeover and strangle them, preventing the grapes from growing. We started a compost pile and have more compost than use for the dirt!
We built a bigger chicken coop out of shed and mastered the art of raising chicks by building them their own little brooder castle. We learned that turkeys are idiots as babies and will not find food or water unless you put a little chick in with them. We learned that sperm is good inside the chicken for at least 7 days so you can pull the chickens out and incubate every egg they lay for a week. You can put the eggs in the incubator all at the same time even if they are a week old.
I learned how to make bread, sandwich bread, yogurt, and bake breakfast. We can meal prep eggs for a week.
It isn’t easy, but it is worth it!
The hardest time is in the winter. Getting home from work at 5:10 and having to immediately run out and deal with frozen waterers or gates that won’t open in the dark. Having to haul buckets of water for the ducks in the snow because the hose is frozen and you can only get water from the spout. Having to heat waterers for multiple coops to keep from freezing. It can be hard to stay motivated.
For us its worth it. We spend more time at home, we expose our kids to new things. We stay busy building projects. We spend more time together and it keeps my husband and I dreaming, always dreaming, of the next goal for our homestead together. It taught us how much we love this lifestyle, and how we want more and set our goals even higher.
It is busy, it is hard, but it is a family affair. The nature of doing it at all makes our kids involved. They spend most afternoons and every weekend outside nearly the whole time. We don’t watch TV hardly at all except in the winter. They know the chickens’ names, they know the parts of a chicken. They pick green beans from the garden. They see us working hard and see our dreams coming true.
Advice for new homesteaders
If I could give a piece of advice, I would say don’t jump in like us. Pick one thing at a time. Go slower. But do it. It is never going to be the ideal time. Just pick something you have always dreamed of doing and go for it. Don’t compare to Instagram because that is only the pretty side. The reality is you’ll be out there shoving eggs into your pockets because you forgot a basket and kicking a rooster out of the way with your foot. You’ll have poop on your hands and more green beans than you could possibly eat. And you’ll probably gain weight from all the sourdough baking that is happening.
But it is worth it when I see my kids running barefoot through the yard on another long weekend with nothing to do and nowhere to be. It’s worth it for them to see us working hard and accomplishing dreams. And ultimately, it helps me find that balance of putting work and other responsibilities at home and doing my most important job- being a mom at home!