We have never had a raccoon manage to get into a properly secured house. A house that has not been properly secure is an entirely different matter - Homesteading: Building Our First Hen House.

This is part four of our homesteading journey. If you would like to start at the beginning check out Homesteading: It Begins With Health.

Now that we had our three hens & a sturdy little house for them, we decided it was time to add more girls to the flock. We were not getting a lot of eggs from these three & we simply wanted more chickens. They really are like potato chips - you can't just have one, or in our case, three. The closest livestock auction was held every Saturday evening & was about an hour away. 

In our experience livestock auctions are a stinky dirty affair. You will find all sorts of folks.  Some are super friendly while others are nasty drunks. Some folks come alone, some bring their whole family, while others bring their friends. You can find horses, alpacas, goats, sheep, rabbits, poultry, parrots & reptiles (probably not legal), produce, farm equipment, all sorts of hatching eggs, a variety of eating eggs, hay, straw, live plants, cages, animal housing, household items, small tools, & even vehicles!

Aside from chickens, we brought home nearly everything listed above at one point or another unless we couldn't fit it into our little Ford Contour.  We bid on all sorts of supplies, household goods, organic produce, rabbits, & more. 

We didn't own a truck at the time & our desire for one only grew as did our adventures in homesteading. An hour long drive can feel like double that when your seat is so far forward you are practically kissing the airbag cover while breathing in the noxious scent of animal feces. While this is going on whatever irresistible item of choice (that also happens to not fit properly inside the car) is bonking you on the head as you hug a box filled with critters (or a lap full of bunnies) because they wouldn't fit in the back seat. 

Perhaps you decide to stop at one of your favorite grocery stores that's on the way home before they close for the night.  They have a fantastic natural food section & great sale prices. You unfold yourself from the stinky car to adjust cages, crates, &/or boxes. You see a hen is on the floor behind the seat, pick her only so she can then let out a big wet poop that runs from the top you your naked thigh & warmly pools into your favorite sandals. Yep, it happens. What do you do? Make the hen comfy & then go food shopping of course! Chickens poop. You can take a shower when you get home.

On one of our trips we bid on & won a box of baby Rhode Island Red hens.  We knew they were Rhode Island Red hens because the little sticker said so. The cage they were for sale in was even included! How perfect was that? Well, it's perfect if your the folks selling these hens because you know you just made out like a bandit. Why? Because that cage of baby hens was really a cage of baby roosters. 

FYI: A baby hen is called a pullet. A baby rooster is called a cockerel. A hen is a female. A rooster is a male. Chick refers to both sexes as babies. Chicken refers to both sexes as adults.

Now that I got that out of the way, lets get a close up of that sticker shall we?

You know the saying, "There's a sucker born every minute." Well that would be us. We went home ooing & ahhing over the cute little chicks. We happily spent that night setting them up with a heat lamp, chick feeders, & chick waters. Then we went to bed dreaming of all the future eggs these girls would give us. They lived in the house, peeping, pooping & sleeping until they were big enough to go outside. As they grew we discovered these were not hens, but roosters. We had no idea what to do with a bunch of roosters. In the end we decided to sell them at the next livestock auction. We brought boxes home from work & poked holes all over them so the birds would have adequate air. We felt awful sending them off to some unknown fate, but there was no way we could keep a bunch of roosters!

Because we didn't know how to visually tell the difference between pullets & cockerels, we accidentally came home with a lot of roosters pretty often. One trip we once again managed to win the bid on a big box filled with Americana pullets (pullets are female). As with the Rhode Island Reds, the box said they were pullets. These birds were much bigger than the Rhode Island Reds when we bought them, what is known as started. They were at least 2 - 3 months old. They didn't need heat & could go outdoors right away. After some time we came to the conclusion that most of these "pullets" were actually roosters. Yet again we brought boxes home from work, poked lots of holes in them & brought them to the next livestock auction. Out of that big box full of Americana "pullets" we kept one bird because we believed it was the only hen in the bunch.

She was a beautiful bird. She grew quickly with the prettiest feathers we ever saw. We named her Buckbeak from Harry Potter. We were feeling rather good about our small mismatched collection of hens. We had all sorts of sizes & colors. We still weren't getting a lot of eggs, but we were finally getting enough to share. One day Buckbeak crowed. We agreed that she couldn't crow because she's a hen. Our denial of the obvious was rather strong. It took seeing Buckbeak mount the girls many times as well as a lot more crowing for us to realize we needed to make another trip to the livestock auction to sell our beautiful crowing hen.

When we look back at old pictures we can only chuckle. It is so obvious that this is a rooster, not a hen! But when you don't know, you just don't know. With experience comes learning.  There truly is no better way to learn than by doing.

Thankfully things didn't always go wrong. We brought home many honest to goodness hens who brought us delicious eggs & entertainment. We even managed to come home one evening with a box containing a mama hen & her chicks! For the safety of the hen & her brood, we kept them in a big bin in the basement with a heat lamp until the chicks were bigger & we felt it was safe for them to go outside. The two chicks out of the three that survived ended up only resembling their mother in size. They were both black, one was feather footed & one was not. They both had crests (little poofs of feathers on their heads) but one only had only a wisp of a poof. Rather than name them, we ended up calling them our Little Black Girls because they were a tiny inseparable pair.  We would often ask, "Have you seen the Little Black Girls? or "Do you know where the Little Black Girls are?" Hence their joint name. We adored every inch of them. They toddled around the property on their short legs, wing to wing, chatting & cooing softly to each other while scratching at the ground for tasty morsels. 

If you have never been to a livestock auction you are missing out. Be prepared to get dirty.  Maybe even get pooped on. It's all part of the fun. And whatever you do, don't drink a lot of liquids prior to the trip.  If you are lucky enough to get a bathroom at your auction, you probably wont feel so lucky once you step inside!

Cockscomb flowers are also known as Wool Flowers & Brain Cleosia. The flower's name is suggestive of a rooster's comb. Cockscomb flowers bloom from late summer through late fall.  Flower heads dry well, adding a unique touch to potpourri's & dried flower arrangements as well as fresh cut bouquets. Bees love the flower heads, many use them as a safe place to nest for the night.

To dry, cut at the base, lightly tie together & hang to dry in a cool dry location free from sun & bugs. Keep newspaper or buckets under the flower heads to catch any seeds that may fall.  To save the seeds, shake the dry heads over a bucket. You can also allow the flowers to self sow. Pick a location you would like to dedicate to your cockscomb flowers & allow to self sow naturally.

75-80°F
Direct Sow: After all danger of frost has passed.
Indoors:  Not recommended.
Size: 12" - 28"
Hardiness: Annual
Sun: Full
Water: Moderate (avoid wetting the leaves or flowers)  
Seed Planting Depth: 1/8"
Row Spacing: 8"
Days to Germination: 10 - 15
Thin:  8” - 12"
Harvest: in 10 - 14 weeks.  Cut flowers last approx. 5 - 14 days.

Kale is extremely cold hardy. It will overwinter in all but the coldest climates. Kale grows best in cool weather.  It's flavor is improved by frost, becoming mild & sweeter. It is great for spring & fall harvests. Kale can withstand some heat but is prone to yellowing & bolting, so I don't recommend growing it in the summer.

Harvest baby greens in approx. 25 days. Allow some plants to grow to maturity, so you’ll have plenty to eat in the fall & even into winter depending on your growing season. I have successfully grown kale in small cold frames through the entire winter. It has even survived being buried under over a foot of snow! When the snow stops, I remove the snow from the glass so the sun can reach the plants. If your area is susceptible to very hard freezes, your kale might not survive even under protection. In some cases it will die off & return in the late winter/early spring. If you have an area with hard freezes you might want to try overwintering the kale by thickly mulching for the following springs harvest.

If deer are a problem in your area, be sure to use adequate deer proofing. The deer where we live love our kale so much John had to put up deer fencing otherwise we wouldn't have any for ourselves, the critters or the farmers market.

Kale is a nutritious powerhouse. It is full of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, & anti-cancer nutrients. You can blend it into smoothies, juice it, saute it, steam it, add it to soups & salads, use it in place of lettuce in sandwiches, add it to potatoes & casseroles & even make kale chips - my favorite. The possibilities seem endless!

Outer leaves can be periodically harvested as previously mentioned as baby green or when older as mature leaves.  You can also harvest the whole plant by cutting it off at ground level.

Kale can be started indoors or outdoors. I like to grow my kale all year long.

Sow outside:  1 - 2 weeks before average last frost for a late spring/summer crop. Seed can also be successively sown every 3 weeks starting in early spring.
Sow outside:  In the late summer for a fall crop.
Sow outside:  In the fall for very early spring crop.
Start indoors:  4 - 6 weeks before average last frost for a late spring/summer crop.
Start indoors:  4 to 6 weeks before average first fall frost for a fall crop.
Days to emerge:  5 - 14
Seed depth:  1/4"
Seed spacing:  2 to 4 seeds every 10" for mature plants.
Seed spacing:  1/2" for baby greens.
Row spacing:  18"-24"
Thinning:  When 1" tall, thin to 1 every 10"
Maturity:  25 - 55 days


Looking for kale seeds? You can find them here.

...We vowed to never eat another store bought egg again. -Homesteading:  Chickens, Housing, Eggs, & Entertainment! 

This is part three of our homesteading journey.  If you would like to start at the beginning check out Homesteading:  It Begins With Health.

Our plans didn't include renting for the rest of our lives, so we knew we needed a hen house that we would be able to move in the future.  We decided to build a house that would sit upon a sturdy stand.  This way the house itself could be removed from the stand.  We also planned to attach wheels to make moving it even easier but we never did.  Having the coop up off of the ground was to help keep snakes & other ground predators out as well as make it easier for us to get into.

We used all new lumber & hardware. We used screws rather than nails. The base was built first. Because this was our first attempt at building anything, we were assisted by my father who showed John how to build proper supports & even how to make attractive cuts for the braces. This coop was the start to many more building projects.  We can thank our girls (chickens) for our new venture & for being the motivation we needed to learn & grow.

We wanted to make sure that the house had good airflow. I read many stories about poultry housing where the air quality was horrible, that to even enter such a place, masks were in order. If it burns our lungs, it is surely burning the birds lungs. We wanted a humane life for our birds. We opted for hardware cloth on every bottom surface. This way anything wet would fall through. Smaller debris would fall through as well, helping to keep the small space cleaner. The longer it was kept clean, the less often we would have to muck it. The hardware cloth was attached by using fencing staples. These are a much stronger staple than your typical staple gun staples. They are a bit of a pain to get in place because you have to hold the little U shaped buggers while whacking at them with a hammer. Watch out fingers!

John added two upper levels for egg laying. He put hardware cloth on the bottoms of the nest boxes as well. The two upper levels had three nesting holes per level. Plywood dividers were installed to give each hen her own private space.  Due to a lack of space, we later decided to remove the lower level & lowered the upper level, giving us three nesting boxes total.

The roof slants down over the front. We have learned that having the roof slant towards the back would have been a better choice. It slanted towards the front because of the nest boxes in the back. John built a big door for ourselves to get into for cleaning, feeding & egg collection. He put a smaller chicken door on the side for the birds to use.

John added ramps so the hens could reach the nesting areas. We quickly learned that this was unnecessary as the hens would simply hop & flap their wings a bit to get to the nesting boxes.  After the first day of use, John removed the ramps. This freed up a lot more space for the birds & made cleaning easier on us. 

Next came the sheathing. John used regular plywood like you use to build a house. We wanted a strong house. A hen house that could withstand our New England Nor'easters. Something that could handle two feet of snow on the roof without collapsing. Something heavy enough not to be blown over when those hurricane force gusts punch through. John succeeded. This house, the house a newbie built (with help) is one of our sturdiest chicken houses. It has been through a lot & is still in use to this very day.

Once the sheathing was on, John installed the doors. Again, he used home building quality materials for the doors. We decided to use padlocks with keys. We were not worried about someone trespassing onto our property to steal our hens, we were worried about the abundance of nighttime marauders, namely raccoon's. These animals are smart but wasteful killers. We decided that with a padlock there was no way they would figure out how to open these doors. We were right. We have never had a raccoon manage to get into a properly secured house. A house that has not been properly secure is an entirely different matter I will save for another post.

The main door opens up with side brackets that lock the door in place. Hardware cloth was added to provide light & air flow.  Like the floors, the hardware cloth was nailed down with fencing staples. It was then framed out with more lumber, adding additional strength, appearance, & keeps the jagged edges of the hardware cloth from tearing clothing or skin.  During the winter we add plexi glass to the front to block the wind & keep out snow. We originally added one lock to the center of the side door, but decided to change it to two locks, one at the top of the door & one at the bottom to make the door more secure. We were concerned about raccoon's pulling at the corners of the door & possibly breaking in. By locking the top & bottom, we removed this potential security breach.

Because the house was so high off the ground, the birds needed a ramp to get in & out. Again, John used building quality lumber for the ramp. He then added little foot grips because the surface was much too smooth without the little steps; the girls can't climb up a smooth ramp.  He originally used a strip of scrap plywood, cut it to size & screwed it onto the ramp. He added two screws per step. When the steps needed to be replaced we opted for natural branches. John screwed them in place the same way he did the scrap plywood. The branches eventually break down & need replacing, but they are free & make very natural ladder steps for the birds.

Once the doors were installed, John put on the roofing. Again, John used home building quality materials for the roof. He did cheap out on the roof protection, using older rolled roofing that you use roofing tar & roll down the roof. Although it's cheap, it has held up fabulously.  He added drip edge to all four sides of the roof to give it added protection. The drip edge has suffered damaged due to moving (you can see the damages in the very first picture in the post), but so far the roof has held strong & does not yet need to be replaced or show signs that it will need replacing any time soon.

We decided to side it with cedar shake shingles because they were the cheapest option. John previously cut holes on each side of the hen house to reduce heat from building up inside. He had to cut the shingles in order not to block the holes.  The holes were reinforced with hardware cloth to keep out predators.

When the house was finally finished we decided to stain it with a water based stain. We really like how it turned out.

...All we knew was, we had chickens!  - Homesteading:  It Starts With Health

Now that we had chickens, we needed housing for them & fast! Thankfully my much younger half sister who brought us the chickens also let us borrow one of her large rabbit cages & was kind enough to give us some feed. Not knowing what to do with these girls, we put them in their cage & put them outside on the grass during the day while we planned the building of our girls new home. In the evening we brought them inside, cage & all to reside in the basement where they would be safe from predators.

At the library, we checked out as many books on chickens we could get our hands on. Chickens In Your Backyard: A Beginner's Guide quickly became our favorite. We checked it out so often that we ended up buying a copy for ourselves! At home we pulled out past copies of Mother Earth News to view "Do it yourself" (DIY) chicken houses. We decided on a small ugly looking contraption & discussed our plans with my building savvy father.  He promptly shot our plans down. "You want to do it right." He said. "You don't want to built this. It's a piece of crap." We looked at each other wide eyed, then looked back at my dad, the one with all the building brains. "Well.... we don't know what else to do & we don't want to spend a lot of money on a chicken house. We need it built right away! They can't live in a cage all day." I replied. We were frustrated by our lack of skills & time. Thankfully my dad offered his assistance.

Plans were drawn out, then we three hit the hardware store for supplies. We returned home to begin building.  It took us about a week to complete. My Dad would check our progress each day, giving guidance & assistance when needed. In the meantime we were dutifully letting the girls outside in their cage when we got home from work. We always read that hens were quite, that it was the roosters who were the noise makers. Imagine our surprise & dismay when our girls cackled, clucked & carried on, sometimes rather loudly. One of the many things we discovered was that when our girls made the most noise it was because they just laid an egg.  When we would find an egg, we would grin at each other like idiots. You would have thought we laid the darn things ourselves we were so proud. 

We worried endlessly that our neighbors would complain about the racket. Much to our surprise & delight, they enjoyed the chickens & asked if they could bring their kids to see them. The kids were ecstatic. They had never seen a real live chicken before let alone touch one! 

We visited our very first farm supply store, called Agway. It was a delightful sensory overload; a candy store for wanna-be homesteaders. The store had canning jars in every size, farming tools to do who the heck knew what with, all sorts of tack, pet food, livestock feed, giant feeders, books, medications, fencing, gates, pre-built coops, rabbit houses, poultry supplies, & much more. We were nearly delirious when we noticed a sign declaring they sold chicks. The cashier told us they would have chicks in about a month. She then informed us that in the meantime we could come back that Saturday morning for their livestock auction.  That's all we had to hear, livestock auction!  We'd be there alright, we wanted more chickens!

By the time Saturday rolled around, we got up at 4:15am. We prepared for our big auction day, packing lunches & filling bottles with fresh water from our well. We arrived several hours early. It seems that the times given were for the vendors to start bringing in their goods.  Oops! We looked around a bit & discovered we needed to register as bidders. As early as we were, we noticed that we were the second names on the list when we registered, so we weren't that early.

We decided to drive around the New Jersey countryside while we waited for the auction to begin. We drove through gently rolling farmland where horses grazed on tidy green pastures with white fencing separating the fields. We even chanced by some yard sales where we joyfully purchased items of interest for mere quarters. We drove over small streams & under canopies of trees rich with new green leaves. When it was getting close to time to return, we selected a quite spot along the road where there was shade & ate our lunch. We watched cattle quietly graze, enjoyed the melodious chatter of song birds, & felt the warm spring breeze on our skin. Life was good.

With full bellies & smiles on our faces we returned to the outdoor auction. Now that the vendors were all there we could walk around looking for hens. We wanted eggs right away, so we didn't want chicks who would take months to grow. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of big hens to be found. We picked a few of interest & took our seats. As the seats filled up, the folks sitting next to us asked what we were looking for. We excitedly told them. With friendly amused smiles they informed us that they were there for the larger critters. There were goats, chicks, all sorts of poultry, pigs, livestock supplies, horses, & more. John's leg bounced with barely contained energy while we waited for our chance to bid. In the end we went home as the proud owners of one bearded gold & grey colored hen. This time we knew what kind of bird she was, a hybrid known as an "Easter Egger" because they can lay colored eggs. We had hoped to bring home more hens, but where we once had two, we now had three & better yet, one that would give us pretty pastel eggs!

By that weekend the chicken house was nearly complete. The girls were living inside of it, John just had to put up the siding, finish the roofing, & finally stain it. We introduced the new hen, there was a lot more bickering than we'd anticipated, but things settled down pretty quickly. We named our new hen Wacko because she was just that. Imagine if you will, coming home from work to your little trio of hens. Two of them happily cluck at you, the other lets out a weird warbled cry & runs so fast she kicks up a puff of dust behind her as she road runners across the property. Why does she do this? We don't know, so we laugh. We laugh every single time. Wacko also developed the habit of roosting in the holly trees at night instead of her cozy hen house. We would be outside with flash lights, dealing with holly leaves poking every bit of bare skin they could find while we carefully retrieved a growling Wacko from the trees prickly limbs. Besides behaving like the road runner & roosting in trees, Wacko also enjoyed sun bathing. She would lie on her side in the sun so that we would think she was dead. 

Our friends & coworkers were very curious about our new venture. The most common question we were asked when they discovered we were getting our very own fresh organic backyard eggs was, "Do you eat them?" No matter how often we were asked, it never failed to take us by surprise. Of course we ate them, what else would we do with them? Well, for them the idea of eating eggs from our own birds was dirty, even disgusting. This viewpoint can be blamed on the perfectly shaped eggs sitting in tidy refrigerated rows at the grocery store.  Somehow in this environment the eggs are not from chickens, they are from the store. This makes them safe, normal, & acceptable. 

All we knew was that the eggs our girls gave us were were delicious! When we cracked them, we looked upon beautiful nearly orange colored yolks that rose majestically from thick translucent white beds. When we separated the yolks from the whites & tossed them back & forth in our hands we were amazed because the yolks wouldn't break.  We cracked one of our girls eggs & then cracked a store bought organic egg for comparison. The store bought egg had a pale yolk that barely rose out of the thin runny white. When we tried to pick up the store bought egg, it broke apart in our hands, oozing through our fingers in watery mess.

We vowed to never eat another store bought egg again.

A few weeks ago I read an article in Acres USA about a successful Eco-Farmer. One of his tips in order to succeed in today's world, was to keep an updated blog. He advised that no matter how busy you are, to at the very least add a new blog post once a week otherwise your website will become stagnant. This really hit home for me.  Here is a farmer who is wildly busy yet he manages to update his blog. If he can do it, shouldn't I be able to do it too? But what to blog about? There is so much going on but what will my readers be interested in hearing about? 

While browsing Amazon.com for books on farm business I read many review where the buyers of these books were terribly disappointed because they wanted to learn how to farm, not learn how to do the bookkeeping. Yet this is exactly what I was looking for. I am already farming, already homesteading. I don't need to read yet another book about how to till or not till the soil or how much sun a tomato needs or have chickens explained to me. This is not to say I don't read these types of books, I do, I just don't read as many as I did in the beginning. The more books I found of interest for my farm business, the more reviews I discovered with this same complaint. This sparked an idea for one of my blog sections. What better way to practice this minimum of a post a week thing then to discuss homesteading? 

I will start at our humble beginnings. I hope you enjoy our story.