From Homestead to Farmstand

In summer of 2019 we began our first season of homesteading. We had little experience starting out but both my husband and myself were outdoorsy type people and we figured we could just figure things out along the way. After moving a retired bonded pair of equine (one miniature horse and one miniature donkey) onto the property, we became aware of a serious tick infestation. We spent night after night ridding the donkey, pony, and our old English sheepdog of the nasty blood sucking pests. We eventually hit our limit and knew that we needed a proactive solution to the problem.

Our passion as homeowners has always been to be as sustainable as possible, so we sought out environmentally friendly options to rid our property of the tick population. After some quick research we chose the best option for us, insect eating birds! We spent the winter planning and prepping for our feathered friends to make a home on our property. We bought an assembled chicken coop from a local farm auction (paid a whopping $3 for it) and took it home to be spruced up. After a few coats of paint, some new hinges and latches, it was ready to go. In the spring we set the coop on a small concrete pad we have outside of our barn and ran some 5 foot tall chicken wire around a couple of fence posts to make them a run. The space was not very large as we planned on having them free range as much as possible.

The time finally came to go pick up our baby poultry. We decided on 4 guinea hens (well known for eating ticks) and 4 standard egg laying chicks. We felt determined, ready, and we were confident that we had found a solution to the thick population of ticks on our property. Well, I can say that we lost over 10 birds in our first year… yeah, that stung. Luckily our financial investment with the birds was low, but our time investment is what really cut us deep. Hours spent tending to the baby chicks, then training the teenagers to return to their coop, creating a comfortable place for them to live, and constantly monitoring their health all ripped away in just a couple of minutes. Needless to say, we learned a lot our first year, and we were sure to do better the next. We quickly discovered the flaws in our chicken/guinea hen tendering. Our population was mostly wiped out by raccoons the first year, and a few guinea were lost to being overweight as they were unable to stand on their own legs anymore. The next couple of years we worked on making improvements.

We gained the knowledge that although guinea hens were ideal predators to ticks, they required too much care for what we wanted to invest. The hens are not very domestic and would often not return to the coop, leading to exposure to predators. We switched over to strictly egg laying chickens and trained them to return to their coop by dusk. We patched up the coop in the places where predators were prone to attack and we designed a better system for watering as well as feeding the birds as to not spend too much valuable time tending to them. That all being said, we are still learning! We improve a little every year with our chickens, creating better systems and practices that maximize both their egg production (which is an added homesteading bonus!) as well as their pest control abilities. Now if only we could come up with an automatic coop cleaner, it would be near perfect! A girl can dream….

Anyway, it took us three years to really figure chicken farming out. We read all the articles, felt prepared going into it, and had the confidence to match, but it still took 3 years. Now we are loving it, we enjoy watching the chickens feast away at the pests on the property while we collect delicious fresh eggs daily. And most of all, we love sharing our farm fresh free range eggs with the community. There is something special about about seeing a product you spent time, sweat, and pouring love over being enjoyed by the people around you. So anytime you stop by and purchase the fresh eggs from our farmstand, you are helping a small family chase their dreams of sustainable homestead living.