Basnaw Family Homestead

We have a make buff orpington duck that's being picked on by the others. I'm hoping to find him a new home. Message me if anyone is interested.

We would like to introduce everyone to the newest additions to our homestead. Pop-eye, Olive-oyl and their 4 babies.

A little over a week ago we added an Easter Egger to our flock and today she laid her first egg for us! Easter Eggers can lay brown, green, pink, or blue, like ours did. We're so excited to add some color to our egg cartons. And if our rooster 🐓 does his job, we might even be able to add some more. 😉

It's been over a year since we have had any updates! The garden this year got hit with a bad hail storm earlier in the season but has since taken off with the all the rain and warm weather. We got 3 more hens and a rooster last week to add to our flock as well.

There may be snow on the ground but the chickens decided it was time to start laying again. We are drowning in eggs. Let us know if you need some eggs. We have 10+ dozen available.🐔🥚

We have 10 dozen eggs available. Let us know if you would like some!

The girls got to play in the garden today with a close watch over by our little farm girl.

Our little farm girl. 💚💚💚

She takes her chicken tending *very* seriously. She always makes sure they have enough treats and that the eggs get collected. (Even if I've already collected the eggs. Today I had to put them back in the nesting boxes so she could get them herself.) 😂😍💚

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Lots have happened since our last update. We got the garden in a few weeks later the originally planned but everything is thriving now. We are happy to announce that we got our first eggs from the chickens today!

Not shown: the crazy amount of blueberries we have gotten and the hundreds of wild blackberries that need to be picked as well. And a few giant zucchini that came out of nowhere.

Went to check on the girls tonight and found them all roosted up together. 🥰 It was so sweet to see them snuggled up together rather than chasing each other around. 😂

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Garden update! 🍅🥕🌽🌶🫑🥒🥬

We've had a garden every year since we bought our first house. The first year was really just for fun, we tried a lot of different plants and learned a lot about maintaining our own garden. When we moved into this house last year, and with five acres at our disposal, we knew we had the space to plant anything we decided we wanted when we stopped at the local greenhouse. Our garden thrived! When we put it to bed in the fall, we started dreaming of everything we could add this year -- and boy did we add!

This year we decided to try our hand at starting plants from seeds. We bought seed packets, starter trays, and seed starter dirt and patiently waited for the right time to plant. When the time came, Hadley, Austin, and I sat on the living room floor and excitedly filled the trays with carrots 🥕, jalapeños, lettuces 🥬, spinach, three kinds of tomatoes 🍅, and more! We planted so much, we quickly outgrew our two little indoor greenhouses and had to purchase a larger one for outside!

As we planted, we joked and worried that filling seventy-two cells with cherry tomato, carrot, and lettuce seeds, among others, might be a bad idea, but we thought, "they won't all take!"

Well...we were overwhelmingly wrong for so many of the plants. 😬😂 With all these new plants came the need for more planting space, so we more than doubled last year's garden. Austin finished tilling on Saturday and now we're on to moving dirt, building up the planting areas, laying compost, laying mulch, and finally getting the garden in! It's a long haul and a lot of work, but so worth it when the veggies start coming in! (I'll need to revisit this post around August when we're swimming in tomatoes 🏊‍♀️🍅😂).

I've been posting so much about the chickens but realized I haven't done a garden update in months! 😳 Stay tuned for an update tomorrow!

The girls took a big step today and met each other barrier free! After about two weeks of looking at each other through the playpen and one failed introduction last week, we did more research and made another intro attempt today in the run. I was nervous, but things went amazingly! There was some pecking -- they are establishing a pecking order after all (and big sisters pick on little sisters as Austin reminded me) -- but they spent several hours out in the run and everyone got along (I think all the treats helped 😉), so we moved them all into the coop together. Again, I was nervous, but I need to have more faith in the girls because they're still doing great. One proud momma hen over here. 🐔😁

I just checked on them and the big girls are still roosting happily on the top bar, looking down on the babies like the princesses they are. 👑 This wasn't the coop project we wanted to work on this weekend, but we're both so happy and relieved that everyone is together, which freed up a ton of space in the coop and allowed us to hang both waterers and install the other PVC feeder, as well as put up some new roosts. We're ending the weekend one step closer to where we want the coop to be, so we're counting a win. 💚

The big girls get more and more comfortable with us everyday. Here's Austin and Elsa hanging out earlier today! She didn't even p**p on him. 😂