Inspiration at Stratford Ecological Center {Wordless Wednesday}
by Rachel • March 28, 2012 • Family, Featured, Gardening & Pets, Home School, Travel • 1 Comment
Images from an afternoon at Stratford Ecological Center March 26, 2012. 1) baby lamb 2) chicken coop 3) hens protecting eggs 4) u-pick greenhouse 5) giving garden sign 6) goats and cows 7) Rachel and sheep pen 8 ) Lil petting cat 9) cernal pool 10) mayapple 11) spring beauty
Rest In Peace Sussie, 2009-2011
by Rachel Tayse • August 14, 2011 • City Chickens • 5 Comments
This week, we lost our speckled sussex hen, Sussie. Suss had not been active, or laying eggs, for a few weeks. We tried several recommended treatments but she continued to lose weight and strength. On Thursday, Alex found her dead in the coop. In life, Sussie was the most skittish and shy of our...
Read more →Bitter Cucumbers {Friday Five}
by Rachel Tayse • July 29, 2011 • Family, Fun or Funny, Local Food • 2 Comments
Lots of awesome things happened around the homestead today: we pickled homegrown peperoncini peppers, filled the basil jar with dried basil, made stuffed sausage, put cabbage into a crock for sauerkraut, and brined pork belly. In the evening I convinced Alex to clear out the cornichon cucumber patch because they were past their prime....
Read more →Homestead Heroines {Book Hounds}
by Rachel Tayse • July 7, 2011 • City Chickens, Read • 1 Comment
Last month I devoured three accounts from fellow female real-food lovers. I read Kristin Kimball’s The Dirty Life, The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker and How to Eat a Small Country by Amy Finley. Each was part inspiration, part ‘what not to do’ and thoroughly enjoyable. Finley’s How to Eat a Small Country is...
Read more →How To Fence Raised Beds
by Rachel Tayse • May 26, 2011 • City Chickens, Gardening & Pets, Home & Family • 4 Comments
The chickens eye the tomatoes, the dogs walk all over the bean bed, and the squirrels want into everything. What’s a space intensive gardener to do? Fence around the beds. Yet every spring I resist. Fencing is ugly and expensive. It is a pain (literally, I have a hole healing in my finger from...
Read more →Dinosaur or Chicken Foot
by Rachel Tayse • May 25, 2011 • City Chickens, Preserving • 1 Comment
This is the foot of Speckles after Alex cured it for months in salt. He and Lil arranged a rock in the claw and set it aside to air dry into a Halloween decoration. In other words, ours is a very strange family. And, if you ever questioned whether dinosaurs came from birds, I...
Read more →Bird Houses: In & Out
by Rachel Tayse • May 18, 2011 • City Chickens, Family • 1 Comment
Two birdwatchers building a birdhouse… …and two orpington chickens happy to be free from theirs. Added to Five Minutes for Mom Wordless Wednesday and Dagmar’s Momsense WW .
Read more →Friday Five: Facts about Backyard Chicken Eggs
by Rachel Tayse • April 22, 2011 • City Chickens, Local Food • 7 Comments
The talented Catherine of Photo Kitchen came over last week to take photographs for Hounds in the Kitchen Egg Week. Today’s conclusion follows tutorials for blowing out eggs, making natural dyes, baking a dutch baby, and creating eggshell seedling cups. A year and a month after collecting our first pullet egg, we have learned...
Read more →Five Signs of Spring
by Rachel Tayse • April 8, 2011 • City Chickens, Gardening & Pets • 0 Comments
This week has been the essence of spring. Ohio has felt downpours of rain, blustery days so chilly Alex lit the wood stove, and sunshine that made me weak in the knees. Best of all, it is the growing season! In the spirit of Friday Five, here are spring scenes from the homestead this...
Read more →The Making of a Cover Model Chicken
by Rachel Tayse • March 18, 2011 • City Chickens, Family • 3 Comments
Our australorp hen is on the cover of this week’s Columbus Alive! Read raising the roost about keeping ‘pets with benefits’ in the city. Learn a little more in the two sidebars, keeping chickens 101 and why to raise chickens. I love sharing about our homestead. Along with an interview for the article, I...
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