Bringing Chickens Back to the Homestead

Happy New Year, ya’ll!  I have been consistently inconsistent at so many things since I went back to school to pursue my degree in higher education, and my blog is one of them.  I have been asked by folks to continue to share about frugality and suburban homestead living. As a result, I’m working to carve out time to share with all of you at least our plan for navigating these interesting and trying times. With the demands of school and work, I struggle with finding time, but am working on improving in this area.  And so I thought, no better way to kick off the new year with talking about chickens, and why sometimes, the chickens coming home to roost is a good thing.  In our case, I am referring to the fact that bringing chickens back to our suburban homestead is a good thing.

Missing our Feathered Friends

This post is an ode’ to missing keeping chickens, but also missing their delectable and delicious fresh eggs.

It has been a minute since we have had chickens.  They were not a terrible amount of work, but it was another responsibility. Which is why we walked away from having chickens about 7 years ago.  I had several of our blog followers reach out to me that they were sad about us no longer having chickens and truth be told, I was too.

Of course, we can’t forget about their fun chicken antics!  They will keep you laughing as they are just fun, although we know that lots of other critters enjoy chickens too.  They are a favorite food of many.

In light of the fact that eggs are now up 49%, it has caused me to pause and re-evaluate the pros and cons of keeping chickens.   Currently the pros are winning!   Also, we had many summers where we primarily were self-sufficient between our garden, chickens, and the bees.  Our son even brought home hauls of fish that we would stock up in the freezer.  If we could have given up meat and a few pantry staples, and the occasional dinner out we could been completely self-sufficient in terms of groceries anyway.  

Researching Chicken Breeds

I have been spending time researching chicken breeds over the last couple of weeks.  We have had such success with our Buff Orpingtons, Black Stars, and Rhode Island Reds that I imagine we will still end up with mostly brown egg layers. They are a favorite at our homestead.  

Through out the year, we still do all of our homesteading pursuits, gardening, canning, dehydrating, and freezing.  We are also re-evaluating what is next with our beekeeping operation. We lost our last hive during the height of the pandemic and have not decided whether to restart the honey operation up.

In the meantime, we have had a couple of cold snaps here in Coastal North Carolina, and we are just staying warm and enjoying evenings by the fire, until we roost lol.  I wish you all a beautiful week! Until next time….

Fondly,