Wildwood Farmstead

01/01/2024

Wishing you all a blessed and magical New Year! Here's to a great 2024!

04/04/2023

We welcomed 8 barnyard mix babies to the Farmstead tonight. Beckels is our favorite chicken and the best momma.

03/07/2023

Look at these!!

01/27/2023

Need some goodies?
The chickens, ducks and geese have been working hard.

01/16/2023

We have our first baby of the year born. We welcomed Rosemary a Pigrim gosling this weekend. She is a heritage breed on the threatened list. We chose Pilgrims due to their docile and personable demeanor. They also are auto sexing. Which means you can tell if you have males or females after they hatch. Geese are a beautiful brown with some patches of while, while our ganders are a beautiful white.

To read more about this cool breed, check out the livestock conservation list. https://livestockconservancy.org/heritage-breeds/heritage-breeds-list/pilgrim-goose/

01/04/2023

💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗💗

01/04/2023

We've had a lot of questions about water glassing eggs. We have done a couple half gallons worth from fall when our spring babies started laying and a dozen jars this winter. Now chickens are supposed to slow in the winter, but our entire flock of birds, chickens, ducks and geese went into laying mode and we were drowing in eggs.

To water glass you need a clean jar or bucket. We decided to use half gallon Mason jars to ensure we wouldn't loose any. We can fit about 18 eggs to a jar. We use clean unwashed eggs. As you want to keep the natural bloom on the eggs.(I'll show a picture of the difference in what I consider clean)
Then we use 4 tba or 1 ounce of pickling lime to 1 quart of water. After filling you jar you just add the water and lime mixture over your eggs. Cover and date. They should be kept in a cool dark place.

We are hoping this will keep us through the winter as we are getting just a few eggs a day now.

Now the picture with 3 eggs shows the difference of how clean eggs are. Some of our chickens live in the barn and lay in nests with geese. So it's expected they are dirtier. These we wash and eat.
Now the other two eggs I consider clean. There is a tiny stain, but it is free from any debris and I do water glass both.

01/02/2023

Happy New Year! We spent the day in the kitchen starting the year off right.

We made a gallons worth of Fire Cider. It already smelled delicious.

We started with 1 lemon, 1 red onion, 1 orange, 1 bulb of garlic, 2 jalapeños, a tablespoonish of peppercorns, turmeric, cinnamon, rosemary and thyme and a pinch of cayenne. A big handful of chopped ginger, and then we covered it with our apple scrap vinegar with the mother.
Store bought ACV can be used as well. We just had a few gallons of apple scrap vinegar from our pound and pounds of apples we processed.

We shake and burp it daily for about 4 weeks. Then, we strain the chunks(add honey)and refrigerate. Take daily to boost your immune system or take as needed when feeling icky.

12/08/2021