So I have a bit of a reputation at the office. I’m the guy with the chickens. In fact, I run a whole informal and probably utterly HR-policy-violating side hustle of bringing some of our excess eggs into the office and selling them. Given that my manager and my manager’s manager are among my customers,…
Homebrew Husband
22 Signs You Are Desperate To Quit Your Office Job To Become A Homesteader
The job is reliable. You work in a clean office, and mostly you get paid to sit at a computer and type things. There are even a few nice benefits like accrued vacation and dental. You’re living the dream, right? Wrong. The signs are there, there’s no use denying them any more. Here are 22 signs…
Income Resilience (Surviving A 20% Paycut)
Early last week, late in the afternoon just before I, with my farmer’s hours schedule, was ready to sign off from my day job for Anonymous Giant Corporation, I received an email from my boss. It had all the hallmarks of something sent in haste, in response to someone else’s urgent email, also sent in…
Forced Molt: Starving Hens For Profit
Lets’s talk about molting. Anyone who has ever kept chickens knows about the molt, that egg-production pause where hens shed old feathers and turn into tiny, ugly dinosaurs for a few weeks. During the molt, a natural response to reduced daylight, egg laying stops. Chicken’s can’t throw energy into making new feathers and eggs at the same…
The Introvert's Christmas
Hi, I’m Nick. I’m an introvert, and I’m caught smack in the middle of my least favorite time of the year. No, I’m not the Grinch, I’m not a Scrooge. I’m just your average introvert, and I wish to hell that Christmas would just shut up. “Introvert” isn’t the same thing as shy or socially…
This Is An Absolutely True Timeline
It is Saturday December 7th. 47.80 degrees North, 122.37 degrees East. It is 22 degrees F outside temperature. This is an absolutely true timeline. 4:15 am I am awoken by Oliver standing in the bedroom door. This is the second time he’s been in tonight. He’s mumbling and twitching with the incoherence of the freshly…
Where The Men Aren't
Maybe you have websites like these your blog-reader. They are filled with instagram-tinted family photos and helpful recipes and they have cute tag-lines that always include the phrase: “journey to self-sufficiency.” These blogs focus on what one family is doing to become more healthy, self-reliant or economically and environmentally responsible. Sometimes the focus is on…
Notes From A Synthetic Environment
For the past five days I’ve been living in an unreal, unearthly limbo. I’m at a professional conference, in a 34 story hotel, in Chicago. I could easily have no idea what time it is. I certainly have no idea what the weather is like. My menus over the past few days read something like this:…
Your Seedlings Hate Your Fancy Window: How Plants See Light
Two months ago, Erica posted comparison photos showing seedlings started in a south-facing window vs seedlings started under full-spectrum grow lights. The results were surprising to many readers (including me!) and at least a few readers invested in grow lights after seeing the difference light makes. There are a few reasons why windowsill started seedlings…
Battle Coffee Pot vs. Microwave: An Energy Cost Analysis
For Christmas this year I got a new coffee pot. Among the wonders it offered over and above our old coffee pot (in addition to working) was a fabulous keep-warm feature that holds a pot of coffee at steaming hot perfection for four hours! Amazing, what will they think of next? While I love the…
Refactoring In The Garden
2011 was The Year of Additions. We added to our garden: new perennial bed, new mini-orchard, new chickens, two new coops for aforementioned chickens, and a couple new raised beds. We added this blog, and with it a sizable commitment and a wonderful community of like-minded folks. And late in 2010 of course, we had added this…
3 Myths About Chickens, Debunked
Chickens are not what you expect. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my hens. I love their enthusiastic productivity, their damn near egg-a-day fecundity. I love their retirement plan (soup) almost as much. But there are a lot of myths about chickens floating around out there, and they deserved to be debunked. Myth One:…