Roman - Modern Settlers

Food for food: our hydroponic fodder system

Posted on October 7, 2015October 9, 2015 by Roman

In an effort to improve the feed for our chickens and turkeys, and cut feed costs, we've decided to grow hydroponic fodder. Fodder is basically sprouted grains, and we're growing ours in irrigated trays without soil. In addition to increasing in weight by simply adding water, the activity of sprouting makes more of the nutrients within the seed available, so it seemed like ...

Getting started canning

Posted on September 9, 2015September 11, 2015 by Roman

Before this year, I had never canned anything. The process seemed complex, and like a lot of work. That, and we didn't have any food to put in a can, until our hard work in the garden started to pay off. Once it was harvest time though, the kitchen was quickly flooded with much more fresh produce than we can eat, and we had to do something quick. We started preserving our c...

Hatching Eggs At Home

Posted on August 17, 2015September 11, 2015 by Roman

In addition to being a cheaper way to stock your flock, hatching eggs yourself is pretty easy and a lot of fun. We hatched heritage Bourbon Red turkeys and French Pearl Guinea fowl. After our 3 guinea fowl were taken by predators (in one fell swoop!), we were eager to learn from our mistakes and try again. However, being so late in the season no feed stores near us would b...

Simple, Incredible Spicy IPA Pickles

Posted on August 4, 2015October 23, 2015 by Roman

If you like pickles, you need to try this recipe. Our cucumber plants are producing like crazy right now, leaving us with tons of cucumbers to eat or store. I just happened across Imgur user usernameisslreadytaken's post, here, and since the timing couldn't be better, decided to give these spicy IPA pickles a try. The brine mixture will fill about 6 pint-s...

Our Life

Posted on July 7, 2015July 24, 2015 by Roman

Crafts & DIY

Posted on July 7, 2015July 24, 2015 by Roman

Garden

Posted on July 7, 2015July 24, 2015 by Roman

Farm

Posted on July 7, 2015July 24, 2015 by Roman

Processing roosters for meat

Posted on July 5, 2015July 27, 2015 by Roman

When we bought chicks this spring, to start our flock, we got quite a few. They were extremely young, and being that this was our first time raising birds, I considered that some of them might not live to maturity. We must have some luck, because all of them made it! So, it was no surprise when a few of them started crowing. Out of our 12 chicks, we ended up with 4 roosters...

Cheap and easy: Hog panel trellises

Posted on June 30, 2015July 27, 2015 by Roman

We constructed our lower beds with the intention of growing our plants vertically, to make better use of the space and to fit more varieties of plants. After the effort of threading 1/4" wire for trellis on the upper beds, I decided the lower trellis would need something simple and fool-proof. It would have to be strong to support heavy fruit, but easy to dismantle and remo...