The Homestead Project Begins

I have done this before, but this time I am planning on being organized, careful, and dedicated. Isn't it nice how we can dream and be ambitious?

My dream is to someday own a homestead, nothing large, but a place to raise my boys so that they know where their food comes from, where we can control what we put into our bodies, and to try to be as self-sustaining as we can be without giving up the advantages of modern life. It's a big dream, and I do believe it can happen, but baby steps are the way to go.

Our Backyard

For now I have to be content doing what I can in our suburban backyard in Arizona. We live in a house we rent from my parents, who graciously support our desires in homesteading. The house rests on .29 acres, which is good for this part of town. We live in a busy neighborhood with lots of neighbors.

My first step has been looking at incubators. There are a lot of reasons that I want to incubate eggs rather than buy through a hatchery.


1) Expense. Shipping live chickens across the country makes me cringe, to be honest. I have done this in the past and usually there are a few casualties, but it's not that at all. It's that I am dedicated and passionate about heritage livestock. I can't afford to buy breeding stock of the breeds I like, even if I were allowed to have a rooster. Ebay, on the other hand, carries hatching eggs from people that I know and trust, that are from pure and rare breeds.

2) Profit. I can legally only have 24 chickens at my house. However, with an incubator I can continue to hatch and sell the chicks to earn back the cost of the incubator and eggs.

The Boy-- Chicken Whisperer

3) Experience. I have three small boys. I try to expose them to the magic of the world and how it works. We have hatched chicks in the past and it is wonderful to candle the eggs and show the boys how the chicks grow and develop, all the way to the day they hatch. Then they carefully cradle the still-damp chicks to keep them warm. It's priceless. It has not been uncommon in the past to have chickens follow Boy around. We call him the Chicken Whisperer.

Getting an incubator can be complicated. I have used the Hovabators in the past and, though they have been adequate, they are hard to disinfect between hatches, and are not very sturdy. NoWay stepped on one of my old ones once and cracked it, and he only weight about 26 lbs. With better quality, comes higher cost. It's a fine line to walk, especially when we're on a tight budget.

I mentioned this will all be on a VERY tight budget, right?

So, right now I am see-sawing between a cheap, get-it-done, incubator or the one I want, which is actually on sale right now, but still very pricey. (The Brinsea Eco)

Once we can settle on an incubator I will be looking at hatching eggs. I want bang for my buck, and heritage breeds, so that will be very fun.