Sunday Photos…Home Creamery

Learning to make dairy products at home is a very rewarding and fun challenge to take on. Whether you have your own milk source on the farm, buy raw milk from a local farm, or buy milk from the store, you’ll have a good time making your own dairy products! Several years ago Mr Chiots [...]

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Baked Brown Rice Recipe

My rice cooker finally died… As I am determined to spend as little as possible this year, and I like the extra shelf space that the cooker took up, so I have reverted to my previous method of cooking rice…baking. After my first batch I wondered why I had ever quit doing it this way.  It [...]

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Organic or Local?

“Cal-Organic Farms, along with Earthbound, dominates the organic produce section in the supermarket. Cal-Organic is a big grower of organic vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley. As part of the consolidation of the organic industry, the company was acquired by Grimmway Farms, which already enjoyed a virtual monopoly in organic carrots. Unlike Earthbound, neither Grimmway [...]

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Micro-scale meat production

The other day I was asked which was better for home meat production, broilers or rabbits. That made me stop and think a bit. The answer depends on so many factors that it would be really hard to give a definitive one, but here’s what I came up with for the person asking. Rabbits. Why? [...]

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The War Rages On or…I Hate Slugs

Yes, this is what I saw a few days ago crawling across my front walk. A SLUG…ughhh! If you live in a wet zone like I do in Western Washington…if you garden in this area…you shudder at the thought…the very sight of this nemesis makes your garden loving heart break. They will eat your entire [...]

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Sunday Photos…Comfort

Comfort means different things to different people. We’re all unique in what comforts us. It could be a cup of tea, a warm blanket, a favorite hobby, spending time with friends, or a piece of cake. Today we’ll be sharing things that we find comfort in. I’m a homebody, so home is where I love [...]

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Pumpkin Pudding recipe for Breakfast.

Since last week was homemade granola I decided to continue with the breakfast theme.  Since I grew and preserved a lot of pumpkin this year we have been having pumpkin pudding for breakfast quite often.  The kids love it, I like baking it the night before and having it ready for the next day’s breakfast…the [...]

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Homesteading 101 – Feeding Chickens

We have been producing and selling eggs for the last five years.  Our flock is made up of a mix of old fashion and cross bred production hens.  We have maintained a flock of 25 birds of various ages.  We have also collected some data on productivity and cost using different feeding strategies.  The charts below are based on [...]

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Dead-out

We’ve had a fairly cold winter so, unlike most years, I have not been able to simply look outside and see if the bees are flying to know they are ok. I prepared the bees this fall by treating them with various things to make sure they were healthy, I made sure they had plenty [...]

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Make it from Scratch

Here are Chiot’s Run we don’t buy manufactured food. Our pantry is filled with dry goods, home canned items, and spices. We make our own pasta, butter, cheese, bread, granola bars, salad dressings and try to stay away from food that contain long ingredient lists, preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, and any weird unpronounceable ingredients. [...]

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