It’s Time to Make a Few Changes Around Here

It’s been a couple of years since I started this thing I call Westholme Farmstead and, in those years, I’ve learned a few things about who I am and what I enjoy. On the flipside, I’ve also learned who I am not and what I do not enjoy. The idealistic plans I had when I was starting out have all changed as reality crept in. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that and I’m so happy with the direction things are taking, it’s just not what I planned.

The biggest thing that I have learned over the years is that this is NOT a farm after all, nor am I a farmer, despite my intentions to be one and the name I chose with that goal in mind.

Yes, I have a million and a half chickens and I do sell their eggs but, really, I’m just a crazy woman with a lot of pet chickens. I sell their eggs because they lay WAY more than we could ever hope to eat ourselves and also to help cover the feed bill. I’m not in it to make a profit and, that’s good because, I definitely don’t! When I sell a dozen eggs that purchase fills a feeder, provides fluffy bedding for the coop, or allows for some quality of life upgrades to the coops. It never makes it into our household spending money.

Other than VERY rarely allowing a broody hen to raise chicks that I have the means to keep forever or occasionally giving someone a few eggs for their broody hen, I don’t breed my birds and I don’t want to. I had originally planned several breeding projects but I don’t have the space to keep all of the resulting roosters and I’ve learned that I don’t have the stomach to send them off to be butchered let alone butcher them myself. This is why I have a chicken village instead of just one coop. I keep my boys whenever I can’t find them a good home and I haven’t given away a rooster in over 2 years now. Because I have learned this about myself I won’t breed my birds, despite my original plans to do so. There are plenty of roosters out there with nowhere to go already, I don’t need to add more of them.
I don’t raise birds for meat because, well, we just covered that in the last paragraph. I am not able to raise something as a pet (the only way I know how to raise an animal) and then kill and eat it. That’s just not who I am. Hats off to those of you producing meat to feed everyone, I am grateful that you are able to so that I have the choice not to. Except in the case of providing humane euthanasia to an animal that won’t recover and is suffering, no one is culled here. Not even the rooster that tries to attack me every morning (I’m looking at you, Noel!).

I will also not be culling and replacing my hens with younger birds as they age out of laying. If I were a farmer, this would be something I’d have to consider doing in order to keep production up. A hen that is not laying or is laying a lot less often is an expense, after all. From a business standpoint it doesn’t make sense to keep them when you could replace them with young hens that will give you an egg every day. Since this is not a business and I am not a farmer, my older hens will stay and continue to live a spoiled life here until they pass naturally. Will I replace the hens that die of old age with younger ones? More than likely, yes, but not at the same rate that they pass. I would like to have less chickens than I do now so I don’t plan to automatically refill the coops as they empty out over time. As my hens age out of laying, I will have less and less eggs to sell. Eventually, the chicken village will become a retirement village with a single coop full of younguns that are “keeping the lights on” so to speak and I’ll need to find other ways (besides selling their eggs) to cover their expenses.

Someday, a long way down the road and as numbers dwindle naturally, I will have my geese as well as a single flock of about a dozen hens and one rooster. The ELEVEN coops, one quarantine pen and one brooder I’m currently taking care of will likely be sold off as they empty out over time. Having less birds will allow me to spoil them even more than I can now.

Yes, I also have a garden that (usually, maybe not this year) produces a ton of food each year but, after filling our cupboards and freezer, I’d rather give away my extra than sell it. In the past I’ve put my extra produce at the end of the driveway on the farmstand for free as well as donated eggs and veggies to a local organization that provides warm meals to anyone who needs them for free. It feels so much better to me to do this than to try to sell it. Is there anything wrong with selling food? Absolutely not! I sell most of our eggs after all. It just makes me happier to donate the extra produce we don’t need than to get the few dollars I’d receive if I sold it.

I am just not a farmer. My heart is too soft for that and, while that used to be a source of shame for me, I own it now. There is nothing wrong with not having the stomach or the heart to farm. It does not make me “less than”, just different. I realize this now.

I love my chickens and geese and spoil the crap out of them. They are my pets, same as my dog or cats. Yes, I have a lot of them (too many, honestly), but I know each of them as an individual and they all have names. They are not livestock to me even if they are “farm animals”.

Knowing now that I’m not cut out to be a farmer, I’ve decided that I should change the “Westholme Farmstead” name to reflect that as well. I’d like to remove the “farm” from the name to better reflect my situation.

Again, it’s just a name change. I’ll still have eggs to sell as long as the hens are laying and I’ll still be sharing posts about my birds, the name you see on the cartons and above those posts will just be different. I do have some new ideas for next year that I hope to polish over the winter so I can share them with you in the spring but they will be in addition to what I do now instead of taking the place of those things.

Hopefully you’ll all stick with me through the change.