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Holy Crop! My chicken has a tumor.
I’m new to chicken keeping, like embarrassingly new. My grandmother, my aunt, and I collectively decided that buying 30 baby chicks all at once was a great idea…and that for whatever reason my house seemed the best place for them despite my lack of experience. So after they were old enough to get out of their brooders we excitedly moved them into their newly constructed coop. All seemed to be going well the first day and then all of a sudden on the second morning I went out to check on the chicks, check food and water, and open coop windows for ventilation and lo and behold I find a…
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Lazy Decorative Planters
I love to garden. I like to plant things, water them, and watch them grow. There is, however, a part of me that is stronger than my love of gardening….that’s Lazy. While I certainly love some annuals (plants that only live for one year or season then need to be replanted.) I struggle to rationalize spending time and money on plants that just won’t stick around when I have a whole acre to try and landscape and maintain. Hence my love of planting perennials (plants that will go dormant and then return year after year.) In this post I will walk you through how to choose perennial plants for your…
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Mom Guilt
When you’re pregnant with your first child people are always so eager to make an uncomfortable comment, or offer up unwanted advice, or tell you how to be a mother…but the one thing that nobody ever mentioned, that no amount of books or research decided to warn me about before I became a mother was the guilt. We like to joke around and make light of it sometimes but the truth is, mom guilt is heart wrenching and real and inescapable. If I spend my entire day playing and doing fun, educational things with my children I still feel guilty when I lay in bed and realize they are going…
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The last CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE recipe you’ll ever use!
Some people think that chocolate chip cookies should be thin and crunchy, I am not one of those people. I like a cookie that has a thin crisp layer on the outside and stays nice, soft, plump and delicious on the inside. Anybody who has ever had my grandmother Mary’s chocolate chip cookies would tell you that they are exactly that…and that they are some of the very best they’ve ever eaten. So after getting permission from her I have decided to share her recipe with you all! Here is what you’ll need… Ingredients 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar 1/4 cup…
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Classic Carrot Cake
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Weatherproofing our nesting box hinge!
When designing my chicken coop and run I wanted to make sure that not only would my chickens have a well ventilated, dry, clean, and comfortable place to call home (resulting in more eggs for me!) but I also wanted it to be a beautiful addition to my backyard and help my daily maintenance and routines to be as fast and easy as possible because let’s face it…I have a very full plate. For these reasons I decided that I wanted to be able to collect eggs each morning without having to enter the run and open the man door into the coop. I decided that a hinged roof on…
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DIY Chicken Roost
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Welcome to Hangin’ with the Hagens!
Hey Everyone! I just wanted to do a quick welcome post to get this blog started. I have had a lot of friends and family wanting to know what we have been up to since Covid-19 has turned the world upside down. The Hagen Clan has been busy working on transforming our house on an acre into a more self-sufficient homestead to help provide milk, eggs, meat, and produce that we can be sure is safe and good to eat…without having to rely on the grocery stores as much. It has been quite the learning experience with lots of ups and downs and I am looking forward to sharing it…
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Leave it Better than you Found it
