Friday, July 31, 2015

Early bird discount deadline is tonight!

Save $10 off the regular price of $89 if you register today!

Imagine yourself becoming more self-sufficient! At the fourth annual Mid-America Homesteading Conference, you can choose from 18 sessions throughout the day. Learn how to keep chickens, raise goats naturally, forage for mushrooms, vermicompost, and how to make things from scratch. You'll see live demos and learn to make mozzarella, soap, lip balm, and herbal tinctures.

You'll also get the opportunity to network with like-minded individuals who are already doing what you want to do.

As one of last year's attendees said, "Bring questions -- the friendly speakers are happy to answer them."

Click here to register!

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Chicken whisperer Pat Foreman speaking this year


Author Pat Foreman will be presenting three sessions during the conference on Saturday at the college and a full-day workshop on Sunday at Antiquity Oaks Farm, thanks to a sponsorship by New Country Organics.

Pat is a sustainable agricultural author, local foods advocate and popular speaker. She graduated from Purdue University with degrees in Pharmacy and Agriculture (Animal Science, genetics and nutrition). She earned a Masters of Public Affairs (MPA) from Indiana University’s Graduate School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Pat has kept poultry for over 25 years, and has experience ranging from backyard homestead flocks to owning and operating a small-scale farm with free range, organic layers, broilers and turkeys. The commercial operation included keeping breeder flocks, incubating eggs, pasturing poultry and finished processing.

Pat is the author of the paradigm-shifting book, City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Chickens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-reyclers, and Local Food Producers.
She is co-author of three books:


She is the developer of the Chickens and You Training Series leading to the Master Backyard Chicken Keeper Certification.

On Saturday, she'll be presenting:

Chicken Whispering: Discovering the Chicken You Never Knew
There are ways to handle and communicate with chickens that can result in trust, gentleness and even an emotional bond. But first you must learn how a chicken thinks, and prefers to be treated. It’s sometimes not what you think. Some birds can even be trained to serve as therapy chickens and classroom assistants. Get close and personal with your biddy buddy. Learn the basics of chicken whispering in this cutting-edge, hands-on, nose-to-beak workshop.

Garden Chicks: Growing Food With and For Chickens
This cutting-edge, ever-expanding, interactive workshop gives you practical, and effective ways to employ chickens in your garden or homestead. Learn how chickens create and enrich topsoil. Understand that not all chicken feed has to come from bags. Learn how chickens forage—and which food they prefer. Use your yard as a mini-pasture (including rotational grazing systems) to build soil fertility, provide fresh graze. Control insects, including ticks and fleas. Integrate different types of fencing by understanding what works, and what doesn't. Jump start your gardens with chicken-assisted biomass recycling that transforms trash into black gold. Begin birdscaping, which is planting trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals that your flock will perpetually love. Best of all, we will talk about getting truly wholesome, nutritious, non-GMO homegrown food for both you and your flock. This is truly a “Think Outside the Coop and Inside Local Food Systems“ workshop.


Primary Poultry Healthcare & The Poultry Pharmacy 
Learn the essential of preventative disease management that utilizes proactive care to keep your flock healthy. You will learn about considerations for housing, air quality, feed, water and special challenges that you might face with your flock. You will learn how to treat the most common diseases as well as wounds and trauma. Includes hands-on administration of treatments and wound care. Learn how to use or make simple, but effective treatments without prescription drugs. This workshop teaches you what you need to know to avoid most veterinary bills.

On Sunday, she'll be presenting a hands-on workshop ...

Home Processing Using Tools You Already Have or Can Make
Learn how to humanely, safely, sanitarily and skillfully process your birds. What to do with those roosters and older hens? Get healthy, high-quality meat and bone broth from your backyard flock.
Topics include:
 • The power of knowing your meat source, how it was raised, fed and processed
 • The sacred significance of taking a life—so that you can live
 • The science & chemistry behind skilled meat processing
 • Processing equipment that you have—or could easily borrow
 • Hand plucking made fun
 • Super simple evisceration & an educational anatomy lesson
 • Nutritional differences of meat from heritage vs. commercial breeds
 • Cold shorting & effective freezer packaging for long-term storage

Processing your own chickens for family food is a lost art of our culture. It’s time to bring back this old tradition and combine it with new techniques so that poultry processing becomes common knowledge in homes and communities.

To learn a little more about Pat, check out this video:

Friday, July 17, 2015

Two post-conference workshops this year

In response to requests to actually get on the farm for hands-on learning, this year we are adding a second post-conference workshop on Sunday. Speaker and author Patricia Foreman will be presenting a workshop on home processing of poultry. Pat will start out in the farmhouse with a discussion on processing in the morning. After lunch, everyone will be moving outside for actual chicken processing, which you can watch, or if you prefer, actually get some hands-on experience under Pat's supervision. Click here for more details!

The always popular goat workshop will be repeated again. Attendees will come face-to-face with goats and walk through the barn and pastures to learn about care, housing, fencing, feeding, nutrition, health, breeding, and birthing. You will also get a quick lesson in milking and in making mozzarella and goat milk soap.

Each workshop is $89. The goat workshop is limited to only ten participants and has always sold out. The chicken workshop is limited to twelve participants, and as this is the first year, we are expecting it to fill up fast, so register soon to avoid missing out.

Reminder -- register for the Saturday conference by July 31 and save $10 off the regular price of $89!