Our Homestead Story
Growing and building our little village.
Our homestead is called Westholme. I started building it in 2022 with a fairly normal plan: vegetable gardens, dairy goats for milk and soap, chickens for eggs, and maybe a couple of pet pigs eventually.
That is not quite what happened.
The goats never arrived and neither did the pigs (though I haven’t given up hope on that one yet), the gardens became increasingly mediocre, and the chickens took over. Westholme now has eleven coops, five roosters, thirty-one hens, two geese, and a steady supply of things I have decided I apparently need to build.
Most of it has come together slowly, one fence post, garden bed, and chicken coop at a time, with about 97% of the building done by yours truly.
From Farm Plans to Crazy Chicken Lady
As it turns out, my heart wasn’t built for the traditional farming model. I couldn’t justify replacing hens just because they slowed down or stopped laying. I couldn’t send roosters away to be butchered simply because there were “too many.”
I wanted to keep them. All of them!
So the retired hens will stay, the extra roosters got their own coops, and the original farm plan quietly turned into something else. Westholme may look a bit like a farm from the road, but it is really a homestead built around the animals who live here, including the ones who are no longer earning their keep.
You know what, though? That’s totally ok too.
I’m less “farmer” and more “crazy chicken lady with a serious coop addiction and a mediocre garden”. I’m perfectly happy with that.
Why Roots, Roost & Rafter?
When I started all of this, I called it Westholme Farmstead. Westholme is a play on my married name, West, and homestead, with an extra “l” thrown in because it sounded cozier that way.
Westholme still feels right. It’s the name of our home. The “Farmstead” part eventually stopped fitting because, honestly, I’m not a farmer. I grow some food and keep a lot of animals, but Westholme isn’t run like a farm and I don’t think of myself as a farmer.
What I was building has also grown beyond the homestead itself. I’m teaching workshops, helping other chicken keepers, building websites, advocating for roosters, organizing community gatherings, and coming up with more projects than any reasonable person needs.
Roots, Roost & Rafter became the place where all of those things could belong together.
Roots are Westholme, the gardens, and the real-life experiences everything else has grown from.
Roost is for the birds, of course, but also for finding your people and having somewhere you belong.
Rafter is for everything I build, whether it’s a chicken coop, a website, a resource, or an entire new project because I had another idea.
Westholme is home. Roots, Roost & Rafter is everything that has grown from it.
Meet the Chicken Lady
I’m Krystal – village builder, project manager, designer, gardener, and chief chicken/goose wrangler around here.
I handle the day-to-day animal care, coop building, problem-solving, and general management at Westholme. My husband Gary and our son Zack help when I need another set of hands, particularly when I run into something that is physically impossible to do alone. Some things are just too heavy and awkward for one person!
The work that has grown from the homestead combines two parts of my life that might not seem related at first. I’ve spent nearly twenty years working with WordPress, web design, and graphic design. Now I use those skills to build poultry resources, registries, websites, workshops, and whatever other project I’ve talked myself into.
On the chicken side, I teach beginner chicken-keeping workshops, offer Flock Talk consultations, and spend an unreasonable amount of time researching poultry health and behavior. I’ve completed several chicken-care courses, built a growing poultry veterinary reference library, and even created Clara, my private research assistant, to help me work with that library more effectively.
I’m not a veterinary professional, and I’m careful not to present myself as one. I’m an experienced keeper who cares deeply about giving people accurate information, helping them understand their birds, and knowing when a problem needs professional veterinary care.
When I’m not doing any of that, I’m usually homeschooling my son Zack, reading, building something, or sitting outside with a cup of coffee while the geese chew on me like I’m a snack.
I’m almost always somewhere on the homestead. This is my happy place, and I rarely leave.
Wattlesford: The Chicken Village
Wattlesford is what we call the chicken village that has gradually taken over one end of the property.
It started with one coop and kept expanding as the flock grew, more roosters needed safe places to live, and certain chickens made it very clear that they could not peacefully share a home. There are now eleven coops housing five roosters, thirty-one hens, and a mated pair of geese.
Every coop has its own flock, routine, and ongoing drama. Together, they make Wattlesford.
The village is also the setting for a collection of stories I’ve written about the flock. They don’t have illustrations yet, but I hope to turn them into proper storybooks someday.
