A Druid’s Guide to Homestead Bird Flocks and Flock Happiness

The Druid's Garden

On the Druid’s Garden homestead, we have many feathered friends. I think a lot of people see birds just as livestock, but here, we see them a little differently. Thus, I wanted to create a short guide for people who were thinking about cultivating a relationship with a backyard flock of birds but they weren’t sure what kind of birds they might want! Of course, this is my own druid perspective on homestead bird flocks, which might be a bit different than what you’ll find on more general sites. In this guide, I’ll talk about a variety of backyard flock breeds, how they might help your garden and homestead, challenges, temperament, and more. I will also note that I haven’t raised birds for meat, so I won’t talk about that much in this guide. I’ll cover four common backyard flock birds: chickens, ducks, geese, and guinea fowl.

Entering Into Relationship

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The Bee and the Machine: Moving Beyond Efficiency and towards Nature-Centeredness

The Druid's Garden

Animals have spirit!

Over the course of the last four centuries, the Western World has created a set of “unshakable” principles concerning the natural world: that nature is just another machine, that animals don’t feel and do not have souls, that plants and animals aren’t sentient. Descartes, writing in the 1600s during the early rise of mechanization, was one of the first to make this claim. He posited that animals are mechanical automata, that is, they are beings without souls, feelings, or pain. These same ideas were not limited to non-human life; we see the same kind of thinking being applied to justify slavery, genocide, colonialization, and a list of other atrocities. When we combine this kind of thinking with the economic ideas of “growth at all costs” and “efficiency”, we end up in the dystopian fiction we find ourselves living in right now. I want to take some time…

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On Being a Minority Religion and Paths to Building Respect

The Druid's Garden

“I’m sorry, I’m unavailable to meet on that day.”

A pause, “well, why is that? This is an important meeting.”

“Because it is a major holiday for me, and I am taking a personal day to celebrate it.”

Another, longer pause. “Wait, your holiday is Halloween? That’s not a religious holiday.”

“No, my holiday is Samhain, which is a holiday dedicated to my ancestors. Modern Halloween traditions actually derived from this much older holiday.”

Another pause. “Can’t you celebrate it on another day?”

“No. The timing is critical to the celebration. Would I ask you to meet on Christmas or Easter?”

Another pause. “That’s not the same thing.”

The above interchange is a fairly common interaction fairly typical of my workplace experiences in being a minority religion, a druid, here in the USA. In fact, I had this exchange with someone just last week. Since this kind of thing seems…

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Shoes

Many people take their shoes off to keep the negative energy from the day out of their house.

I don’t know if it’s still a practice, I’ve been married nearly 35 years, of tying tin cans to scare off evil spirits and shoes to the bumper of the transportation the newlyweds use to leave the wedding beginning their new life together.

The Witch Reborn in Autumn: Spiritual Death and the Dance of Bones | Spirits Dance Bones

Good Witches Homestead

The Wild Witch and the Dance of Bones

The moon ascends from her primal cave,

And my feet twitch in excitement.

For this is the long-awaited call

Back to my soul’s home.

I become a wild witch once more.

Hail Autumn,

With your winds of change,

Blowing me free of what has passed,

Dancing in the delight of freedom.

Spiraling joyfully towards the darkness that is my truth.

Spinning onwards to Hekate’s Cave,

The font of magick and mystery.

The spirits of the season join me and the leaves, in our delight,

Knowing deep in our souls that we are connected,

In our pursuit of the deeper truths.

Swirling wildness embraces me,

As I proclaim

My place among them.

Our dance calls forth the spirits,

Of the departed and the mighty,

Night wandering under the pale light of the moon,

Onwards, our steps in harmony,

Towards the crossroads where we…

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Earthen Nature Spirit Statues with Cob

The Druid's Garden

An earth spirit statue in my greenhouse, freshly made with sticks and an oak gall

A lifetime ago, myself and a dear friend dug some clay out of a hillside. We each took half of it. My half of the clay was used to form an earthen statue, a guardian statue, for that same friend who was struggling with terminal cancer while still in his early 20’s. It had a wooden tree knot head, stones for its belly, a stick staff, and an earthen body. My friend accepted it reverently, and it went with him everywhere, even till the end. As he struggled with his battle with cancer, it grew nicked and chipped. The wooden head fell off, just as my friend’s brain cancer grew more serious. When he passed on, the earthen statue passed on with him, returning to the earth. This statue was an impermanent being; fashioned of…

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The Ways of our Ancestors: Review of the Mountaincraft and Music Gathering

The Druid's Garden

Here, in the center of our camp, the sacred fire burns. This fire is tended for the four days we are together, never being allowed to go out. This is an ancestral fire, and all of us at the Mountaincraft gathering have the responsibility of feeding it. This is where we remember that learning primitive and earth skills is the work of our ancestors. This is where we gather for a quiet moment to commune with those ancestors, and will our bodies and hearts to remember. This is where, each morning, we gather as a group to hear about the day’s classes, call to the directions, hear a word of intention, and recieve a water blessing from Nancy Basket, a tribe elder. This is where, at each meal, some of us may find ourselves, talking with each other or engaging in quiet communion with the flame. This is where, each…

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Friday the 13th: Myth, Superstition or Reality?

Good Witches Homestead

Apparently, there is no definitive date for the origin of the dreaded day of special misfortune. While there is evidence to suggest that the number thirteen was considered unlucky prior to the 20th century, there is no definitive link between Friday and the number 13, or so “they” say. I used to take that at face value, but not so much anymore. Actually, when you consider all of the origin stories, there are all kinds of connections between Fridays and thirteens.

There are some who insist that Friday the 13th is a modern conceptual invention. According to this theory, the first recorded mention of a Friday the 13th occurred in 1907 with the publication of Thomas W. Lawson’s popular novel, Friday, the Thirteenth. The storyline of the book tells of a stockbroker who exploits the superstition to create a panic on Wall Street on Friday the 13th. Obviously, it doesn’t…

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Electric Universe

Building with Cob, Part II: Soil Tests and Mixing Cob

The Druid's Garden

Happy feet mixing cob!

In a meadow under the summer sun, a group of dancers laugh and fling mud. Beneath their feet, clay, sand, and water become mixed together, creating a sticky earthen blend that sticks to their feet, their legs, and, after some play, faces and fingers! This is a cob mixing party, one of the best times you can have with good friends. After the cob is mixed, it is added by others to the bench and more soil is added and the dance continues. In last week’s post we explored some reasons to consider exploring natural building as a potential way to build sustainable structures and be more attuned with the energies of earth. In this week’s post, we will get into how to test your soil and how to make some cob!

One thing I want to share about cob–you don’t have to build big things…

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