Boots and Roots

Welcome to Boots and Roots, the official blog of 7 Arrow Ranch! I’m Heather, owner/manager of 7 Arrow, a small, regenerative ranch in north central Texas. Our main “enterprise” is pasture-raised poultry–chickens for meat and eggs, and turkeys. We also raise Syfan Spanish goats, a few head of cattle, and have dogs and cats. The only thing we “lack” is a horse!

I am working on a whole series of basic “getting started with chicks” information. For someone who’s new to blogging, and is better and talking to my turkeys than communicating my thoughts cohesively, I probably should have started blogging about something simpler–literally anything.

But NOPE!

My first blog posts on here started off as an entire series–and guide–for you for getting started with chicks. But other things came up in the meantime. The chick-buying guide will be several pages long, and will encompass several different aspects of buying and caring for chicks. Please bear with me as I get each of these posts completed and published.

My hope, with this whole blog, is that others can learn from both my mistakes and my successes.

So why should you listen to me or pay attention to what I say?

We purchased our 20-acre slice of heaven back in December 2017, but my leap into “homesteading” actually began back in 2010, when I fired my boss, and left the workforce to be a stay-at-home mom to my then-2-year-old and 6-year-old daughters.

Quitting my job to stay home was a huge leap of faith, one that inspired me to learn how to bake bread and make my own laundry detergent–anything to save money,

Since 2010, I have learned how to make just about everything from scratch. We also began homeschooling in 2011, and then had 3 more kiddos!

Since purchasing our farm, I have continued to learn an even wider range of skills, from baking cakes from scratch and making yogurt to building portable shelters for animals and slaughtering chickens, from running fecal exams and draining abscesses to reading a field to know when to hay or rotate animals to a new paddock. Sourdough is still a mystery to me.

I have learned a LOT about a LOT, particularly about chickens. My middle daughter and I are the “go-to’s” when my chicken friends–both new and experienced–have questions about health, egg abnormalities, raising chicks, all kinds of troubleshooting questions, or goals to go from a conventional setting to a more holistic setting (i.e. free range or pasture-raised).

And now, I’m hoping to get this knowledge–not just about chickens, but about homesteading, homeschooling, all of it, really–out of my head and onto paper (or this blog) for your benefit.

Welcome to new adventures!