Welcome to Roots, Roost & Rafter
Building better flocks. Growing stronger communities.
I’m Krystal, a Nova Scotia chicken keeper, educator, rooster advocate, and the person behind the many projects that have grown from life at our homestead, Westholme.
Roots, Roost & Rafter is the village center where they all come together. It’s home to stories from our chicken village, called Wattlesford, along with practical chicken education, community gatherings, rooster advocacy, and the resources and projects I build to help poultry keepers find good information and one another.
Whether you’re here to meet the flock, learn something useful, find a local resource, or see what I’m building next, you’re in the right place.
What Brings You To The Village?
Meet Wattlesford
We’ve somehow ended up with eleven coops, five roosters, thirty-one hens, two geese, and a beagle named Renji.
Meet The FlockFind Chicken Help
I teach beginner chicken-keeping workshops and offer 30-minute Flock Talk calls for people with a whole list of questions.
Find Chicken HelpExplore Village Projects
Roots, Roost & Rafter is the umbrella over Feathered Fundamentals, The Rooster Registry, The Breeder Registry, and the other projects I keep building. Each has its own job, but they all started here.
Explore the ProjectsFind Your People
The Flock Party and other gatherings give local poultry keepers a chance to meet in person, have a coffee, and spend an afternoon talking about chickens.
Gather With Us
Meet The Chicken Lady
When we started our homestead in 2022, I had a fairly normal farm plan. It included vegetables, dairy goats, chickens for eggs, and maybe pet pigs eventually. The plan did not include eleven chicken coops, keeping every rooster, teaching chicken-keeping workshops, or building websites for chicken people, but here we are.
These days, I’m usually somewhere between checking coops, researching whatever strange thing someone’s chicken is doing, helping people learn more about their birds, and building another website because I had an idea. Roots, Roost & Rafter is where all of those parts of my life come together.
What’s Happening in the Village
The Flock Party
On Sunday, September 27, local poultry keepers are getting together in South Alton for an afternoon of coffee, snacks, and a lot of chicken talk.
There won’t be a speaker, a packed schedule, or any pressure to work the room. It’s just a chance to meet some of the people you’ve talked to online and spend a few hours with others who are equally happy to discuss their birds all afternoon.
Registration closes Monday, September 21.
Have a Henquiry?
Answers to your chicken keeping questions.
People send me chicken questions all the time, and a lot of them are things other keepers are wondering about too. Henquiries are where I choose one of those questions, remove any identifying information, and answer it publicly so it can help more than one person.
The questions start here at Roots, Roost & Rafter. Answers that need a more detailed explanation are given a permanent home at Feathered Fundamentals, where they’re easier to find and refer back to later.
If there’s something you’ve been wondering about, send it in. I won’t always be able to answer every single question but yours may become a future post.
From Around the Village
The latest stories, updates, and general chicken nonsense from the Roots, Roost & Rafter Facebook page.
