Our Homestead Story
Growing and building our little village.
This homestead didn’t appear overnight. It’s been built slowly, one fence post, garden bed, and chicken coop at a time (97% of by yours truly).
This is Westholme, our little corner of the world where the animals, gardens, coops, projects, and all the ideas that never seem to stop growing have come together over the years.
What started as a simple plan to live a little closer to the land has turned into a patchwork of animals, food, and projects that never really seem to stop. It’s busier, louder, and a lot more layered than anything I originally imagined. Animals, builds, ideas, and ongoing projects all seem to overlap here and I never really sit still for long.
From Farm Plans to Crazy Chicken Lady Reality
Back in 2022, this whole thing began as Westholme Farmstead. The plan looked a lot more structured on paper than it ever did in practice – vegetables in rows, dairy goats for milk and soap, chickens for eggs, maybe pigs eventually.
Reality didn’t follow the paper plans.
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 hens stay even after they quit laying, the roosters all stay even though it’d be far easier with just one of them, and the “farm plan” shifted into something else entirely.
Over time I’ve learned that, even if the place does look like a farm with all of the coops out there, I’m less “farmer” and more “crazy chicken lady with a serious coop addiction, too many roosters, and a mediocre garden”.
You know what, though? That’s totally ok too.
What grew here instead of the farm I dreamed of was something even more meaningful.
Why Roots, Roost & Rafter?
Eventually, I realized that Westholme Farmstead wasn’t really the right description of what I was building – the “Farmstead” part just didn’t fit. So Westholme (a play on my married name, West” and “homestead” with an “l” thrown in there for the cozy vibes) stayed as the official name of our homestead, and the brand grew into something else.
Roots, Roost & Rafter became the name for the collection of ideas, stories, projects, and community-building efforts that grew out of life here. The name reflects the three pieces that tie all of those things together:
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“Roots” are where things begin. Our connection to home, the land, the experiences that shape us, and the ideas that grow from them.
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“Roost” is about the living, gathering and belonging. Our flocks, our stories, our communities, and the people who make this whole thing worthwhile.
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“Rafter” is about building. Coops and gardens, websites and tools, projects and communities.
Westholme is still home. Roots, Roost & Rafter is what grew from it.
Meet the “Chicken Lady”
I’m Krystal – village builder, project manager, designer, gardener, and chief chicken/goose wrangler around here.
My husband Gary and our son Zack help out when I need an extra set of hands, but most of the day-to-day running, building, and decision-making lands with me. It’s a mix of animal care, project work, and whatever urgent fix or chicken problem just popped up that morning.
Alongside the homestead side of things, I also work in graphic and web design. That’s where a lot of the projects come from – building systems, designing tools, and shaping the digital side of things that support what’s happening here in real life.
I’m also a pretty vocal rooster advocate. Roosters get a bad reputation they don’t always earn, and that’s something I’ve built part of my work around changing, or at least challenging.
When I’m not checking on the chickens or working on (yet another) coop build, I’m usually working one of my many projects, reading, homeschooling the kid, 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 ever leave.
Wattlesford: The Chicken Village
Wattlesford is what the chicken village turned into without anyone really deciding it should. It’s a collection of coops spread across one end of the property, each with its own flock.
The birds spend their days scratching for bugs, pecking at greens, and soaking up the sunshine, rewarding us with beautiful eggs.
Our little chicken village is made up of eleven coops that are (currently) filled with five roosters, thirty-one hens, and a mated pair of geese.
Wattlesford is also where my storybooks are based – written from life here, shaped by real birds and real moments, just turned into something a little more whimsical on the page. They’re not illustrated yet, just stories without pictures, but I hope to publish them someday.