Welcome! Our names are Anna and Alexa and we are twin sisters from the wonderful state of Michigan! We started The Pioneer Chicks in 2015 as a way to share our knowledge of poultry and the delicious recipes that we love to create!

Over the years, we have decided to take our name to heart, and strive to become modern pioneers! We wanted to start living a more simple, self-sufficient lifestyle so that we could have more time and money to spend on the things that mattered most to us.

~ photographer, homesteader ~

Alexa is the creative force behind The Pioneer Chicks. She writes all of the chicken articles and creates the recipes that you get to enjoy. Her passion to always be better is what makes The Pioneer Chicks grow and improve. All of the beautiful imagery on The Pioneer Chicks is thanks to her amazing passion for photography. Alexa’s love for poultry has led her to found the Black Feather Farm. She has competed in the National 4-H Poultry & Egg Conference and has been featured in Backyard Poultry magazines and the Farm Show magazine.

Alexa has a degree in graphic design and currently works as a freelance photographer. Contact The Pioneer Chicks if you would like to see Alexa’s photography portfolio or are interested in working with her.

From Alexa:

“Thanks for stopping by our blog! I love running this blog with my sister and enjoy posting informative posts on things I care about. My passion is in photography, homesteading, and building pioneer lifeskills. I like to use herbs, essential oils, and other natural supplements to better my health and the health of my homestead flock. One of my goals is to turn the Black Feather Farm into a profitable homestead. I would also like to try raising every kind of domestic poultry out there. So far I have raised chickens, ducks, guineas, pheasants, and pigeons.”

“I love hanging out with my family and going on adventures with my dad and mom. A few hobbies I enjoy include baking, cooking, birding, needle felting, and photography. My favorite things to photograph are food, animals, and my collection of Schleich model animals. A few of my favorite things to bake include pies and cookies. I love outdoorsy activities including camping, horseback riding, campfires, hunting, fishing, and swimming.”

~ graphic designer, pilot ~

Anna is the co-founder of The Pioneer Chicks. She helped start the blog and her contributions to the user friendliness and design of the blog are essentail for keeping the blog up and running. She is also the official taste-tester for all the recipes and proof-reader for all the chicken articles. Anna is pursuing a career as a missionary pilot and is currently training to become an airplane mechanic.

From Anna:

“Hi there, thanks for visiting our blog! My twin sister and I share the fun responsibility for posting on this blog. Some (cool) things about me include; I participate in 4-H and enjoy raising my flock of chickens. My favorite chicken breed is the Salmon Faverolle and I have always wanted a Brahma rooster. 🙂 I am also a member of the EAA and a private pilot. I love flying and am always trying to convince Alexa to go up with me. I enjoy putting my love for God’s Word into beautiful images that I can use for future reference. For fun and recreation I enjoy baking (and eating), reading The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings (big fan of both), running (it really is fun), and hanging out with my friends.”

We grew up loving animals and have always had a variety of ‘pets’. After enrolling in a 4-H club and beginning our first 4-H poultry project in 2013 , we have now fallen in love with our feathered friends. Every year since then we have raised poultry.

Both of us showed and exhibited our chickens at the local county fair and at various poultry shows across the state. Along with showing our birds, we also strive to keep them as healthy and happy as possible using natural remedies and preventions. Chickens are the gateway animal to homesteading, and so they proved to be for us! Starting in 2017, we started focusing more on breeding and preserving rare and heritage chickens. We hope to grow this part of our homestead into a business and continue to share our knowledge and experience with others.

Both of us were diagnosed with asthma when we were younger and have struggled with various food allergies over the years. Since then, we have started paying closer attention to the foods we eat and what affect they have on our health.

Changing our diet was very hard at first but our mom really encouraged and inspired us to find healthier alternatives that taste just as good. We now live without inhalers and medications and feel great! Both of us love working in the kitchen, trying new recipes, or creating our own.

Raising chickens and creating healthy recipes seemed to go hand-in-hand for creating a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle! They are also the basis for our modern pioneer principles… raise & make your own food, become more self-sufficient.

Our focus with The Pioneer Chicks is to share our journey as we become modern pioneers and to hopefully inspire others to become modern pioneers as well! There are four mottos that we use to help ourselves stay focused on becoming modern pioneers. On our blog, we share information about these two mottos:

• Be Self-Sufficient: right now we are focusing on that through raising our homestead flock and growing some of our own foods in our homestead garden
• Live a Healthy Lifestyle: we are striving towards that through creating wholesome recipes that use simple, healthy ingredients

In our newsletter and in our Trading Post, we share information about our other two mottos:

• Live Sustainably: we work on limiting our waste, saving energy, shopping local, making instead of buying, and being frugal
• Be Environmentally Conscious: ways that we achieve that is through using organic, all-natural, and sustainably harvested products

Our values include our family, our faith, our health, and our environment. Based off of these core values, we have also set for ourselves some modern pioneer values:

• take the best care of our animals– give them plenty of space, clean living quarters, and daily care
• respect nature- use holistic approaches, work with nature (not against it), and be aware of the natural resources that we use (and how we can replace them to the best of our ability)
• live off the land– go back to our homesteading roots and be self-sufficient
• practice good health daily- what we eat and drink affects how we feel and our health
• be frugal- understand that if we use up something, it’s gone and more money or energy has to be spent to replenish it

Be Self-Sufficient

• Raise our own livestock, including both the small animals (like chickens) and the large animals (like cows).
• Grow our own food… time to limit grocery shopping trips!
• Harvest our own food, whether it be fresh meat, eggs, dairy, fruits, or vegetables.
• Practice food preservation, including learning how to use a root cellar!
• Make food for our livestock so we are not only supporting ourselves, but our animals too.

Clean Eating

• What produce we do purchase should be organic and sustainably harvested.
• Any meat that we buy must be pasture-raised, organic, and humanly raised.
• Do as much home baking and cooking as we can!
• Use only natural, nutritious ingredients in our baked goods and meals.
• Make recipes that are allergy-friendly, fit our dietary restrictions, and are low-inflammation.
• Incorporate new homestead foods into our diet like sprouts, fermented foods, sourdough, and other home-sourced ingredients.

Sustainable Living

• Limit our waste, which means recycling, upcycling, composting, and finding alternative to products that would normally have to be thrown away.
• Make our own all-natural cleaning products for the utility room, the bathroom, the coop, and anywhere else!
• Shop local for any foods, amenities, or gifts.
• Be frugal with our money, spend and save wisely!
• Save on energy, be mindful of water and electricity usage to reduce our carbon footprint. The early pioneers didn’t have running water or electricity in their cabins.

Build Life Skills

• Don’t buy what you can make! For example, make our own spice blends, bone broth, apple cider vinegar, vanilla extract, etc…
• Learn how to sew, quilt, knit, do basketry, and other homemaking skills.
• Learn to hunt, fish, chop wood, do basic carpentry, know woodcraft, and other outdoor skills.
• Use holistic remedies and make our own tinctures, tonics, and teas.
• Learn more about livestock care and basic horsemanship.

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