10 Reasons to Raise Chickens

We enjoy our chickens very much. Here are some of the reasons why (excerpted from My Pet Chicken Handbook: Sensible Advice and Savvy Answers for Raising Backyard Chickens:

Chickens make great pets. They have personality galore, and they're extraordinarily easy to care for. They're bright, funny, quirky, friendly, loving little balls of feathers-and they're entertaining, too. When you have a flock, you'll find they have their own friends, their own cliques, their own favorite nests. Chickens come in such an array of colors, patterns, shapes, and sizes that some of them look more like exotic tropical birds-or even alien life-forms-than farm animals.

Keeping chickens is a lifestyle choice. Having chickens helps fulfill a positive, back-to-the-farm way of living that's about becoming more sustainable. It's also a way to celebrate local, slow food, and reestablish a constructive connection with your neighbors and your neighborhood.

Raising chickens allows you to have more control over the type of food you put on your table. You want organic? You want non-GMO? You want cruelty-free? These choices are all yours to make when raising your chickens.

Chickens will eat your table scraps and convert them into eggs on the one hand, and fertilizer on the other. If you grow vegetables or flowers, you'll find that composted chicken manure is great for your home garden, adding organic matter and nutrients to the soil. Plus, chicken manure from layers tends to be relatively high in calcium, which is helpful for plants, warding off blossom-end rot on tomatoes, for example.


Chickens will cut down on the number of insects in your yard. Anywhere chickens are allowed to forage, they'll snap up spiders, ticks, beetles, grubs, worms, grasshoppers, and more. They love to dig through lawn clippings and yard waste, too.

The eggs from hens raised with access to your backyard will be tastier and more nutritious! Research shows they're not only higher in omega-3s, beta-carotene, and vitamins A, D, and E, but they're lower in cholesterol and saturated fat. They taste better, too. It's something you can see: All that extra nutrition gives backyard eggs a dark orange yolk-not the pale yellow color you see in store-bought eggs.

You'll be eating really fresh eggs—sometimes just minutes old-as opposed to the eggs you get in a grocery store, which can be 6 weeks old or more.

You'll be giving your children positive values. Just as with other pets, keeping chickens can help kids learn about responsibility. But because chickens give back in such a tangible way-eggs!-your kids can also learn about reciprocity and how the care they provide impacts their pets directly. Once they taste the eggs, they'll also come to learn that store-bought isn't always better. Some things are worth doing yourself.

You'll have control over how humanely your wonderful egg producers are treated—and how healthy and clean their environment is.

Chickens are so easy to care for. No walking, no pooper-scoopers, no grooming, no boarding when you go away; they won't scratch up your furniture or chew your favorite slippers.

Mini-Ecosystems on Our Mini-Farm

At our place, when our mini-ecosystems are running as they should, the goats, chickens, ducks, worms, catfish and tilapia, all work together to feed each other and us humans.

The chickens like to get to the fresh goat manure as soon as it comes out of the goat. They peck it open to get to undigested seeds and, we presume, parasites. In the process, the chickens scratch to turn the manure into the straw bedding of the goat pen. Thanks to the chickens the composting bacteria begin their work even before we muck out the pen.

The straw and manure from the pen go to one of several compost bins or piles until the composting action cools. In the meantime, we dump kitchen scraps on top of these piles and let the chickens and ducks have at them. They add manure to the piles as the chickens scratch and turn the compost, speeding the decomposition.

 

From there the cooled, but not necessarily completed compost goes either to the garden as mulch or to the worm bin to become vermicompost (worm castings). The worms go to feed the fish, ducks, and chickens. Most of vermicompost goes to the garden, some goes as tea to feed the duckweed, while a bucketful (with worms) goes to the bottom of the empty compost bin ready to receive more muck from the goats.

The fish eat the duckweed, and in moderation and for variety the following: garden and kitchen scraps, chicken and duck manure (and the flora these encourage), worms, chopped offal from the duck and chicken butchering, and raw scrambled eggs.

The ducks and chickens receive the fish offal, greens from garden and the aquaponic grow beds, and duckweed (the ducks like it wet, the chickens like it dry).

Solid fish waste is filtered out of the fish tanks to feed the garden and to help heat up the compost as needed.

Goats get leafy greens from the garden and aquaponic beds.

The humans keep it all moving and healthy. In return we get veggies, fruits, nuts, herbs, eggs, milk, meat, and fish.

67 Self-Sufficiency How-To's

1. Raising Ducks 101 
2. How to Save Seeds
3. Preparing for Cold and Flu Season With Probiotics
4. Ultimate Chicken Care Guide
5. How to Process Meat Rabbits
6. How to Make Reusable Food Wrap
7. How to Make a Clothespin Bag From an Old Pair of Jeans
8. How to Flash Freeze Green Beans
9. Restoring and Seasoning Rusted Cast Iron
10. How to Can Peaches
11. 5 Favorite Ways to Repurpose Feed Sacks
12. Predator Proofing Your Coop
13. How to Make Tomato Powder
14. Making Venison Jerky
15. How to Trim Your Goat’s Hooves
16. Permaculture: Integrate Rather Than Segregate
17. How to Build a Chicken Tractor
18. How to Braid Garlic
19. Aquaponics Intro
20. Canning Butternut Squash + pressure canning primer
21. Canning Grape Juice and Jelly
22. Cinnamon Coconut Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
23. DIY Elderberry Syrup
24. DIY Flock Block
25. Home Brew on the Homestead
26. Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk
27. How to Store Onions
28. Mulch Cover Crops for Organic Gardens
29. Nourishing Soups for Cold and Flu Season
30. Satsuma orange farm
31. Stinging Nettle and Its Health Benefits
32. 5 Awesome Apple Dips
33. 10 Benefits and Uses of Apple Cider Vinegar
34. Putting Chickens to Work in the Fall Garden
35. Curing Olives
36. Homemade Applesauce
37. Extend Your Growing Season
38. DIY Inexpensive Easy Food Drying Rack 
39. How to be an apartment homesteader
40. How to Fix Soil Nutrient Deficiencies
41. Seed Saving 101
42. How to Prepare for Butchering
43. Freezing Tomatoes
44. 10 Best Herbs to Grow Indoors
45. Canning Tomato Soup
46. Root Cellars 101
47. How to Make Apple Jelly
48. How to Can Peach Salsa
49. How to Grow Garlic
50. Growing Garlic
51. How to Freeze Mixed Vegetables
52. How to Butcher a Whole Pig for a Pig Roast
53. How to Make Hard Cider
54. 9 ways young kids can help in the kitchen
55. Basics of traditional foods
56. Best cold and flu fighters
57. Direct composting
58. Financial realities of homesteading
59. Food storage
60. Heating with wood
61. Homemade chicken broth
62. Homemade citrus extract
63. How to make buttermilk
64. How to make infusions, decoctions, tinctures
65. Natural stove cleaners
66. Rural homesteading: four things to know
67. Teaching children food preservation

Home Grown Breakfast

Eggs, cheese, potatoes, tomatoes, basil, and milk. All home grown. Yummy and very satisfying.

If we can do it, so can you. We encourage you to “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” --Theodore Roosevelt

With just a little patch of ground (or a couple of containers) you can grow tomatoes, greens for salads, herbs, and strawberries for example.

With a little more space, you could have a couple of chickens--they'll eat your kitchen waste and give you eggs in return. Scraps of food to scrambled eggs--a rags to riches kind of thing. They'll also give you manure to compost an put on your vegetable patch.

We agree with Julia Child who said, "You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients." And it doesn't get much fresher than picking or gathering your food a few minutes before it goes onto your plate.

More Muscovies and Fewer Campbells

Today our mama Muscovy brought out fifteen ducklings from the nest! And they are very cute. As we posted earlier, Muscovies make great mini-homestead livestock. They are quiet (they don't quack), good foragers (they eat grass, weeds, and bugs), and provide plenty of eggs and meat.

One day old Muscovies.

Watchful Mama Duck

Following Mama

We also have Khaki Campbell ducks. These are great layers, but they do have some drawbacks for us. First and foremost, we can't eat the eggs--they are yummy, but they upset the tummy. They are also noisy--constantly quacking. We have had two hatches of them this spring, eleven in each hatch. We'll be harvesting all the adult Campbells in the next week or so, and will grow out the ducklings for harvest in a few months. Although they are much smaller than the Muscovies, and therefore, don't give us as much meat per bird, we do like the taste. It is worth the extra effort of preparing and extra bird for each meal.

Mama Campbell and her ducklings

Building A Self-Sufficient Mini-Farm

Building a self-sufficient mini-farm can be a daunting task of you try to do it all at once.

We began our project several years ago, and we couldn't say exactly when we started. We can tell you however, we knew when we had built one. Last March, we were picking up a mail-order of some day-old ducks and geese at the post office, when the clerk asked, "Do you have a farm?" We said, "We do now!" We hadn't really thought much about it up until that point, but we knew that answer to the question when asked.

In an urban or suburban setting, it is difficult to imagine a completely sustainable mini-farm. It is not difficult to imagine a mini-farm part, just the sustainable, or completely self-sufficient part. But we can approach those goals. We like the way self-sufficiency expert John Seymour put it, “You do not need five acres and a degree in horticulture to become self-sufficient ... self-sufficiency is about taking control and becoming an effective producer of whatever your resources allow.” And then there is Teddy Roosevelt: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

We had had a vegetable garden for many years, when about five or six years ago, we decided to grow as much of our food as we could in our 800 square-foot garden area. And why not? We were already doing much of the work. A little planning and a bit more work and we thought we could attain our goal.  The first season included all of the usual favorites (inspired by our Friday night pizza custom): tomatoes, peppers, corn, zucchini, pole beans, bush beans, herbs, and so forth in the spring and summer; in the fall we had broccoli, beets, cabbage, peas, and some other cool season crops. The difference between this garden season and previous years was the amount of each crop.

We planned and planted with an eye to putting up enough to get us through the winter (especially the tomato sauce). We had purchased a food dehydrator several years previously, but had only used it sporadically. We started using it weekly, if not daily. We bought a stock pot and jars in which to can tomato sauce. We bought a pressure cooker and more jars to can other parts of the harvest.

The next year we expanded our garden area and planted some more of the stuff we wanted: okra, cucumbers, and loofah gourds to name a few. Fruit trees came next. We started three worm bins to convert our kitchen scraps into compost.

Somewhere in there we bought some chickens for the eggs, remodeled our pigeon coop to be a chicken coop, and started collecting the eggs.

We were pretty happy with the fact that we were raising our own veggies and gathering our own eggs, so we started looking around for what might be next. We realized that we were buying milk at the rate of about a gallon a day for our growing family. Hmmm... Cow or goats? We ended up with goats. Milk started coming in. Now we had veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk.

We also had plenty of manure  and straw to make into compost for the garden. In previous years, we went begging to the neighbors for leaves, lawn clippings, and horse manure to add to our own share of yard trimmings--we had pretty good compost with all of that. Now however, we had our own sources for great compost. This is were a good bit of the "self-sufficient" part of the farm comes in. With all the animal and fish wastes, we have plenty to sustain our plants. But we have only a quarter acre to live and work on, so our space is very limited.  Although our back lawn has become the pasture on which we feed our birds most of the year, and they get first crack at the kitchen scraps every day, we just don't have the room to grow the forage for the poultry year-round, let alone the goats. We bring in feed for them.

Water is another issue for us. We are not permitted to dig a well. We bought 3 IBC totes (275 gallons each)  to collect rain water (just a small step toward self-sufficiency here). It does rain enough in Southern California to easily fill these with runoff from the roof of our house. But one or two  weeks of watering the garden in the summer time used up our stores. To make a long story short, the totes became the fish tanks and grow beds for our aquaponic system--a much more efficient use of resources since aquaponics uses much less water than a similar-sized conventional garden. In a 48 square-foot area of our patio we can grow all the fish we would like to eat, plus bunches of veggies. At this point we have veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk, and fish. Not enough to meet all our needs all the time, but we are getting close to that goal.

Eventually, we decided to buy some more chicks, and a friend gave us some eggs to incubate and hatch out. Of course, about half of these were cockerels. Since we had them, we thought it would be a good opportunity to raise them out for meat. We did. It was a great idea!  About that same time, we received from some good friends some fertile Marans (chicken) eggs. We incubated this brood of chocolate-colored eggs and hatched out about a dozen. We kept the hens, ate all but one of the cockerels, keeping the best one as our rooster. For a couple of years now we have had a constant supply of chicks for layers and meat birds. We've recently added Pilgrim geese, Campbell ducks, and Muscovies to our poultry flock. We've eaten some Muscovy, and we're getting ready to eat some ducks. The geese haven't laid any eggs yet, but will soon. When they do, we'll be raising a Christmas Goose!

What this means for us now is that we are able to produce a good bit of our food needs--veggies, fruit, eggs, and milk, fish, poultry, and meat from our goats if we want--on the piece of ground we have. We know we can do more and are constantly working to improve and increase our self-sufficiency. We have to purchase our water and most of the feed for the animals, but from that minimal investment we are able to feed ourselves, exclusively if need be.

We want to encourage you: if we can do it, so can you! Start small and work your way up to your goal slowly. Set a  modest goal to attain. Once you have achieved that goal, and are consistent in meeting it, add another. Over time, you'll be able to accomplish more than you would have though possible.

We recommend this book to get you thinking about the possibilities and to get you started:

The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!

February in the Garden

February is just about the last chance to plant peas. Also plant mesclun, lettuce, beets, cole veggies (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale), radishes, Swiss chard, turnips, carrots, and potatoes.

Choose the Right Carrot Variety for your Soil
When choosing carrot varieties, consider the heaviness of your soil. Sow short, stubby carrots in heavy clay soils and longer, tapered ones in looser sandy soil. Tips of the tap roots will grow four to six inches further down than the edible portion.

Plant bare-root asparagus, horseradish and artichokes.

Prune fruit trees if you haven't already. Feed them. Mulch avocado trees.

Make a compost pile.

Start seeds indoors for:

• Cole crops (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage) -- 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost. That would be the first part of February. These can be transplanted into the garden two weeks or so before the last frost.
• Tomatoes -- 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost. That would be mid February.

Starting From Seeds

It’s time to plan our Spring garden. For some gardeners, planning is about all that can be done until the weather warms up. For us, the last frost is expected in mid March or early April. My grandfather, whose real-sized farm was only a few miles from our mini-farm, used to plant corn every two weeks or so starting in the middle of March so that he could harvest corn for celebrations on the 4th of July and on thru the summer. He planted Golden Bantam (as do we) which is ready to harvest about 80 days after planting.

The first decision to make in garden planning is what to grow. All plants are easy to grow if you know how. Our advice is that you grow only what you plan to eat. If you don't eat beets, don't grow them--at least at first (beets are very good for you, by the way). Start with a few things that you consistently buy at the produce market. Tomatoes are the most popular home-grown vegetable, but if you don't eat tomatoes don't grow them. (A tomato is actually a fruit, but defined by the government for tax purposes as a vegetable; see Nix v. Hedden)

Knowing how long your plants need to mature will help you know when to start them in the garden. Seed packets and catalogs usually give the number of days to harvest from the time you transplant the seedling into the garden. So you work backwards from the time you want to harvest your crops, keeping in mind the frost-free date. 

To raise transplants from seed--like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc.--find out how long the seed needs to germinate (also found on the seed packet or in the catalog) along with the number of days or weeks required for the seedling to be ready to transplant (usually four to six weeks). Add these together and using a calendar, work backwards from your frost-free date. 

Organic Gardening Magazine has a chart to help with your calculations here.

Here is our schedule for starting seeds indoors. Our target date for setting out plants is the first week in April (the last expected frost). We'll start planting seeds for:

• Peppers and Eggplant -- 8 to 12 weeks before the last frost. That would be now.
• Lettuce -- 8 to 12 weeks before the last frost. That would be now. Lettuces can be transplanted into the garden a month or so before the last frost.
• Cole crops (Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage) -- 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost. That would be the first part of February. These can be transplanted into the garden two weeks or so before the last frost.
• Tomatoes -- 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost. That would be mid February.
• Cucumbers and Melons -- 2 to 4 weeks before the last frost. That would be the first part of March. These are transplanted out two weeks or more after the last frost. 

We like to grow our plants from seed for at least two reasons. First, we can more easily get seeds for the varieties we want to grow (Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck Squash, for example). Second, we choose open pollinated and heirloom varieties (not usually available from the nurseries as transplants) so that we can save seeds from year to year. 

However, if you are new to gardening, you may want to wait until the weather warms up and buy plants from the nurseries or garden shops. Nurseries tend to stock only tried-and-true varieties. These will be ready to set out in the garden, are disease resistant, suited to your area, and in most cases will not appear on store shelves until it is time to plant them, give or take a couple of weeks, depending on the weather (frost). If you choose to start seeds, we suggest you start with varieties that germinate easily: basil, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, chives, leeks, lettuce, onions, peppers, and tomatoes. 

Our favorite online seed catalogs:

Seed Savers Exchange http://www.seedsavers.org/

Territorial Seed Company http://www.territorialseed.com/

Both of these offer printed catalogs available upon request. 

Territorial Seed Co. has pretty good online "Growing Guides" for each variety of veggie. Although just about every online or print seed catalog offers information on how to grow various varieties, some have more detailed information than others. Park Seeds (http://parkseed.com/vegetables/c/vegetables/) has on most of their detail pages a "Growing Information" tab that offers planting and growing instructions, tips, special considerations, potential pests and solutions, and so on for each variety.

Our favorite book on starting plants from seed is The New Seed Starter's Handbook by Nancy Bubel. It's main sections include: Starting Seeds Indoors, Moving Plants Outdoors, Special Techniques and Situations, Saving Seeds and Making Further Plans, and an Encyclopedia of Plants to Grow from Seed (the info you need to grow each variety of garden plant). 

Starting Seeds Indoors

1. Gather your materials. Get your seed flats, milk cartons cut in half down the middle, small pots, or what ever it is you're going to plant your seeds in. You'll also need some potting soil or seed starter soil mix (recommended over potting soil), or make your own mix with equal parts sharp sand, peat moss, and perlite or vermiculite.
2. Prepare your work space. Put down some newspaper or other suitable cover on your work surface. You're going to spill some potting soil.
3. Review seed packets and make labels for your plantings. Popsicle sticks, strips cut from plastic milk jugs, ready made labels from the garden store, or simply a label taped on the side of the flat will do. Oh, and don't forget your seeds. If you're new to starting seeds and identifying seedlings, labels are must. If you have lots of garden experience, you'll know that a super-hot pepper plant looks the same as a mild-hot pepper plant. It is very easy to confuse plantings in similar looking flats or pots. Labels are a must.
4. Prepare the medium. Use a watering can or a spray bottle to moisten the potting soil or seed starting mix. It should be damp to the touch but not soggy. If you start with moist soil, you will not have to water your seeds once you after you plant them. There is enough moisture in the soil to sprout the seeds. If you are planting very fine seeds, even the finest mist can dislodge your seeds and cause them all to clump together in the corners and along the edges, making separating the seedlings for replanting difficult if not impossible.



Containers to use for starting seeds indoors. Some ready-
made, some re-purposed.

5. Prepare the containers.  Remember this planting is only temporary. As soon as your seedlings have their second set of leaves, you can move them to individual pots or packs (although you could start with these keeping in mind that they will use more starting mix). Fill your container with moistened starter mix and press it down gently. Top it off and press again so that the mix is within a half inch of the top.  Airflow, and in some cases light, is important to seed germination. A planting surface too far below the rim of the container can interfere with these.
6. Plant the seeds. If you're using a small container (like the bottom two inches of a plastic milk jug), you can scatter the seeds over the entire surface of the planting medium. If you're using a nursery flat, you can place the seeds on the surface in rows, spacing the seeds according to size (tiny seeds at least an eighth of an inch apart, medium seeds a half inch, and large seeds an inch). Remember that you are going to be transplanting the seedlings later. Separating the roots of seedlings planted too close together can be difficult if not impossible without damaging the plant. If you're using a pack with cells, put a couple of seeds in each cell. The extras can be thinned later by snipping them off with small scissors.
7. Cover the seeds. Except for the very finest seeds or those few varieties that need light to germinate (the seed packet or catalog will tell) which can simply be pressed into the medium, the seeds will need to be covered with more starting medium. A general rule of thumb is to cover the seed to a depth 3 to 4 times its size. For example, a seed that is one-eighth inch in size would be covered with three-eighths to one-half inches of cover. We tend to stay toward the shallower depth when starting seeds indoors. This cover layer of mix or vermiculite does not need to be wet. It will absorb water from the moist layer below. You will not have to water your seeds until after they sprout. There will be plenty of moisture available for them.
8. Cover the container. If you're using ready-made seed starting trays, put the covers on and your seeds are ready to go. If you're using re-purposed containers, you can place a piece of damp newspaper or burlap over the surface of your container. Or (our favorite), you can slip the whole container into a plastic bag, or use a plastic sheet (trash bag), tucking the edges under your container. You could possibly use aluminum foil, but we have never tried this. Clear plastic allows you to see what is happening without letting out the moisture around your seeds.
9. Put the container in a warm place. Your seeds have moisture and they will need warmth to germinate. Put the covered container in a warm place, but keep it out of the sun! You don't want to steam your seeds or new seedlings. The top of the fridge might be a good place. Near the stove in the kitchen. A shelf over the dryer in the laundry room or a shelf near the water heater. We've sprouted seedlings on the dining room table and on the patio table (in warm weather). Most seeds will sprout more quickly at temperatures between about 72 and 86 degrees, but have a good germination rate at around 70. In other words, a comfortable temperature for you will be good for your seeds.
10. Watch and wait. As soon as most of the seedlings emerge, they will need their plastic tent removed and to be moved to a sunny place, not necessarily in direct sunlight at first. In a future post, we'll talk about what happens next.   

January in the Garden

Today is home-grown and home-made meal day at our house. This morning we had eggs (from our chickens), sausage (made Saturday), biscuits, and milk (from our goats).  

Tonight we are planning Rosemary-Lemon Chicken, roasted cabbage, snow peas, butternut squash, and our home-made soft-drink.  Oh, and home-made ice cream for dessert! All food ingredients but the squash were harvested in the last few days or will be later today. The squash was harvested in summer. The ingredients for the soft-drink are not home-grown, but we do make it ourselves. The vanilla extract in the ice cream, is not home-grown, but it is home-made.

Several cabbages are ready to harvest, which means that we'll be making sauerkraut in the next few days.

January is time to plant garlic, onion, and shallot bulbs.

It's time also to prune roses. By the way, if you have plants that have been damaged by frost (like our kiwi vines), do not prune off the damaged parts. They may be ugly, but they'll help protect the rest of the plant from further frost damage.


Rake your lawn and/or your neighbors' lawns for leaves for your compost pile.

Once all the leaves have fallen from your fruit trees, you can prune them. While you are pruning your deciduous trees you can also trim your conifers.

Purchase and plant bare-root roses, fruit trees, vines, and veggies. Camellias and  Azaleas, too. 

Spray your roses and deciduous trees with a dormant spray.

Order seeds and supplies from seed catalogs (more on that in the next post).

A Fairly Normal Saturday

Several have asked about what a typical workday on our mini-farm might look like. First, in the spirit of full disclosure, there aren’t very many typical, or normal days. While we do have routines and schedules, life the way God created it has its variables, particularly in regard to when things need to happen.

Our goats need to be milked everyday, and so are central to scheduling whatever else might happen on a given day. The goats and all the other animals must be fed and watered, their shelters and bedding tended to, and whatever other husbandry needs to happen--like the daily egg collecting from chickens and ducks, daily watering and weeding in the garden, daily checks and adjustments in the fish farm.

Then there are the additional chores for Saturday: harvesting poultry and fish, making soap, making soda pop.

There are also chores related to the garden harvest which we like to be continual, but usually come in waves. Harvesting and preserving the harvest is the most labor intensive aspect of the farm. For example, when the Roma tomatoes are ripe, we have just about a week to get them all picked at their peak, and then comes the processing for canning or drying. It is a good thing for us when this work can happen on a Saturday, but it doesn’t always.

When possible, we plan for the “extra” work to occur on Saturday. Our weekdays are pretty well used up with the daily farm chores, school, work, and a few extracurricular activities. Sunday is the Lord’s Day, and we try to devote ourselves and our energy more completely to Him and His work and worship on His day. So that leaves Saturday.

Saturday is the day we can all work on projects together that take more than an hour to accomplish. On weekdays we set aside an hour in the morning and an hour at midday to do our farm chores. Each takes his or her turn to feed and milk the goats, weed and water the garden, tend the poultry, feed the dog, sweep the porches, mind the baby, and so forth. If we need to put up a fence, or to build raised beds,  do some plumbing, or harvest some poultry, Saturday is the day.

So far with today about half over, we have harvested four chickens, made 5 pounds each of Italian and breakfast pork sausage, picked snap peas and cauliflower, changed a wheelbarrow flat, took down the last of the Christmas lights, and started work on some new raised beds. After a break for some refreshments, we'll see what else we can get into: possibly haircuts, making soap, and/or making toothpaste.

A Little Less Ambitious

As self-sufficiency expert John Seymour wrote, “You do not need five acres and a degree in horticulture to become self-sufficient ... self-sufficiency is about taking control and becoming an effective producer of whatever your resources allow.”

Many (or even most) writing about self-sufficiency make the assumption that all of us who want to be self-sufficient want to do so primarily because of environmental concerns, global environmental concerns, like sustainability of food production, reduction of pollution, and so forth.

Our thinking is a little less ambitious. We do want the best possible environment in and around our home to allow each member of our family to thrive, both physically and spiritually. We have found in the process of improving our immediate environment by avoiding unnecessary chemicals--cleansers, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, preservatives, and sedatives--that traditional ways (natural, homemade) are most often less expensive than purchasing the commercial, chemical products.

In other words, we’re not becoming more self-sufficient to save the planet, we are becoming more self-sufficient to save ourselves. We trust ourselves to take care of us, not the government--local, state, federal, or global. We have found that being self-sufficient, while in the short run is more costly in terms of time and labor (and sometimes money) than relying on others, in the long run is less so. Growing our own food veggies and fruits for the cost of some seeds and a little water is cheaper and cleaner than buying our food at the grocery store. That’s a short term savings. In the long term, we expect to save much more in terms of health and well-being in the future. Those are long term savings.

"Sustainable" for us means that very little, if any, input is required to keep a system going after the initial investment. For example, saving seeds from open pollinated vegetable varieties means that we don't have to purchase seeds or plants each year. Or, keeping a rooster will provide chicks for us whenever we need replacement layers, or meat birds.

The investment we make now in terms of time and money has an incalculable return on investment in the near and distant future, both for ourselves and future generations. For those that feel the planet is in need of saving: the solution is not in buying carbon credits, or driving an electric car, or eating lots of tofu. Just do what you can for your immediate environment. If everyone did the same, the global environment would improve substantially. Start by growing something that you like to eat--tomatoes? peppers? salad greens? Add a couple of chickens to your yard and they will eat your table scraps and bugs in your yard, and give you eggs to eat and manure to put on your garden. Less packaging goes to the landfill, less diesel for food transport is burned, and you will be producing a good bit of your own food.

Dreams and Goals

It has been our dream to have an efficient, "sustainable" means of food production. For us, it started with the garden and has expanded steadily over the past few years.

In an urban or suburban setting, it is difficult to imagine a completely sustainable mini-farm. It is not difficult to imagine a mini-farm part, just the sustainable, or completely self-sufficient part. But we can approach those goals.

On our mini-farm we have the animals we need to provide manure--chickens, ducks, geese, fish, and goats--so there is no shortage in this department. We have at least three or four compost bins and piles going at any given time, as well as some worm bins to turn the manure, garden trimmings, and kitchen wastes into usable compost. We plan to add a bin for black soldier fly larvae next year to help deal more quickly with the kitchen waste and to provide grubs for the chickens and fish.

The snag for us in becoming self-sufficient or completely sustainable is that we are having to bring in feed for the chickens and goats. While our poultry are as free-range as we can make them, there just isn't enough "range" to completely provide for them just yet. We need to find the balance between available forage and number of birds.

The ducks and geese forage for themselves with the occasional treats of leftover fruit and greens from the table, and an occasional sprinkle of grain.  Our chickens have free access to a couple of compost piles, so they get whatever leftovers from the kitchen they want along with all the grass, weeds, seeds, and bugs the can find, but they still need extra feed to maintain egg production. The goats are given grasses and hay from bales we purchase in addition to the garden and tree trimmings and other home-grown forage we provide. We grow sunflowers specifically for the purpose of feeding the seeds to the birds (and goats) and the rest of the plant to the goats. We  also have grown mangels specifically for goat feed.  Swiss Chard is a hit with just about everybody on the farm, except some of the people. Kale, too.

To be able to eat fish from our farm once a week throughout the year, we have to purchase fish food. The black soldier fly grubs will help here. We have also been experimenting with other available foods. Tilapia have been reported to eat raw scrambled eggs. We have not had success in getting ours to eat this, but will keep trying. We do grow duckweed to feed our tilapia, but not nearly enough. More pond to grow it in would be nice, but not practical at this point.

Now to the humans on the farm. We can grow for ourselves all of our fruit and vegetable needs. We have eggs, milk, meat and fish in enough quantity to meet our needs most of the time.  We can and do make our own yogurt, ice cream, and cheeses. But if we want beef, pork, or grains we have to buy them. Do we need them? No, at least not all of the time.  So it is entirely possible for us to eat well with only animal feed coming into our farm. This is one of our goals. We'll start with a week or two and go from there.

At this point, we don't make many trips to the grocery store. We buy our staple goods in bulk.With these we make our own bread, soaps, and soft drinks. We can make our own pasta, toothpaste, shampoo, cleaners, and deodorants. Does all this save money? It sure doesn't save time, and time is money, right? Well let's see.

We spend about $300 per month on animal feed, and about twice that much on staple goods (organic if possible). We have a family of eight. That works out to less than $1.50 per person per meal. Our food is real food, no additives or sedatives. No chemicals you can't pronounce. No GMO. Our homemade cleaning and personal care products are the same way. We spend less than two hours per person per day working the farm and the kitchen.

We have a way to go, but we're getting there. Some say that the journey is more enjoyable than the destination. We're having a lot of fun getting to where we want to be. If we can do it, so can you. Start small as we did, working your way up. Start now.

More Efficient Means More Self-Sufficient

We have several improvement projects currently in progress on our place. All these and almost all of the projects planned are to make our micro eco-systems more efficient or to make our work easier or more effective. Our goal is to work smarter, not harder. This will allow us to become a little more self-sufficient in the space and time we have available.

For example, we just finished making some portable fence sections so that we can keep the fowl away from some new crops we intend to plant this week. Most of the time a low visual barrier is sufficient to keep the water fowl out, but the chickens often require a bit more, especially in height. Prior to our getting some Marans chickens, our chickens rarely, if ever flew over our four-foot picket garden fence. The Marans, however, have taught everyone in the coop to fly up to the top of the fence and then to fly down on the other side. Time to either clip some wings or make the fences a little higher, or both. So we made some lightweight fence panels that hopefully will do the job.

A month or so ago, someone left the garden gate unlatched and the geese found their way into the garden and ate every single new transplant--cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli--down to the ground! So we replanted the garden rows. A week or so later, we had a day or two of gusty winds which blew the gate latch apart. The geese helped themselves again to every single new transplant, and some not-so-new plants. So we put a new, better latch on the gate and replanted the garden rows. So far, so good: humans are happy, geese not so much.

We also are putting fence around the patio (again to keep the fowl at bay) and new siding on the fish tanks that will be more aesthetically pleasing than the makeshift siding we have had (the siding keeps the sun off of the tank so that algae doesn't grow). Because the fish tanks and aquaponic grow beds are at the edge of the patio, this siding also will be incorporated into the fence around the patio. While we're at it, we will need to design and build a better solar water heating system for the fish--last winter the water stayed just a little too cool for them. They survived just fine, but they didn't thrive or grow much during the cooler months.

We'll be updating our worm bins from the plastic storage containers we started with years ago, to a single more permanent arrangement. The worms turn our kitchen scraps into compost in a very short time. They also become food for the chickens, ducks and fish (and when we go fishin’ they also make for good bait).

We also have plans to consolidate three compost bins into one larger bin over and around which we will put up wire and wood to house chickens. The idea is to let them turn the compost with their scratching, as they live mostly on the kitchen and garden trimmings we throw in for them. This seems to be a very efficient use of resources--time, space, and waste. We have also designed an automatic chicken waterer that we’ll be putting into service in the next few weeks--we have to do some plumbing first, but it will be worth it when we’re finished. Details will follow.

In addition to these projects we are putting in some raised beds in the front yard to increase our growing space. We're looking forward to the Spring when we'll be able to look out our dining room window over a sea of winter squash vines--green like a lawn, but with edible produce....

As soon as we have finished these projects, we’ll find some more. This is a great hobby. We encourage you to try it. Just as in any other hobby, start small and work up to the bigger projects.