Re: [Homesteadingfamily] Sustainable Homestead

One of the biggest things I miss about being in the country is my
CHICKENS! we could have them here in town, but our yard is nearly
non-existant! I've played with the idea of asking the neighbor lady to
share some of her yard with us and share a few chickens, just because they
ROCK! Fresh eggs and bug control like you cant believe! I remember that
when I had free range chickens, we had NO fleas! The dogs were VERY happy!!

Angelia in OR who will have a small garden bed this year!

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 10:42 AM, brad4d2000 <brad4d2000@hughes.net> wrote:

> My idea of homesteading is living well (not high) in accord with nature
> and producing most of our needs here at home with minimum inputs and
> maximum sustainable yields. Planning is important in that it saves time and
> money. Human diet requires fruit, vegetables, protein, oil and water. The
> least portable of these is the fruit orchard. We share the habitat with
> white tailed deer and therefore fenced them out of a sunny grassy area and
> planted dwarf fruit trees. To make orchard management cheaper and easier I
> added chickens. We had a garden below the house and the rain barrels but it
> did not get enough sun and required annual feeding. We therefore are moving
> the garden and compost areas to the orchard. The first step was to make a
> 4' X 32' compost bed on the southern perimeter fence and fill it 3' deep
> with grass clippings, chopped leaves, wood ashes from the cook stove,
> kitchen and garden scraps and most important, chickens. Six months later we
> added another bed next to the original and gated the chickens out of the
> old compost which had then decayed enough, been weeded enough, been
> fertilized enough to plant tomatoes which produced our best ever harvest.
> Instead of buying herbicide, insecticide and fertilizer we buy chicken feed
> to supplement what they can find and let them do almost all of the work.
> Every six months we add another bed always alternating garden and compost.
> Eventually the entire orchard area will be 4' beds with the exception of
> the coop and trees. Half will be compost and chickens and the remainder
> will be garden beds. The shape of the beds is so that insects can not get
> more than 2' away from a bug eating monster, aka chicken.
>
>

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