There is nothing more fun for me than learning. And when I can’t learn from a person, reading a book or scanning the Internet is a great alternative. I think there are dozens of essential books for beginning small farmers. Nothing replaces actual experience on the land, and the advice from more experienced
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The first chicken egg since December.
My Sunday mornings include listening to Lynne Rossetto Kasper and The Splendid Table®. Sunday’s episode included a discussion of “french chickens” sometimes called “Freedom Rangers” or “Colored Range” chickens – the chicken breed I grew this year.
The tradition of saying Grace – a prayer or expression of thanksgiving prior to a meal has personal meaning this week.
As I gathered each of the first 14 meat chickens I raised, I held each one, talked to it, and thanked it for allowing me to take care of it and for being part of
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I’m packing and organizing for some media work at Farm Aid in St. Louis tomorrow. I’ve also been working on fall projects and tonight we’re expecting a low in the mid 30’s. Fall is quickly arriving. For a brief post, I’m sharing a photo of the daily egg harvest.
It takes a brave man to blog about a subject he knows increasingly less about.
I am talking about roosters.
When I bought the feed-store chicks in April, I wanted barred rock pullets, but the store had only straight run. So I rolled the genetic dice with the Z and W chromosomes and bought two chicks. Both
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Last year’s July 4th weekend project with my son was the building the pheasant fly pen, a 45 x 25 net enclosed space for the pheasants to grow out from 6 weeks to about 18 weeks. It is covered with netting and has about 6 – 7 feet of head room
Along the east, long side,
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I’ve written about receiving shipments of 52 pheasants in the US mail. From what I’ve read online at many of the hatchery sites, it seems that the smallest shipment is 25 birds. In this number, the birds generate enough body heat to survive there one or two day trip.
While raising pheasants for release requires one
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Frederick J. Dunn offers advice and links on choosing chicken breeds as spring approaches, courtesy of Mother Earth News:
I keep both ornamental and dual-purpose poultry. Ornamental birds are just that, nice to look at and be entertained by — or even to show in competition for those interested in the “poultry fancy.” My recommendations for dual-purpose (meat and eggs) are traditional breeds: the Rhode Island red and barred Plymouth rock. Both (rocks and reds) are independent on open range, forage well, produce eggs in abundance and (if you choose) will make flavorful table fare. In fact, the ALBC hosted Renewing America’s Food Traditions blind taste test, and the barred Plymouth rock was most preferred.
One of the sites I like to follow is Fiona Nevile’s The Cottage Smallholder
The trick to quick and easy cleaning is to store everything that you might need within a few feet of the chicken house. We keep our chicken consumables in two large barrels in the run. One holds the bedding the other contains
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