Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Homesteading 101

We have loved the mentality of life up here. It's fun " using" the land. We are slowly on the path to becoming a tiny bit mire self sufficient. We kind of dove in with both feet (how does that saying go?) so it has opened us up to a very steep learning curve. We like the idea of letting our land and animals work for us. So I will start with talking about CHICKENS:



This was our first animal. We call chickens the gateway drug of the farm. They are fun and easy. Chickens are always happy to see you, and they are born to lay an egg a day. I know, why doesn't everyone have chickens!? They do not need a rooster in order to lay an egg. But, if there are roosters within the flock, the eggs that the hens lay will most likely be fertalized. Roosters are doin their thang with those hens all day long! We had one hen sit on her eggs day after day. So we didn't collect those eggs. And yes one day, they hatched right underneath her! I know! Just like in a cartoon. We have also incubated eggs. That was super fun.
I sell the eggs to a lady from church. Because of different issues we've had with critters getting into the coupe, we haven't had an over abundant supply of eggs. The cold weather also decreases egg production. Because of those two things, we reallly haven't been able to consistently sell eggs. We have always had enough for us though, and we like giving the occasional dozen out to neighbors and family. But its always a lesson, we spent the day just recently moving the coupe around and completely securing it from unwanted visitors. So we'll see if we can start being more able to sell the eggs.




Colt's job is to feed the chickens ever morning, let them out in the afternoon, and collect eggs daily.




Hello

What the heck happened to my chicken post?