Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Chickens... baby steps...


Last summer we moved into our new house, with 3 acres of land.  Land!  I had never owned land before!  Why is it so important?  Just ask Delmar and he'll tell you!  While I am quite excited about this land, I've quickly grown sick and tired of spending 3 hrs a week mowing the lawn.  I want to know how my land can work for me AND make it such that I do not have to mow the lawn.

Here's the options as I see them...
Orchard - This one is a done deal.  A few years and some sweat equity and I'll be rock 'n rolling with apples, peaches, pears, almonds and more!
Cows and Sheep - These guys can mow some serious grass!  More on that later...
Goats - Yea... they can mow, but they might mow down the neighbors flowers or garden when they escape!  (Not a good way to Win Friends and Influence People!)
Chickens - I like eggs, fried chicken, and I have the land! 
Rabbits (meat) - My wife is strongly opposed to this... but I have a feeling we'll get there some day...

Well, since I'm on a budget, I'm going to have to start small.  Small... chickens are the smallest of the bunch*, so we are starting there.  *See explanation on rabbits.

Now I do have neighbors, and I don't want to be too obnoxious or offensive.  But on the other hand, I live out in the country and there are some things they are going to have to put up with.  In this case, my one neighbor has a strong opinion on not letting chickens free range.  Between my desire to maintain a good relationship with him, a healthy local hawk population and a lack of shelter for my birds, I will choose to respect his wishes... for now.  So hopefully my next post is going to be an awesome post on how I came about building a Hoop House style chicken tractor.

Till then, a sunset from my point of view...

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