This place has been such an eye opener for us in terms of what the country life has to offer. I have always told Kels that I want to live in the country, and this place just seems to have fallen in our lap with out us even meaning to live on land. It has really changed how I view our future and what I want for our children when they grow up. Last summer Kelsi and I started our very first vegetable garden, which did, pretty well considering our lack of experience and the frequent visits by the flocks of hungry deer. We bought our first chicken in May of 2009, her name is Rhonda and she changed everything we knew about chickens. We currently have 17 girls for laying and nine process birds. Which is especially funny because when we got Rhonda Kelsi only wanted 4 chickens and now we have a flock. A large flock.
Kelsi and I have always been pretty thoughtful about the choices we made when it came to our food purchases and how they affect the global food cycle. We try to buy local and organic when possible and we really preach and live for the fair treatment of animals. So the best benefit that we have found living on the land besides the space is being able to 'live' off of the land. We are able to do this by having a vegetable garden, chickens that supply us with plenty of fresh eggs (and a little extra money when sold), and now we are venturing into the area of processing our own meat.
It will be interesting.Very interesting. A few days ago we bought 10 meat chickens from Big R for 20 dollars, which seemed pretty reasonable. We placed the "meaters" in a big plastic tote in an area I recently converted into their new home. It
was a fairly easy project to handle, just added a couple hinges and a door here and there, some wire and bedding and we had a new home for the meaters before lunch time.
The chicks are little, sweet, and they are pretty darn cute which is going make it very hard since I will be doing them in, in a couple months. One of the chicks died a couple days ago when it was pretty hot out and they ran out of water, I think this little guy got dehydrated, so we have stepped up the intervals at which we check on them. Hoping to avoid dead chicks in the near future as they are rather helpless creatures and are very dependent on us right now. In terms of sustainability and eating meat from a trusted local source, this is really the only way to go for us. I will post some updates of the meaters as time goes on, and also much to come about the garden, Kelsi and I have put a lot of work in so far and there will be lots to share about all the new things we are trying like a greenhouse, 8 foot deer fence, drip irrigation and raised beds.
1 comment:
Loosing those little guys is no fun :( It is inevitable though. No matter how hard we try we always end up loosing about one out of every ten chicks we buy. My best suggestion is to pick the ones that move fast and are active. The sleepers don't do so well.
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