Around The Homestead
Around The Homestead is where you'll find tips on gardening (including what's up with Heirloom vs. GMO seed), keeping farm animals, communications, hygine, lighting, and home safety.
Nearly 81% of the populace live in urban areas. That means it's likely when you look out of your living room window, you won't be looking upon a panoramic view of unmolested trees. Still, there are things you can do to prepare for alternative communications, home safety, and hygiene concerns. Even without a yard, containerized gardening is possible for those with little else than a lanai or a patio. You may even want to consider raising chickens. Checking with your city planners could bring surprising results, as many urban settings allow them...minus the rooster, of course, but it doesn't take a rooster for hens to lay.
Most folks involved with preparedness have researched the likeiness of civil unrest in a time of protracted crisis. Their consensus? Move to the country--one tanks worth of gas away, to be exact. But if your situation won't allow for a permanent move, your might want to consider purchasing or renting a get-away cabin. If finances are tight, what about joining forces with other's who are likewise interested in a cabin in the woods should city life prove too difficult. It doesn't take much to trade worry for peace of mind; a small cabin with enough floor space to sleep everyone, enough land to grow vegetables and fruit, and a well is all you really need!
Around The Homestead is where you'll find tips on gardening (including what's up with Heirloom vs. GMO seed), keeping farm animals, communications, hygine, lighting, and home safety.
Nearly 81% of the populace live in urban areas. That means it's likely when you look out of your living room window, you won't be looking upon a panoramic view of unmolested trees. Still, there are things you can do to prepare for alternative communications, home safety, and hygiene concerns. Even without a yard, containerized gardening is possible for those with little else than a lanai or a patio. You may even want to consider raising chickens. Checking with your city planners could bring surprising results, as many urban settings allow them...minus the rooster, of course, but it doesn't take a rooster for hens to lay.
Most folks involved with preparedness have researched the likeiness of civil unrest in a time of protracted crisis. Their consensus? Move to the country--one tanks worth of gas away, to be exact. But if your situation won't allow for a permanent move, your might want to consider purchasing or renting a get-away cabin. If finances are tight, what about joining forces with other's who are likewise interested in a cabin in the woods should city life prove too difficult. It doesn't take much to trade worry for peace of mind; a small cabin with enough floor space to sleep everyone, enough land to grow vegetables and fruit, and a well is all you really need!
Popular Homestead Animals
Although there is along list of farm animals to choose from, two of the most popular are free range chickens and goats. If asked why, most homesteaders would probably tell you that free range chickens and goats are fairly easy to keep, and they provide a high yield--eggs and meat from chickens, milk and cheese from goats--for the least amount of outlay.
Free Range Chickens
You will need an acre or two of land to provide forging for a flock of free-rangers. If you live in an urban area, it might be possible to keep caged chickens. Call about city ordanacnes to see if your area allows them.
There are reasons other than financial to choose free rangers, as their eggs contain 1/3 less cholesterol, ¼ less fat, 2/3 more vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, three times more vitamin E, and 7 times more beta-carotene. Free-range chickens can forage for around half of their supper until winter months, particularly true in northern climates when foraging beneath snow is impossible. Whether you decide on free-range or caged chickens, you’ll need to buy a couple of books. One will be on the care and feeding of chickens, specific to either free range or caged chickens, and the other is the Merck Veterinary Manual. It has an in-depth section on chicken diseases and how to care for injured birds. Doctoring your flock will save you vet bills now, and prepare you for the future, when it may not be possible to reach your vet. Be sure to put aside the medicines recommended for disease and the caring of your flock.
As with every decision we make regarding self-sufficiency, thinking smart means preparing for a future that may not offer the conveniences we enjoy now. You will need to ask yourself if growing your own feed has the return you will benefit from later on. Plan for it to take between 1 to 1 1/2 acres of corn planted in stages so the land doesn’t go fallow. The amount of land you will need to grow enough corn is completely dependant upon how large your flock is. Many of us do not have the land to devote to growing corn. The good news is chicken feed is around $10 for 100 lbs#. You could put aside one year’s worth of feed, as I did, so when tough times hit we can continue to provide a little extra feed as the flock adjusts to working overtime for their suppers. If this sounds heartless, remember, it’s what out forefathers did, and although not an exact science, between kitchen scraps and the bugs, seed, and grasses they forage, they should get by.
If your flock is big enough, you may decide to sell your eggs, which can cover your expenses while still providing plentiful eggs for your own table. If you’d rather put all your eggs aside for the winter months when hens stop laying, reefer to “how to preserve eggs” in the recipe section of this book.
If you are a novice and haven’t gained the experience to tell a good chick form a bad one, it’s best to get day-old chicks from a hatchery that has been recommended to you. Ask your neighbors if you live around farmers. They’ll be able to provide country wisdom and save you the heartache of choosing the wrong source for your chicks. Make sure you choose a scrappy breed that hasn’t had the instinct for survival of living off the land bred out of them. They should also be a breed that does best in your climate zone. If you plan on using your flock for meat as well as eggs, then you’ll want to investigate which breed offers the most meat that thrive in your climate. As for how many roosters to keep, I subscribe to an heir and a spare, so that if a rooster ends up being a candidate for Viagra, or he is otherwise incapacitated, your flock will continue to thrive.
Chicks are best raised by keeping them in heated stock tanks, or when on a tight budget, raising them in a draft-free location in your home. Timing is important. If you get your chicks in summer, they will have time to grow large enough to roost, producing smaller eggs at first, but larger ones by the following spring. When the chicks get older, and no longer require a heat source, move them to small cages outdoors. Although some keep free-range chickens out in the open, I enclosed the side of a large shed behind a wire enclosure. This better protects them from predators. Those that keep their free-rangers more exposed typically depend upon a watch dog that will drive off predators. Such a dog needs to be trained or they, too, may develop a craving for chicken.
The chicken coop can be kept simple, but must have brooding boxes. Typically 4 hens will share a 2 X 2 brooding box. Make certain you have provided enough brooding space for the number of hens you plan to keep, or they will begin to lay out in the field, and that will draw predators to your property. The brood boxes are mounted up higher, allowing for more room on the ground beneath them. Build a ramp running from the ground to the box(s) so your hens can reach them with ease. Brooding box(s) should always be installed in a dark location away from drafts. They should be enclosed on all sides, other than a front access for hens to get in and out of. Make sure the roof of your coop and brooding area has a sound roof, so that they can stay out of the rain. You will need to provide plentiful water in freeze-proof containers and a feeder that is protected from vermin.
The ground of the enclosure itself will need to provide at least one square feet, preferably two, of space per chicken to roam.
For the first month, you will be feeding your chicks chick feed, which is slightly medicated to stave off disease. As they get a little older, you will begin training them to go out in the field in the daytime, and return to the coop at night. Once the birds are fully grown, feed them once a day at dusk for 1 – 1 ½ hours and then take away the feed. This will encourage them to forage for their own food of bugs, seeds and grasses. There must always be a source of fresh water kept in a freeze-proof container.
You will want to water your flock out in the field if you don’t have a natural water source. Otherwise, they will spend the day lazing around the coop, expecting you to supply their feed.
Training your flock takes patience and time, but once you’re successful, plan on spending around 1 hour a week on maintenance. This depends, however, on whether you’re the worrying kind, spending some of your day loitering around your flock. But no matter, it beats sitting in front of the idiot box!
Expect around a 10% natural attrition of your flock. When you see anything worrisome with your one of your chickens, like bloody stool or lethargy, it’s time to reefer Merck Veterinary Manual or another book on the care of chickens.
Note: Free range chickens can be as heartless as deer with regards to your garden! To avoid their decimating your crop, hang poultry netting, hung loosely between stakes surrounding your garden.
Goats
Cave drawings depicted goats from 2,000 years ago. They were the first domesticated animal besides sheep and dogs and are every bit as important today as they were then. There is a mind-boggling 600 different kinds of goats, but for the purpose of self-sufficiency in the U.S., we need only discuss a few breeds.
Goat farming can be broken down to three purposes: milk, cheese, and yogurt production, meat, and wool. Common breeds found in the United States are Toggenburg, French Alpine, Saanen, Nubian, LaMancha breeds that are used for dairy. Boers, their larger cousin, are raised for meat. Other meat goat breeds are Kiko and Savanna, and Mytonic. Angoras are used for their wool.
Discussed in the overview of farm animals, goats are one of the more affordable of farm animals to raise and their milk can be produced for penny’s on the gallon. Does will produce 1 – 3 kids a year. In troubled times, there are worse things than being the owner of goats. But when you buy a goat, buy a friend for them. Goats are social creatures and they need companionship.
As with Free-range chickens, goats will forage for their own food with the help of a little hay, thus keeping the costs of raising them to a minimum. They will produce milk, cheese, yogurt, butter (although a bit hard to make), meat, and provide rich fertilizer for a garden. Although a cow can produce up to 5 gallons of milk a day, they require a great deal of grain and hay. Goats can be counted on to yeild nearly one gallon a day, but their eating requirements are just a fraction of what cows require—and the reason why goats are called the poor mans cow. If your family cannot consume a gallon of milk every day, the excess can go to feed other farm animals. Chickens and pigs love goats milk.
It makes economic sense to select the bred of goat most common to your area, as they will sell easier when it comes time to part with extra kids.
A goat’s minimalist eating requirements, flows over to their enclosure needs as well. A shed with three sides that keeps the weather out and faces south is acceptable. Generally, providing 16 square feet for each animal will give them room enough to be content. Goats love to jump, so plan on building a sturdy fence, able to withstand hoofs, and built at a 5 foot height to foil the best of escape artists. You can find free online building plans for goat enclosures, or if you’re industrious, look a book on goat rearing that includes building plans (especially fencing requirements).
Plan on feeding your goats hay with a bit of grain, and let them forage for at least some of their food. During breeding season, bucks benefit from being given 1 – 2 pounds of grain a day, and pregnant Does should be given 1 – 2 pounds of grain a day—the amount increasing as she nears the end of her pregnancy.
There aren’t many health-related requirements for goats, but hoof trimming must be done monthly. To ignore this can cause them to go lame. De-budding should be done when goats are young as their horns are mere buds at that point and easier to remove. Castration of the males you don’t intend to breed is another aspect of maintaining your goats.
As for selecting your goat, do your research. A good approach is to attend shows so you can familiarize yourself with what to look for. A book on goats is another source. And if you’re lucky enough to have neighbors who farm goats, it’s time to get to pay them a visit.
Although there is along list of farm animals to choose from, two of the most popular are free range chickens and goats. If asked why, most homesteaders would probably tell you that free range chickens and goats are fairly easy to keep, and they provide a high yield--eggs and meat from chickens, milk and cheese from goats--for the least amount of outlay.
Free Range Chickens
You will need an acre or two of land to provide forging for a flock of free-rangers. If you live in an urban area, it might be possible to keep caged chickens. Call about city ordanacnes to see if your area allows them.
There are reasons other than financial to choose free rangers, as their eggs contain 1/3 less cholesterol, ¼ less fat, 2/3 more vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, three times more vitamin E, and 7 times more beta-carotene. Free-range chickens can forage for around half of their supper until winter months, particularly true in northern climates when foraging beneath snow is impossible. Whether you decide on free-range or caged chickens, you’ll need to buy a couple of books. One will be on the care and feeding of chickens, specific to either free range or caged chickens, and the other is the Merck Veterinary Manual. It has an in-depth section on chicken diseases and how to care for injured birds. Doctoring your flock will save you vet bills now, and prepare you for the future, when it may not be possible to reach your vet. Be sure to put aside the medicines recommended for disease and the caring of your flock.
As with every decision we make regarding self-sufficiency, thinking smart means preparing for a future that may not offer the conveniences we enjoy now. You will need to ask yourself if growing your own feed has the return you will benefit from later on. Plan for it to take between 1 to 1 1/2 acres of corn planted in stages so the land doesn’t go fallow. The amount of land you will need to grow enough corn is completely dependant upon how large your flock is. Many of us do not have the land to devote to growing corn. The good news is chicken feed is around $10 for 100 lbs#. You could put aside one year’s worth of feed, as I did, so when tough times hit we can continue to provide a little extra feed as the flock adjusts to working overtime for their suppers. If this sounds heartless, remember, it’s what out forefathers did, and although not an exact science, between kitchen scraps and the bugs, seed, and grasses they forage, they should get by.
If your flock is big enough, you may decide to sell your eggs, which can cover your expenses while still providing plentiful eggs for your own table. If you’d rather put all your eggs aside for the winter months when hens stop laying, reefer to “how to preserve eggs” in the recipe section of this book.
If you are a novice and haven’t gained the experience to tell a good chick form a bad one, it’s best to get day-old chicks from a hatchery that has been recommended to you. Ask your neighbors if you live around farmers. They’ll be able to provide country wisdom and save you the heartache of choosing the wrong source for your chicks. Make sure you choose a scrappy breed that hasn’t had the instinct for survival of living off the land bred out of them. They should also be a breed that does best in your climate zone. If you plan on using your flock for meat as well as eggs, then you’ll want to investigate which breed offers the most meat that thrive in your climate. As for how many roosters to keep, I subscribe to an heir and a spare, so that if a rooster ends up being a candidate for Viagra, or he is otherwise incapacitated, your flock will continue to thrive.
Chicks are best raised by keeping them in heated stock tanks, or when on a tight budget, raising them in a draft-free location in your home. Timing is important. If you get your chicks in summer, they will have time to grow large enough to roost, producing smaller eggs at first, but larger ones by the following spring. When the chicks get older, and no longer require a heat source, move them to small cages outdoors. Although some keep free-range chickens out in the open, I enclosed the side of a large shed behind a wire enclosure. This better protects them from predators. Those that keep their free-rangers more exposed typically depend upon a watch dog that will drive off predators. Such a dog needs to be trained or they, too, may develop a craving for chicken.
The chicken coop can be kept simple, but must have brooding boxes. Typically 4 hens will share a 2 X 2 brooding box. Make certain you have provided enough brooding space for the number of hens you plan to keep, or they will begin to lay out in the field, and that will draw predators to your property. The brood boxes are mounted up higher, allowing for more room on the ground beneath them. Build a ramp running from the ground to the box(s) so your hens can reach them with ease. Brooding box(s) should always be installed in a dark location away from drafts. They should be enclosed on all sides, other than a front access for hens to get in and out of. Make sure the roof of your coop and brooding area has a sound roof, so that they can stay out of the rain. You will need to provide plentiful water in freeze-proof containers and a feeder that is protected from vermin.
The ground of the enclosure itself will need to provide at least one square feet, preferably two, of space per chicken to roam.
For the first month, you will be feeding your chicks chick feed, which is slightly medicated to stave off disease. As they get a little older, you will begin training them to go out in the field in the daytime, and return to the coop at night. Once the birds are fully grown, feed them once a day at dusk for 1 – 1 ½ hours and then take away the feed. This will encourage them to forage for their own food of bugs, seeds and grasses. There must always be a source of fresh water kept in a freeze-proof container.
You will want to water your flock out in the field if you don’t have a natural water source. Otherwise, they will spend the day lazing around the coop, expecting you to supply their feed.
Training your flock takes patience and time, but once you’re successful, plan on spending around 1 hour a week on maintenance. This depends, however, on whether you’re the worrying kind, spending some of your day loitering around your flock. But no matter, it beats sitting in front of the idiot box!
Expect around a 10% natural attrition of your flock. When you see anything worrisome with your one of your chickens, like bloody stool or lethargy, it’s time to reefer Merck Veterinary Manual or another book on the care of chickens.
Note: Free range chickens can be as heartless as deer with regards to your garden! To avoid their decimating your crop, hang poultry netting, hung loosely between stakes surrounding your garden.
Goats
Cave drawings depicted goats from 2,000 years ago. They were the first domesticated animal besides sheep and dogs and are every bit as important today as they were then. There is a mind-boggling 600 different kinds of goats, but for the purpose of self-sufficiency in the U.S., we need only discuss a few breeds.
Goat farming can be broken down to three purposes: milk, cheese, and yogurt production, meat, and wool. Common breeds found in the United States are Toggenburg, French Alpine, Saanen, Nubian, LaMancha breeds that are used for dairy. Boers, their larger cousin, are raised for meat. Other meat goat breeds are Kiko and Savanna, and Mytonic. Angoras are used for their wool.
Discussed in the overview of farm animals, goats are one of the more affordable of farm animals to raise and their milk can be produced for penny’s on the gallon. Does will produce 1 – 3 kids a year. In troubled times, there are worse things than being the owner of goats. But when you buy a goat, buy a friend for them. Goats are social creatures and they need companionship.
As with Free-range chickens, goats will forage for their own food with the help of a little hay, thus keeping the costs of raising them to a minimum. They will produce milk, cheese, yogurt, butter (although a bit hard to make), meat, and provide rich fertilizer for a garden. Although a cow can produce up to 5 gallons of milk a day, they require a great deal of grain and hay. Goats can be counted on to yeild nearly one gallon a day, but their eating requirements are just a fraction of what cows require—and the reason why goats are called the poor mans cow. If your family cannot consume a gallon of milk every day, the excess can go to feed other farm animals. Chickens and pigs love goats milk.
It makes economic sense to select the bred of goat most common to your area, as they will sell easier when it comes time to part with extra kids.
A goat’s minimalist eating requirements, flows over to their enclosure needs as well. A shed with three sides that keeps the weather out and faces south is acceptable. Generally, providing 16 square feet for each animal will give them room enough to be content. Goats love to jump, so plan on building a sturdy fence, able to withstand hoofs, and built at a 5 foot height to foil the best of escape artists. You can find free online building plans for goat enclosures, or if you’re industrious, look a book on goat rearing that includes building plans (especially fencing requirements).
Plan on feeding your goats hay with a bit of grain, and let them forage for at least some of their food. During breeding season, bucks benefit from being given 1 – 2 pounds of grain a day, and pregnant Does should be given 1 – 2 pounds of grain a day—the amount increasing as she nears the end of her pregnancy.
There aren’t many health-related requirements for goats, but hoof trimming must be done monthly. To ignore this can cause them to go lame. De-budding should be done when goats are young as their horns are mere buds at that point and easier to remove. Castration of the males you don’t intend to breed is another aspect of maintaining your goats.
As for selecting your goat, do your research. A good approach is to attend shows so you can familiarize yourself with what to look for. A book on goats is another source. And if you’re lucky enough to have neighbors who farm goats, it’s time to get to pay them a visit.
