Make this the year you start keeping chickens! Here are ten (of many) reasons why. . . (more…)
Posts tagged with ‘Compost’
10 Reasons to Start Keeping Chickens This Year
Friday, January 8th, 2021“Krewe of Coops” Chicken Coop Tour, No. 14 — Fifteen (Anything But) Basic Coops
Saturday, December 19th, 2020
When we named our stand-alone chicken coop design “The Basic Coop,” we meant it purely as a compliment. The design is basic, of course, in that it’s easy to build and easy to afford.
But that simplicity makes it a great starting point to extend, customize, and create the perfect housing for your small backyard flock. In this sense, The Basic Coop design is anything but basic. These fifteen customer builds will show you what I mean. . . .
(more…)VIDEO: A behind-the-fence look at two inspiring urban homesteads
Saturday, April 2nd, 2016
This episode of Growing a Greener World on modern homesteading aired a while back, but I just came across it again on Northwest Edible Life and wanted to point you to it. Click here to read the post and watch the show.
It features two of my favorite chicken/gardening writers and a closer look at the worlds they’ve created in their backyards — Jessi Bloom, author of Free-Range Chicken Gardens, and Erica Strauss, author of The Hands-On Home as well as the blog linked above. (See our Buyer’s Guide for links to their books.)
Topics covered include:
- Deep-litter method
- Free-range vs. confined range
- Keeping ducks and chickens together
- Involving your kids in garden and chicken chores
- Making your home more productive
- Perennials vs. annuals for growing your own food
- Compost
- Tips about growing backyard fruit, and more. . .
Enjoy the tours, interviews, and inspiration!
Compost Cupcake
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
We had to move our “Green Machine” compost bin a few feet to make space for a garden path. When we pulled the black plastic shell away, we were treated to this, well. . . hmmm. The fluffy-white “frosting” is actually our family’s most plentiful carbonaceous material: shredded junk mail. Dig in!
Growing Gardens’ primer on double-digging and sheet mulching
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010Great post at Growing Gardens’ blog on how they prepare vegetable beds for their garden installations. They use a combination of double-digging, a method that loosens the soil to a depth of about two feet while incorporating rich compost, and sheet mulching, which involves layering newspaper or cardboard with compost, leaves, straw, and the like.
We’ve used both methods separately and together in our own veggie gardens with great results. What’s more, the abundance of composted chicken manure we get from our hens makes a super fertilizer to mix into a newly prepared bed. That’s right, it ain’t all about the eggs.
