My Thoughts on Recycling & Composting...

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             Hey folks! I thought I would talk about something today that is near and dear to my heart, though I don't talk about it much, if ever: recycling. Well, that and composting. They kind of go hand-in-hand, if you think about it. Buckle up...

             I've been meaning to write a post about recycling for awhile. Though it may surprise you (or not), I'm not one of those people who jumps on board the recycling band wagon just to fill up post space around Earth Day. I'm a hardcore hippie. (Well, maybe not, but for all intents and purposes in this case, let's just go with that!) I have found recycling fascinating since I first learned about it in school. Sadly, back in those times, it was still a somewhat foreign concept and not a widely made practice like it is (for the most part) nowadays.

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             Why do I find recycling so interesting? First of all, I've always been a nature lover. That love has grown into many more things that I find so exciting as an adult: hiking, growing my own food, feeding my leftovers to our chickens, recycling, etc. Being a nature lover, I naturally want to help out Mother Earth as much as possible so that she “keeps on trucking” for a long time after I'm gone for future generations. Recycling is one of the more obvious/well known ways to help Mother Nature out.

             As we're all aware, making products (especially packaging!) takes a lot of resources from the Earth. If you don't already know, you can read some alarming statistics HERE about how much waste (that could be recycled) we make each year, how much energy it costs to make the original products with and without the recycled goods, etc. Kind of hard to believe, right? So why wouldn't we do something relatively easy to help keep our Earth cleaner and more sustainable for future generations? If you're not sure where your local recycling center is, try searching for both trash AND recycling in your county of residence. You should be able to come up with something!

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             You know what else Americans waste a ridiculous amount of? Food! You know what's extra sad about this? A lot of it could be used for other things! Besides recycling the packaging, of course (see above. Ha ha), you can save food scraps and start a compost pile! Which in turn helps your garden out, and by you growing more of your own food you're not buying as much (less packaging used), you're more likely to eat it (since you grew it yourself), AND less gas you're using to drive to the store! It's a win-win-win-win situation. That's a lot of winning. (Charlie Sheen would be so proud. Ha!)

             You can compost all sorts of things and it shouldn't be as intimidating as some people make it seem. As long as you have a good ratio of brown matter (cardboard, fruit waste, leaves, newspaper, etc.) to green matter (grass clippings, coffee grounds, weeds, livestock manure, food waste, etc) you should be good; roughly a 25-30:1 ratio. As far as food waste goes, if it's a whole food of some sort (i.e. fruits, veggies, eggs), you can probably compost the “waste”. Pretty cool, right?

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            Hope I didn't get too preachy on you guys today. :) If you find you have a recycling program/center near you, I encourage you to at least learn more about it. More and more places are making it easier and easier for people to recycle so that they will! Plus, it usually doesn't cost much, if anything. As far as composting...If that's not your thing (i.e. You don't have a garden!) you know what they say: One man's trash is another man's treasure. There are so many online swap groups nowadays, you may just be able to find a neighbor or someone else close by who may want your food scraps!

Homesteading Update: Squash Patch 2.0, A New Animal Friend, & More!

             Hey folks! I have an insane amount of photos to share with you today, so I really will try to keep the chit chat and extra commentary to a minimum for once. I think it will be evident that we have been busy around the farm/yard.. (I actually am starting to feel like we have a farm because of our recent addition, which you'll see a sneak peek of below!) With that being said, I have a lot more homesteading-related posts I would like to share with you, so I will probably be posting two types of these posts per week for a bit. (Including, what I hope to be, informative posts.) Not to worry, though. If gardening and animal keeping are not your thing, I'll still be having my “regular” posts on Monday as well. :) Ok. I'm already talking too much. Let's jump in...

             Let's start with a cute one. Little Farm Girl here loves toads, for some reason, which totally works out because there are always a ton in our herb bed next to the walkway. In fact, I found this guy when I was weeding the chamomile finally.

             Don't be surprised if I post about a million pictures of our new squash patch over the next few weeks. I re-did this at the beginning of July and am very excited about it! Mostly for the...

             Black beans and spaghetti squash! Everything is doing so awesome so far! I think I mentioned it in my last update, but in this area we planted pumpkins, black beans, butternut squash, cucumbers, zucchini, spaghetti squash, and luffa gourds (for the fun of it).

             Oh yah. Here's a lovely view of me clearing the dead grass. I don't do tall grass or piles of dead grass or anything really where snakes like might to hide, so yah. I felt silly for raking grass, but it comes in handy for animal bedding and food.

             We've been slowly chipping away at some brush clearing too. How we haven't had brush trimmers/pruners/whatever you want to call them sooner is beyond me! They've come in so ridiculously handy so far. (As well as our lawn mower cart!)

             It may not look like it since you can only see this area from one angle, but we cut a ton of smaller trees and used the weed eater pretty extensively too. There's still quite a bit to do, but I'm happy with the progress we made in just one afternoon.

             I found this guy hiding in our giant volunteer pumpkin vine recently! We've had tons of flowers, but that's only like the third pumpkin that has grown at all. I'm wondering if some of the flowers aren't getting pollinated?

             Alright, y'all. It's time for the segway into the chickens. ;) John and I keep talking about planting something in the side yard where the chicken coop is because it's kind of a giant waste of space, so might as well do something useful with it, right? Obviously, it will need to be something we don't care if the chickens eat, so John was thinking grain of some sort. We had this stuff in the picture for whatever reason, so I planned on planting it. We finally got around to planting it after I had used the , you guessed it, weed eater to make rows a few days before and lo and behond...We couldn't use it because it was cracked. Well, we couldn't plant it, at least, so this happened...

 Chicken smorgasbord. I'm sure we'll get something else soon to plant there!

             We've also been trying to eat better and actually cook more often, so the chickens have been benefiting too. They're still a little unsure about food scraps, but they seem to really like buttnernut squash and cantaloupe so far!

             This is Gandalf that Little Farm Girl is snuggling with in both pics. Can you tell she's one of our faves? Also, as much time as Myka spends with the chickens, I'm pretty sure she thinks she is a chicken half the time.

             And finally, for the big reveal, I present to you our new farm friend, Bruce. He's an American Guinea Hog (if you're curious) and has learned very quickly that people=treats and gets very excited, like in the video below. We're all still trying to get used to each other and it's been interesting...And it's been less than a week. He received the nickname Lil B@st@rd the evening we brought him home. But I promised to keep this fairly succinct, so that will be a story for my first pig post. ;)

             What have you been up to lately out in the yard? Are you reaping the benefits of your garden yet? Planning fall crops? Tell me in the comments section below!

Cost Effective Reason to Free Range

            Hey folks! Today's post ties in a bit to last week's Farm Fridays post. If you missed it, you can find it HERE. It's all about the costs that go into raising chickens, so definitely be sure to check that out if you're considering them in the future!

             I know there have to be some of you out there reading this that are like me and both want to makes things as easy AND cheap as possible. In the chicken world, you get both when you let your flock free range. Let's talk a little about what free ranging is.

             It's probably exactly what you have envisioned: Basically, you're letting your chickens roam around wherever they want. It does have its drawbacks, such as worrying more about predators picking off members of your flock and having to keep them out of your gardens somehow, but it has a lot of benefits too, one of the main ones being saving you a ton of money on feed!

             Depending on the size of the area they're allowed to graze upon and what kind of grasses, plants, weeds, bugs, etc. you have, you can drastically cut your feed costs. Don't get me wrong: Chicken feed doesn't cost all that much. We buy some cheaper stuff and it is about $10 for a 50lb bag and we go through one about every 2-3 weeks for 16 birds altogether. But, that is largely due to how much they forage during the day.

Borrowing this pic from another post, but the big girls seem to enjoy drinking from the puddles much more than their waterer in the coop.
 

             According to the Abundant Permaculture guy, one chicken should only be eating about 1/3 lb of feed per day if they are free ranging/pasture raised. This got us curious about how much ours were eating and we figured it up that they are actually eating less than this per day. That's amazing! That means they're getting the vast majority of their food intake for free! If we kept them locked in their coop all the time, they would be going through at least three 50lb bags per month...And that is rationing them to the 1/3lb/day/chicken mentioned above. If we were allowing them “free choice” (basically letting the chickens eat however much they want) and keeping them cooped up, they would easily be going through 5 bags per month. Again, we're only going through one per month. If that doesn't convince you to free range, I'm not sure what will!

 The chickens LOVE the berries from our giant honeysuckle bush! That's also what Victoria, the Silver-Laced Wyandotte, was after in the first picture.
 

             Now that we got my main point out of the way, let's talk about some other benefits of free ranging. First of all, you will still have to “coop train” your birds. Whenever the word “training” is involved, it sounds like something difficult but I assure you coop training is not. It's a fancier way of saying “keeping your chickens locked up for at least several weeks so they know where home and a constant source of food is”.

             Once that's taken care of, they will never wander too far from home. Honestly. Sounds too good to be true, but it is. Since they are wandering around all happy at their will, this provides the perfect opportunity for varying their diet too, thus having healthier chickens as well. Chickens don't just eat weeds and grasses (though they are excellent weed eaters!), but berries, wild grains, and bugs as well. (They're also great natural insecticides!) They'll even eat snakes! So, not only do they have a healthier, varied diet by free ranging, but they help keep your lawn fertilized, weeded, and the pest population down too.

            I find that they are also less work because they free range during the day. I don't have to fill their feeder every day nor their water. They actually seem to prefer drinking from outside sources that have collected rain water better than their waterers in the coop. I don't have to clean their coop out frequently. (Truth be told, I have yet to clean their coop because we're doing the deep litter method with the wood chip bedding “fluff”.) It's pretty nice. Most days I just have to let them out in the morning and lock them up at night. I only need to fill their food and water every 2-3 days and I really don't need to then. Both their feeder and waterers are usually half full by then and I just like to keep them topped up because I'm OCD like that.

             Do you have free ranging chickens or would you consider it? Why or why not? Don't forget to link up with us at this week's Farm Fridays! (Click on the Farm Fridays image below.) Until next time...

Cost of Raising Chickens

             So, you're thinking about backyard chickens. Congratulations! Sure, it's getting late in the season and the pickings will be slim at your local farm supply stores but, you can always order online through a hatchery or check with your local FFA group. (I'll talk more about this in a minute.) Even if you're still not completely sold on keeping chickens and/or still in the research phase, I would like to share a rough cost breakdown of raising chickens with you today to give you an idea of what you're getting yourself into!

             Let's start with the numbers and we'll expand upon some items after.

• Cost Per Chick: $2.99-$4.99 (in general)
• Chick Starter/Grower Crumble Feed: $12.99
• Pellets for Layers feed: $10.49
• Meat Bird Crumble Feed: $14.49
• Organic, non-GMO Feed: $27
  -Meat Bird: $31
• Pine Shaving Bedding: $5/30lb bag
• Chick Feeder & Waterer (respectively): $2.79, $1.69
• Adult Feeder & Waterer: $5, $20
  -DIY Waterer (Nipples & Bucket w/Lid): $5, $4.40
• Heat Lamp: $2.50 (bulb), $20 (base)
  -Eco Glow-$80+
• Building material for coop: Variable

             Are you still with me? I hope I haven't scared you off! Let's talk some more about the items listed above. For starters, if you are purchasing your chicks from a farm supply store, they are, in general, going to cost less than ordering them online. Most breeds are between $2.99 and $4.99 per chick. Ordering online from a hatchery tends to cost more due to shipping costs (because they are live animals and need to be expedited for obvious reasons. Also, I've read the post office doesn't really like having to deal with them.) Plus hatcheries will have “fancier” breeds available. I've also heard that you can order chicks through your local FFA, but honestly, I don't know much about it as we've never done so.

             Ah, the food costs. Looks kind of scary, right? Think of it this way: It's like feeding a cat or two...except these are chickens and will be a “productive” member of your farm, homestead, backyard, whatever. Also, the prices above are all for 50lb bags. That's a lot of feed! Plus, depending on how many chickens you wind up with, you won't have to buy it too often if you are letting your chickens free-range. For instance, we have 11 chickens eating from the 50lb bag of layer pellets. We go through a bag about every 3 weeks, probably a little longer than that, actually. So, each of our 11 big chickens is only eating 5 cents worth of feed a day!

             Also, a little side note on feed: You will see that the meat bird feed cost more. However, from what I've gathered, you usually cull most meat birds around 8 weeks, so you're feeding them for MUCH less time!

             To be honest, the bedding situation is going to vary from person to person. We use pine shavings and are going for the deep litter method. (You can read a bit more on that on The Prairie Homestead HERE.) We have a big coop and are still trying to build our “fluff” layer up, so we'll usually puchase a thing of pine shavings every time we buy feed, so every 3 weeks. If you're just starting out, you will need MUCH less than this, or, even better, none at all if you build/buy a coop that has a removable screen for where they poop at the most.

             Chicken feeders and waterers are cheap as chips. The adult waterers can be a bit pricy though, in my opinion. A much cheaper method is to make your own from a 5 gallon bucket with a lid and some inexpensive water/chicken nipples. I actually have a post on how to make these with old 2 liter bottles HERE.

             If you get your chickies when it's still cool out, you'll probably want to get some sort of outside heat source for them. Heat lamps are actually not really recommended any more because of the fire hazards they post, but I felt compelled to include them anyways since that's what we used. You can check out these nifty EcoGlow warmers HERE. I don't know much about them other than they're a lot safer!

             It would take a whole other post to cover all of the variables on chicken coop building/buying costs and, as usual, this post is already long. You could build a super cheap one like we did with our first chickens in Arkansas or go all out and buy one of the fancy “pre-fab” models from a farm supply store. If you're lucky enough, maybe your place already has one like ours did!

             From my experience, it seems like there is no in-between when it comes to what people expect it will cost to raise chickens: They either overestimate or grossly underestimate. With that being said, I hope this post has given you a realistic idea of what to expect. As you can see, after the intial costs, they're basically like having even lesser maintenance cats running around your yard and pooping everywhere. Ha ha Their food is actually cheaper than cat food and, depending on how many you have, of course, you will have to buy chicken food about as often if you are letting them free-range. 

*I am not an expert on chickens by any means. As I mentioned, the costs above are a rough estimate and will vary depending on your area, where you buy, time of year, etc. With that being said, I LOVE talking about chickens (in case you haven't noticed. Check out my Instagram account for more chicken shenanigans from Wild Onion Farm.), so please let me know if you have any questions or if you have anything you would add or change on this post. Until next time...

 

Making a Homestead: Getting Off Our Lazy Butts!

             Hey folks! I am super excited to be bringing you the very first Farm Fridays post and link-up here on Mixed Bag Mama this week! I have so many homesteading posts going on right now (tis the season, right?) I figured why not? Some weeks I will be doing a separate post and just linking up to the link-up post. Others I will just have the link-up post with a bit about what we've been doing that week in the intro. It just depends on how long my post is. :P We were pretty busy outdoors last week, so this inaugural post gets its own separate page!

             Hey folks! I have to admit that other than the chickens, we have TOTALLY been slacking on all the homesteady type stuff we started this spring. We recently came across the Abundant Permaculture guy (Justin Rhodes on YouTube) and just watching his videos has given us the push and motivation we needed to take back our yard and gardens that we've been neglecting.

I can breathe!

             Despite our utter and complete neglect, we do have some plants that are actually growing and some that are even producing already! I got out a couple of days ago and freed our blueberry plants that actually made it. Unfortunately, we planted our berry bushes too early and the raspberries didn't make it. However, we have a TON of wild black raspberry bushes growing all over the place, so we're pretty set on those anyways. Also, I'm not gonna lie: I completely forgot we planted a grapevine too until hubby pointed it out while I was weed eating.

            Speaking of those black raspberries, check this out. This is just from going out and picking the easy-to-get-to ones several evenings. There are easily 2-3x this many in hard to reach places! Myka and John have actually been picking the majority of them, so I hope to get out there more myself and try to sell some!

            We've had a crazy amount of chamomile too. It's right next to the back walkway, so I've been better about keeping up with harvesting it. We've got a buttload already drying, so I can't wait to make some tea with it! I'm not sure how long it keeps flowering, but if I get much more I might try to sell some of it too. I let a lot of them go to seed, so I'm hoping even more grows back!

            So, what else is growing? The peas seem to be doing well despite not weeding the garden AT ALL since we planted everything. Seriously. It's super sad and I'm hoping to get around to weeding some more in the next few days when/if it's not raining. We also have onions, carrots, tomatoes, and green beans. Some pumpkins (that the damn chickens didn't get to!) are starting to flower and produce and some of the corn seems to be growing decently for now too.

            Are you sick of my chicken obsession yet? I hope not, because again, no homesteading update would be complete without them! So, this first picture above...Yah. The struggle is real. The chickens have officially taken over the poor cats' area. I'm glad they're not afraid of us or the cats, but between the chicken crap all over the walkway and them ravenously trying to eat the cats' food, it's gotten out of hand. I had to start putting the food bowls in the window sill and a few of the cheakier ladies will still get up there and eat it. (I'm especially talking to you, Gladyss!) Oh. And on top of that they come through and trample all of my chamomile plants and eat the flowers off the pumpkin plants. Sigh...

             These are the Three Amigos. (The two big ones are Brahmas and the other is an Easter Egger.) To be honest, they are my least favorite of all of our chickens because they're the most skittish (which is obviously our fault, for the most part) and they're kind of a-holes. The Easter Egger (Plucky) was picking on the bigger Easter-Egger (Yasmine) for awhile, which isn't cool because she has messed up toes and doesn't like to get around much unless she has to. All three of them come and eat the little ones chicken food as soon as I fill it, which drives me nuts. (The crumbles are supposed to be for the five little ones and the pellets for all the others.)

 Isn't she cute? “Whatcha doin'?”

             I've not given the five little chickies much love besides the super fluffy bantam Silkie I call “Don” on Instagram, so here's a few pics of the others. We somehow have three names for the gray one on top: Lil Chicky (I know. Real creative on my part, huh?), Gandalf, and The Hamburglar. (John came up with the last two. Hamburglar because it's a Silver Hamburg. Hardy har.) She's my new favorite and I've been calling her Gandalf more and more, so female chicken Gandalf it is.

             Live I've said before, I just love watching the Easter Eggers change colors and patterns as they grow. It looks like our two littlest ones are going to be the darker colored variety instead of light like the older two. (Yasmine and Plucky. ;) ) I decided to call this one Amber since she has a lot of dark coloring on her chest. I still need a name for the other Silkie bantam and Easter Egger. Let me know your suggestions in the comments below! I'm obviously open to ridiculous names! (Have I mentioned one of the Australorps is named Australorpennegger?)

            Guess what this stuff is for! I was recently looking into “chicken tractors”. (A caged in area for chickens to clear land.) However, I came across a message board and learned that this can be both detrimental to the land and the chickens, but that pigs are much better at this without affecting their nutrition and the nutrients in the soil. So, we did some more research on using pigs for clearing land and we're deciding to go for it! Since I had some extra money from a sponsored post last month and a lot of the items we need for fencing were on sale at, you guessed it, Rural King, we went ahead and bought all of the supplies we should need for portable, electric fencing.

            We think one pig will be sufficient for our needs, even though there are several areas we'd like to get cleared before next spring planting. Oh. You might be wondering, “Why don't you just till the land you need for planting?” We still don't have a tiller and quite frankly, I can't see us being able to afford one any time soon. Even including the fencing, the cost of purchasing the pig, and having to fix up the old hog shed (which should be free or close to it since we have lots of extra wood and tools), it will still be significantly cheaper to keep a pig than buy a tiller. Like, a fourth of the cost, in fact. Especially since we're cheap and we're making our own fence instead of purchasing one of the pre-made portable electric fences. (Although that might be nice to have in the future!) Maybe I'll do a cost breakdown of that soon too!

            Well, I think that about wraps things up for this time. I could go on about the pigs, but this post is already running long. ;) Until next time...

 

Fun fact: That pile of dirt that shovel is in? That's where our massive, volunteer pumpkin vine is growing!

Click the image above to head to the link-up!

5 Reasons to Line Dry

             Hey folks! I just love easy ways to live a little greener of a lifestyle, don't you? Today I'm sharing 5 reasons to consider one of my favorite ways to live a little greener: line drying your clothes (and cloth diapers)!

1. It's cheaper to set up a clothesline than buying a dryer. You can be hillbillies like us and use cut limbs as poles, but I'm willing to bet that even if you use metal poles and cement, you'll still be saving a ton of money!
2. Speaking of saving money, you'll be saving money by not paying for the electricity to run your dryer as well.
3. It's eco-friendly. By not using your dryer as much, you're lessening your carbon footprint.
4. Line drying helps take out stains. To be honest, this is the main reason I wanted to finish the other half of the drying line we had when we moved into this house. I've heard sunning cloth diapers is awesome for taking out stains and it is!
5. Hanging clothes up to dry is oddly relaxing. Maybe it's just me. Sometimes it does feel like kind of a pita, but most of the time it's a nice, quiet break for me because Myka usually runs off and torments the chickens while I hang clothes.

             Do you line dry your clothes or cloth diapers? Why or why not?