I’m an all in Locals guy. I really love the atmosphere and camaraderie of the local attitude. I won’t get political for fear of being out of line but will just say Local is where I think it should all start and end as far as what we expect from real life.
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There is nothing wrong with buying and raising things locally it’s practical and efficient. Working with other local farmers in Kansas just makes sense for us. Neighbors helped me out today.
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The last video of the Alaskan Youtubers that have chickens//they were feeding their chickens salmon. I guess they like to give them a lot of energy. Also their chickens are laying eggs again (longer days?) They said the cold up there in November killed some of their birds…it was just too cold/too soon and they weren’t ready. I would do chickens here but everyone we know that has tried them they always get chomped by wild animals (fox/etc).
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My chicken pen looked like fort Knox I didn’t lose any birds. The coyote and dogs paced the perimeter. Once found some determined dogs had dug down nearly a full 3 feet only to find I buried rebar and fencing 36". They were so warn out they were sleeping on the dirt pile when I arrived. In hindsight I should have back filled with concrete. They scared the chickens pretty bad. The hawks swooped down too eat my birds finding I fenced the top of the pen as well. They would perch on top. If I got a determined predator I wired up the electric fencer. Get your chickens but be ready for war.
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I have wire on the ground all the way round and top and sides wired . I bought a pre-made coop from Tractor supply that has a metal pallet on the bottom and I put predator proof locks on everything. It would have to be a damn determined animal or a bear that would get in. A bear could rip the coop apart if pissed but their usually to lazy here to do that. Plenty else for them to eat without working for it.
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Kept them in 5 ’ fences when I was home that covered large areas. Had the chicken yard sectioned in 4 spots and 2 were orchard , 2 were gardens. When I left I put them in fort knox. The other photos show the 2 chicken pens im talking about. The photos below I posted earlier show the big fence . I rotated them amongst the 4 pens totalling 1/2 an acre or more.
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Grow pigeon pea in Florida. Short lived perinnial , nitrogen fixers and makes tasty peas that your chickens should love. D
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This source is good for many less common seeds, including Caragna. Cheap and reliable. Poncirus seeds also !
https://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/
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Here we have bobcats and hawks. In New Hampshire we had bears and Fisher. Everybody likes chicken.
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I received an email from Bakers Creek just now explaining their current state of affairs. Attached is the jist of the message.
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I just hit up the Dollar Tree yesterday for seeds. They were $0.25/pack and worked out for me pretty well last year. While some seeds are rare enough to spend $5/pack, You don’t have to spend that much on the basics.
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There was a post and replies that will be updated.
I always really like Baker Creek seeds. During the past few years, I increased my own seed saving, a lot from varieties I bought from them or from Victory seeds (who I also like) and sometimes others if open pollinated / heirloom types. I always buy quite a lot from them anyway - this year about $60 worth.
This year, about 2/3 of my squashes, pumpkins, lettuce, cilantro, shallots, pole beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes will be from home saved seeds. Also some of the annual flowers. My plan for this year is save seeds from the best of the old and new open pollinated types in my garden for future garden, adding some smaller squashes, snap and snow peas, peppers, bush beans and overwinter more biennial types like onions and Swiss chard. It mostly requires being aware so pollination can be controlled (squash, onions, shallots, etc) and it can take some planning ahead. For some, a spot is needed to let them mature - lettuce grows 3 or 4 feet tall, and Swiss Chard has to over winter and is even bigger. I have to save some space for a few bean and pea plants to grow them to full seed maturity.
Some planning is long term. For example, for onions if I want to save seeds, this year I need to plant open pollinated varieties, save a few bulbs over next winter grow them to bloom in 2023, then save the seeds for 2024. It’s a long time frame but in the end I wind up with my own seeds and no supply chain issue, no cost. The 2023 seeds will also probably need to be bought, and onion seeds don’t have a long life span. This year, germination for home saved shallot seeds was very high, but the purchased onion seeds were slower and germination was lower. Unfortunately, that batch of shallots was from an unnamed grocery shallot that was probably hybrid, but if there are ones from that, that I like, I’ll keep those for next year’s seeds. Also unfortunately, I forgot to set aside a few onion bulbs from last year, so I wont have any blooming this year. I left some of the shallots in the ground, so those probably will bloom again.
My home save squash seeds also had better and faster germination than the bought ones too, for Pink Banana Squash.
Most vegetables are annual, so not so much planning is needed (beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce).
Sorry if I already posted this - I can forget sometimes.
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The couple times I visited Sam’s…I didn’t see that many bargains…but that’s a good price on Saltines.
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I have many of the Siberian Pea Shrubs here in Abilene, Texas zone 8 and they are doing great. I haven’t noticed the chickens eating the pods that they produce, but they are nitrogen fixing and have real pretty yellow blooms in the spring.
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wow! they even grow in z8! they grow in z1 Siberia. talk about adaptable. read that during WW2 Russian peasants got their chickens through their harsh winters just feeding them s. pea shrub seeds. whether they liked them or not, its probably all they had to eat.
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My chickens are free range but I supplement them with non gmo scratch. Last week I went to the feed store and for 3 bags of feed it was 84 dollars, talking about a shock! I am looking into alternative feed and my neighbor owns a local brewery and brought me the leftover grain and they seemed to like it.
That is an awesome story about the Russian peasants and could possibly be the story about America sooner than later.
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Yesterday dropped by the store thought I would grab a loaf of bread while I was going to appointments and I got a big surprise and sticker shock. Had not been out in public in a long time. Bread that was .59 was now 3.50 but only the rye bread was in stock and it was 4.50. All the other bread was gone. Had to go to another store to find bananas there were 3 left. There was precious little there of anything and what there was seemed very expensive. Got a feeling I got my first experience what a gold camp must have felt like. Gas was nearly $4 a gallon so I didn’t stop to get any. Have plenty of everything already will just bake my own bread. We better start growing more food as soon as this snow is gone.
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I think It’s been at least 10 years since a plain cheap loaf bread under 79cents here…runs 1.40 to 4.89 from cheap to the good stuff.
Many things have more than doubled in the last year, not just gasoline.
Fortunately, much so far only up about 15+ percent.
One solution for the price gasoline might be to reduce the federal mandates on purity and pollutants…so more gallons could get squeezed from a barrel of crude oil.
Nobody does any creative thinking in that direction anymore.
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