Homesteading, Survival, Homemaking, Back to Basics...Blog Hop

My wonderful husband found this great article and I have to share it with you! grow-an-organic-chicken-garden I learned a lot reading this and wish I had know about chickens loving soured milk a few days ago.
Since my yard is more weeds than grass it is very chicken friendly! I really don't need to plant them their own garden. (For one thing, they will be able to have free range in ours this fall!)

Our back yard has; dandelion, clover, violets, wild strawberries and Plantain. There is more but those are the main ones and the ones I know what they are. The chickens love these, not to mention the bugs they catch. They really are fun to watch when one gets hold of a bug and goes on a chase to keep her treasure from the others.

I want to try something new. Something fun! Over at Raising Homemakers they are having a homemaking link up. It inspired me to do one for anything homesteading, homemaking, Prepping or survival, old fashioned skills... you get the idea! I would love to find some more interesting blogs and link up with them.

I may be doing this all wrong and not even know it. But I can always remove this post in a week if it's a bust!

If you have a blog or a post that has something to do with any of these, use the linky below and be sure to link back to me so others can join!

Our Chicks!

In the light of rising gas and food prices we have been looking for ways to become a little more self reliant. I have had a garden for several years now and am getting so most everything I plant grows.

Last year my husband found out about Amaranth, a grain that is gluten free and very healthy. He planted a bunch of it and it did pretty well. He will be planting more of it this year.

(I will have my husband do some posts about this grain soon.)

We have a done rain barrels, mulch piles, gardening classes and getting books to learn how to be as self reliant as we can on our small piece of land in a sub-division.

For a long time now I have wanted to have just a few hens in the back yard for fresh eggs and manure. Not to mention the fun and pleasure. It is also a great project for my children. (This will be a 4-H project for my 10 yr old.)

Everything started to come together for us to be able to do so. My friend John had been looking at port-a-coops/chicken tractors and really didn't like what he found and started studying different types and the pros and cons and designed his own. We are building the prototype and making changes as we go. My 10 year old told us she wanted an incubator for her birthday and a friend gave her a dozen fertile eggs and after carefully turning them every day and watching the temp. The eggs started hatching Saturday morning and we have 8 chicks hatched and 3 eggs to go! We will keep only 4 or 5 hens and sell or give away the rest.

I will post more later but I need to rub some coconut oil on my shoulders. I got a little sun burnt adding compost and rock dust to my soil this afternoon.

I will do some gardening posts soon.