Why chickens?

I'm glad you asked... it isn't as though we are hurtin' for eggs around here - we have a friend that delivers farm fresh eggs to our doorstep once a week and for less that we could buy them in the store... Yes, in the winter time things taper off quite a bit but that should hold true for us and our own egg production.

Well, Nic and I talked long ago and decided that being more sustainable and being less reliant on others for our basic needs was going to be a priority in our future. No, we aren't the-sky-is-falling enviro's consumed w/ oil prices and such, but I am convinced that we NEED to be more self reliant. For example, what if one of us lost our jobs? What if instead of both being employed full time we could only muster up a couple of part time gigs? What would happen to our standard of living then?

So rather than trying to always be at the top of the food chain standard-of-living wise, the idea is to lower the standard, become responsible for more of our own basics, and live cheaper and simply as much off the land as we can reasonably manage. You've heard the term "hobby farm" before? That's kinda where we are going... a couple, three, four, five acres if we can get it, a simple house or yurt, some out buildings... keep it simple and affordable... so even if we do manage to keep going full throttle w/ our income (a situation I seriously doubt will last until retirement) then that's just more money into savings or other projects...

So the chicken thing, the garden thing (other than we both enjoy the homegrown food) are actually training for when we make the big push for self reliance... if we can do it ourselves, we SHOULD do it ourselves...

One of the things we need to learn how to do (among MANY other things) is to learn food preservation techniques, and also learn what foods/animals/veggies etc will work out well for us. Who knows - maybe it will all work out that Ducks are the way to go rather than chickens... they do lay more consistently than chickens do and don't worry so much about the weather, so...

Oh, and the 6 girls are doing just fine... moved them into a much bigger brooder and they are just lovin' it!!