They have been talking chickens at the back forty and http://a-homesteading-neophyte.blogspot.com/; while I have no chickens right now, I do have livestock of a different sort. They are very low maintenance, they do not bother the neighbors, they do eat my childrens homework (and my junk mail), and all they ever give me is S**T! They are my red worms of course! They started as a dozen worms brought home from the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair (http://www.themrea.org/) two years ago by my then 5 year old. Last winter most of our food scraps went into the bin, then they moved outside for the summer and turned a large pile of last years used up 'potting soil' into great growing material again. Now the worms are back in the house in TWO bins. We are experimenting with using them to recycle waste paper in addition to waste food (anything but meat or fat). Any paper not brightly colored or shiney goes through the cross cut shredder and into the bins. We are using the resulting compost for flowers/ornamentals-not for food-so I am not so worried about the heavy metals, etc from the ink. Now instead of hanging on to EVERY piece of schoolwork the girls bring home (and they bring home ALOT) they love to shred the work and feed it to the worms-of course the 'masterpieces are saved for posterity! So far the only problem I am having is fruit flies! I had read that freezing the food scraps prior to placing in the bin would prevent the fly eggs from hatching, but it does not seem to be working. I loved Harvey's idea for worm bins in the greenhouse and worms fed to the chickens on the modern homestead site-K
2 comments:
I kept worms last year! I kept forgetting to feed them and then I put them in the garage on a burning hot day and well...I'll have to try again another time. I also did not use red worms. My hubby and I just went to the bait shop and bought a bunch o' generics and sooo, they may not have been as hardy...but I was getting casings and they were working for awhile. Sorry about the work situation. My husband still has a very high stress job and I am running the farm basically on my own because once he makes the hour commute morning and evening, he is too wiped to help. This is what we want and once we are out of house debt (5 years hopefully or sooner if we can stop going out to eat and splurging) then he will take a lower paying job and we will just homestead together. Hugs. We had chickens when we lived in suburbia and we kept bees. If you go to my blog and go back in my archives to the very beginning, you'll see our pregression to selling our house and buying land and milking goats and raising our own meat.
Danielle-I'd love to hear more about your beehives! My work situation is not that bad, it is entirely of my own creation! This blog is just my outlet to vent. I'll write more later about our rabbits -our other urban livestock! K
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