HOW MY CHICKENS GIVE ME MORE THAN JUST EGGS. BUT THEY'RE DAMN GOOD AT GIVING EGGS!!
The girls definitely aren't thinking about winter anymore! They're doing there jobs quite well. Another job the chickens do for me on the farm, besides laying eggs, is prep the ground so I can plant.
We use our animals highly honed skills to our favor. I've been using the pigs and the chickens to clear ground for me so I can plant into it. We don't own a tractor on HOP Farm or a gas powered tiller. I'm testing to see if animal power and a little man power can do the work instead.
First we send in the pigs to have them eat and root out all the grass and plants not wanted in an area. Pigs have plows for noses and they love to dig up fresh grass. Plus they're getting more of a balanced diet and we don't have to spend as much on feed! They also drop fertilizer out the back end.
After the pigs have left I will send in the chickens. The chickens will do a more detailed job. Eating the grass and weeds the pigs may have missed while doing a finer till by scratching. They will spread the pig manure when scratching through it to find larvey. This spreads the manure and helps break pest Cycles. The chickens also leave fertilizer as they go.
After the chickens have been moved out I will go behind them and plant. I'm trying two different ways of planting seeds. In the picture above there's a traditional row method.
The way I made the row was by breaking up just the top inch or two with a hand twist tiller. Then planted green beans, the bush variety, 3-4 inches apart. Toped the row with a little compost and was good to go.
The second way I'm trying is by poking holes in the ground that animal power prepared for me and planting a seed in the hole. If this way works it will save a lot of time and energy. We do plan on mulching. Just going to wait until the seeds sprout so they don't have trouble pushing through the mulch.
Here's a video showing the process that we are trying.
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Thank you so much for putting out such amazing content. We loved it so much we put it into our weekly curation report where you will be paid for your content from the rewards of the post. You can find it here:
https://steemit.com/helpie/@helpie/helpie-s-homesteading-curation-report-8-by-helpie-curator-llfarms
That is awesome! Thank you so much @llfarms!
Great way to get the animals to pay for their keep, lol. But seriously, I wish I had enough land to have both hogs and chickens. I would love to have a set up like yours. Two types of meat, eggs and all the different veggies without tilling!
Of course, I have also added this post to the Sotall Directory so others can learn from what you are doing.
Oh I forgot all about Sotall. I found out about it just a couple days ago and meant to look into it.
Thanks for the reminder!!!
I have to learn how to use animals in this way... we will be learning tons very soon as we're moving off grid to build a homestead!
Thank you sotall!
Love your amazing homesteading posts--I grew up in farmland with a LOT of chickens and this brings back a lot of great memories. Thanks for sharing these posts that help people reconnect with the land!
Thank you @lilyraabe! Glad I could bring back some good memories for you.
Pigs and chickens work great for this! In my area, it is done every year and at the end of the growing season, the pigs and chickens are put in to clean everything up.
Yep. We plan on doing the same thing after the growing season. Thank you for your comment!
I can't wait to see your progress on animal/no till method of gardening. It looks like you have good potential based on the photos!
Thank you @shalomacres! So far so good.
Holy cow I can't believe all those eggs! I like your animal tilling methods!
Thank you! The girls are laying quite well.
Thanks for sharing and nice "harvest" ;)
Thank you @orlandumike!
I love what your doing here.. I hope to one day have my own little piece of property in the country to farm on like this.. I wish I lived closer to NC so I could get some of those eggs from ya, they look delicious! ;)
Thank you @moderndayhippie! I love farm fresh eggs! So much better than store bought.
That's a whole lotta eggs! Mine are su per productive right now too, it's awesome. And they help in the garden, like yours :)
Thank you. Good to here that there is others using animal power to do the work!
Super inspiring for me, thank you.
We are moving off grid to build a homestead in just avfew weeks... I have talked about getting pigs, chickens we are getting for sure. My wife just asked about "renting" goats to clear some areas we want cleared, so we may instead just get a couple goats to do the job and in return we could rent them out as income from time to time.
I lile that you send the pigs out for clearing and than the chickens for the "fine work".
Thank you for sharing
Thank you. The system is working pretty good. Pigs will clear any land you want cleared.
I'm sure it is. Reminds me of the movie Mad Max where a pig is slowly eating a car!