Barnyarden

The banty in the shed vs the blog post…

Posted on Jul 1, 2015

The banty in the shed vs the blog post…

If you happen to have a little farmstead with chickens, ducks, dogs, gardens and bee hives you can find some fairly odd sounding to-do notes lying about in the kitchen. This one was from our place back in Arkansas. We had one banty hen who flew out of the chicken yard regularly…

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Throwing away chicken food

Posted on Apr 16, 2014

Throwing away chicken food

How can we be throwing away so much chicken food? OK not really throwing away, but feeding to the composter. Which is good but not nearly as satisfying as watching a bevy of biddies TEAR into a fresh pile of kitchen scraps with a gleam in their eyes.

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First Chicken Coop: The Taj-MaHen

Posted on Nov 17, 2012

First Chicken Coop: The Taj-MaHen

I’ve posted that a good coop is THE KEY to happily keeping chickens. What I mean by that is a spot where your chickens roost at night and can be locked up safe when you need them to be.

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Chickens: Hardest Working Garden Buddy Award

Posted on Nov 5, 2012

Chickens: Hardest Working Garden Buddy Award

Some friends and I were standing in the ramshackle remnants of the November garden at Larrapin after an arduous 2012 summer season. There wasn’t much to crow about once you got past the glorious stand of collard greens. Perhaps as a kindness, my friends remarked instead on how handy it must be that my chicken paddock is right beside the garden. The hens were casually pecking away at piles of end-of-season garden residue tossed over the fence to them. Yes it is! I nearly shouted, relieved to turn the attention away from all the things I didn’t do right in the garden this year.

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Permaculture Leaf Compost Shredding with Chickens

Posted on Jun 16, 2012

Permaculture Leaf Compost Shredding with Chickens

The situation: We have an over-abundance of oak leaves every Fall. We have a shortage of good topsoil on this rocky Ozark hilltop year-round. How to use one problem to solve the other? Why, chickens of course.

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