Do Something Farm — Life-Long Back-to-the-Land Wannabe Making Do On a Small City Lot

How to Hypnotize Your Chicks

I couldn’t help it – I just had to make a video when I saw what was happening in my chicks’ brooder this morning. The Light Brahma chicks normally run around like, well, chickens. But then they zoned out so completely that I could pet them and they didn’t move. I’m not sure if they [...]

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Baby Chick to Miniature Chicken – in 4.5 Days…

Backyard Chickens

My Light Brahma chicks are now 21 days old, (the photo above was taken about a week ago). The “extras,” (except for the two I kept), have all gone to a new home, thanks to a very nice neighbor. If not for him, I’d still have all ten. I received no response to my Craigslist [...]

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From Lazy to Self-Sufficient – Let the Transformation Begin

Food Self-Sufficiency

There are several personal stumbling blocks that could derail my commitment to become food self-sufficient on my small city lot. In my favor are several personality quirks that should help — I love to experiment, just to find out what happens when you do something out of the ordinary. And I love to create things, [...]

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Baby Chick “Environmental Enrichment” Program

Backyard Chickens

Last week I read Temple Grandin’s book Animals Make Us Human. She talks a lot about how an artificial environment, like a zoo, a farm, or a backyard, can be painfully boring for critters imprisoned there. And she said that an animal feels much more pleasure and enjoyment during the act of finding food than [...]

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Garden Compost – There’s Lots of Systems to Choose From

Composting

How do you make garden compost? It depends… It’s amazing how many systems people have invented to help nature turn leaves and weeds back into humus. Just a few of these systems include the fancy (and expensive) compost tumblers that transform food scraps and garden waste into compost in as little as 14 days (or [...]

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Increase Your Comfrey Patch by Dividing Plants

Composting

Comfrey is so easy to divide that you could start out with just one plant and quickly have enough for all your composting needs. You can learn more about this amazing plant and why it makes such good compost here (links to PDF file). If you don’t have any comfrey yet, make sure you buy [...]

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Baby Backyard Chickens Arrived. Oops…

Backyard Chickens

Well, this is a problem I didn’t prepare for. I ordered three baby Light Brahma chicks from Nature’s Hatchery, which is willing to ship small orders. Most hatcheries have a 25 chick minimum. Since the hatchery is in Illinois and I’m in Oregon, I thought of many things that might go wrong. But getting too [...]

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My Easy-to-Build Tiny Chicken Coop

Backyard Chickens

Like most of the things I build, this coop was pounded together using the “good enough” rule. That rule states that you must sometimes be willing to do things wrong if you want to do them at all. Otherwise, you must hire the work done for you (can’t afford it) or do without. Yesterday my [...]

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