Backyard Farmer

Heavytruck

Heavytruck

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Any of you ever get into trying to be self sufficient with as much food as possible? About a year ago, my wife and I decided we were going to grow our own chickens for egg production since at the time the price for eggs was crazy. We bought ten chickens and ended up with two of them not making it through the winter. We decided we wanted a few more this is the first group that we hatched four days ago from our own chickens eggs. Pretty exciting. We also built a 76’ x 42’ vegetable garden with a small 10x20 greenhouse for the colder months. Still working on building the rest of the raised beds but we grew more vegetables than we can store and been using the extra eggs to mix with dog food. We also planted two apple trees, two plum trees, and an orange tree. What are some things you’ve done that started out as a way to save money, and turned into an addiction? (Besides peptides lol)
 
Heavytruck said:


Any of you ever get into trying to be self sufficient with as much food as possible? About a year ago, my wife and I decided we were going to grow our own chickens for egg production since at the time the price for eggs was crazy. We bought ten chickens and ended up with two of them not making it through the winter. We decided we wanted a few more this is the first group that we hatched four days ago from our own chickens eggs. Pretty exciting. We also built a 76’ x 42’ vegetable garden with a small 10x20 greenhouse for the colder months. Still working on building the rest of the raised beds but we grew more vegetables than we can store and been using the extra eggs to mix with dog food. We also planted two apple trees, two plum trees, and an orange tree. What are some things you’ve done that started out as a way to save money, and turned into an addiction? (Besides peptides lol)

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My thinking is my kids are well educated and self sufficient and my thinking is you can't take it with you mentality. So I guess none. Not to poh poh on your post. Just my take.
 
I don't plant anything in my yard unless it is edible.

We have several large garden beds. I have everything from rhubarb, artichokes, potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, melons....so much more.

Hubby built a lettuce table for our lettuce. I also grow microgreens as well as flowers like calendula and nasturtiums (for salads and teas) and tons of different herbs.
 
I have many chickens and occasionally grow out meat birds and butcher. We grind most of the venison we shoot and use it in place of ground beef a couple times a week. Have a garden. Raw milk. Bake my own bread etc. Beats paying 7+$ per loaf of daves killer bread which is the only kind we will buy. That's all in an ideal world. This year my garden sucked and I've been too tired to bake much bread. We spend about 30$/ week on bread for the 7 of us.
 
At my old house, I had chickens. Absolutely loved having them. Free breakfast, they are pretty low maintenance, help keep the bug population down in the yard, and free fertilizer for my garden. I wasn't trying to reach a goal of self sufficient, but I was trying to be closer to it. Had the chickens for eggs and protein, had bee hives for honey (source of sugar), veggie garden for vegetables and herbs, rain barrels for water. I never did nail down a source of salt though.
 
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