Meat chickens

Ok, so we have a website here that is very similar to craigs list. It's called KSL. It is simply a place where people can sell stuff online locally. There's a free section that I always keep a close eye on (cause I'm a cheap bastard), and the other day, I saw that someone nearby was giving away FREE meat chickens! I called the guy up, and he said that he had five available. I told my wife I was going to go pick some of them up. She looked at me and said "Cam, only get two." She said this because she knows better than anyone that sometimes I can get over my head with my dumb little projects. I agreed, and left to go get the chickens. I showed up at the guy's house, and we walked into his back yard, and upon seeing his chicken coop, I saw the biggest chickens I have ever layed eyes on. He started loading them into the large box that I brought, and I told him that I only wanted two (secretly I wanted 3 though), and he said "Well, I kind of want to get rid of all of them at once. It's ok, I'll give you another box". He gave me all five, and loaded them into boxes. I could seriously barley lift a box with 3 of them, and I'm a fairly strong person. I came home and sheepishly told my wife how in a moment of weakness, I took all five. She was annoyed at first, but it was a bit playful, so it was ok. So I've never actually butchered a chicken before, and now I have 5 nearly turkey sized chickens that I have to dispose of. So after watching a few YouTube videos I dove into it. I took a while, and I called in a friend to save me some time. Needless to say he had never killed/butchered chickens either, but it's really not that difficult. When all was said and done, I ended up with about 30 lbs of straight chicken meat. It was too much to even fit in my freezer. I had to enlist the help of my parents freezer. It took a while, but now I have some good experience with butchering chickens, and a whole ton of meat, and it was all free. It was great.

My Homestead....almost

My Homestead....almost First of all, let me tell you a bit about myself. I'm what you would call a fairly normal guy. I've got a wife, a young son, and currently live in a Two bedroom apartment in Utah. We have very hot dry summers, and very cold winters here. My Views: I think that we should all attempt to be as self sufficient as possible. I think that we have all become too dependent on commercially provided food and other supplies. I not so much a SHTF prepper person, however I'll be honest, I fit the profile fairly well. I've got a fairly good food storage, and a good amount of emergency supplies, however what motivates me is to simply be self reliant. I hate having to rely on commercially prepared goods. I want to be able to do most things for myself. This takes me to my backyard homestead. As I stated earlier, I am living in a two bedroom apartment, or duplex. Fortunately, it's in a small town where most people have a yard of some kind. In the back of my apartment, there are two large pecan trees, the largest apple tree I've ever seen, and two not so great peach trees. Aside from the trees, I was allowed a small garden area in the back. In this area, I have built a rabbit run along with a few hutches. I also have a parrot cage in my driveway with a few quail in it. Soon, I will be moving into my own home a few cities over. I will have my own yard It won't be a huge plot of land, the whole plot is just under a quarter acre. This blog will pretty much be a journal of my adventures in making it as homestead-esque as possible while still trying to look like a normal home, and not driving my wife crazy with all my antics. Here's my plan, or at least what I want to accomplish with my new home. 1: I currently have 5 female rabbits, and two male rabbits. I've only gotten a successful litter out of one of them. I want to be able to get them all on a routine where they are producing litters alternately and I will have a constant supply of rabbit meat. 2: My quail will begin producing eggs within the month. The eggs are much smaller than a chicken egg, but as far as the feed to egg ratio go, the quail is actually more efficient than a chicken. not to mention they are pretty delicious. I butchered a few up and fried them on my grill. 3: Since I won't have my fruit trees any longer, I will actually be needing to plant some, although I won't get good harvests for a while. I want to have at least two apple trees and a peach tree. 4: I want to dig a well in one of the far corners of the property. I shouldn't have to go down very far where I'm going to be living. I imagine about 25-30 feet should be plenty. I'd build me a pump, and that could supply the garden and animals with water. 5: I attempted a garden where I live now, however the work it took to get water all the way back to where the garden was wasn't worth the effort. In my new house, I'm putting in my own sprinkling system, so I'm going to add in a watering attachment into the system so that it automatically gets watered. 6: I want to get a few egg laying chickens. Not a ton of them, only around three or so. 7: The last thing that I want to implement is......my wife isn't quite sure of this idea, but I want to use a couple of 55 gallon drums and raise some fish in them. I've been doing a lot of research on the subject, and most people do it to aid in an aquaponics system. At this point, i'm not really interested in it. I just want to raise some Tilapia, and/or catfish. We'll see how it goes. So here it is. I'll update whenever I get to work on my homestead. We'll see how it goes.