Monday, April 28, 2008

Green Acres is THE place to be...

Okay, so I'm a far cry from Eva Gabor but I do feel a bit like I've stepped into the Green Acres life. It's just this organic eco-friendly self-sustained living is so stinkin' addictive!

This weekend we planted our garden. Soon we'll have tomatoes, green and yellow peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, radishes, onions, lettuce, and a variety of tasty herbs. If all goes well, we may even have corn one day.


Then we did the craziest thing ever. We added some sweet little chickies to the family. After much searching, we finally found some Rhode Island Reds.



Turns out these popular egg laying fiends are sold out for at least the next two months at nearly every hatchery in the country. But, we found an awesome local man who has dozens available. He's selling them out nearly as soon as they hatch, but he has a pretty steady supply. If you're in the area and interested in his info drop me an email and I'll get you the hook-up.

We ended up buying 5 from him just to get us started and we'll see how it goes. We are also planning on adding a couple Silkie Bantams to our coop once we get it up and going. They lay small eggs, but they are sweet chickens and really pretty, too.

Since Rhode Island Reds can lay as many as one a day we could conceivably have around 25-30 eggs a week from these hens. We've already have a few people tell us they want to buy our eggs when our hens start laying so I think I'll let the girls have this as their first little "business." They can sell the eggs and keep the proceeds in exchange for their egg collecting services. I love the idea of them learning about chores and reaping the benefits of making a time investment in something. I don't think it's ever too early to teach that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh how cool is that! Id love to buy chickens one day.

Me said...

Have you read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"?