Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Decisions, Decisions

The wife and I have been going over the Mini Farm and the future plans for the past couple of days. It has been raining every evening so there was not much to do outside anyway.

The main topic is where are we going with all this and how are we going to get there. Even though I have a step by step schedule and a over all five year plan on where I want this to be, that dose not mean it is going that way. The main question was, are we doing this just for survival or are we doing this to build a business. We both came up with the same answer, let's do both. Building a business will ensure our survival.

Saying all that, this summer was brutal on us and the animals with all the snakes, owls and the blistering heat and not to mention the non producing gardens. So we had to step back and take another look at how we can do this in a more efficient way. What she come up with was, go big or stay in the house.

Last night was spent on figuring out the expansion of the chicken side of it. What looks good on paper does not mean it will work but it's a starting place. We have a shipment of chickens coming in tomorrow. They should be laying by the end of March. I really do not want to keep ordering expensive day old chicks so we are going to take this first order and use them for our breeders. They are the breed of chickens we like so why not? I need to build three more little hen houses so we can control who is bred with who and then build one larger grow out pen.

The way it plays out is there will be a constant rotation from the incubator to the brooder to the grow out pen then to the yard. The number of birds in that rotation will very.
So that means I have a little work to do before the end of April.

2 comments:

  1. Praying it works well for your family. We tried this and have come to the conclusion that in our neck of the woods( so to speak) people just aren't ready to support local anything, let alone small farms*sigh* So... after much prayer and rethinking( due to the ever rising feed costs, causing tightening budget issues) we have decided to go back to raising for our own needs, only. To us( personally) the hassle of trying the educate the people about Fresh/ Naturally raised produce and animals has been frustrating to say the least.
    Good luck and praying it works well for your family.
    Blessings,
    Kelle

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  2. Buying natural food is growing in popularity here and people do not seem to mind paying a little more for fresh the fresh stuff. The problem is, a lot of people are doing it and location plays a big part in how you do. If I only knew what I know now and I still lived down on the old farm, I could make a good living just selling produce and animals.

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