Being slightly more self sufficent - what Ive been up to...

Taking into account I'm a townie and most of what I learnt is from youtube/books. Really like the American homestead they are much more switched on and practical.

Apart from raising the odd animal for our own freezer...

Raised a handful of Le Bresse eating chickens - Will buy day olds prob Sasso slow growing in spring over hatching own.
Growing my own to as much as poss but needs a lot of tweaking for next year.
Made bacon from pigs
Raise small flock of layers (sell most eggs)
Milking house cow for milk
Making yogurt
Started making butter from cream as above (seeing that we spend at least £10pw on butter this is a saving)

Next step is to make real cheese however the cave style cheese will have to wait for now. Watching Curd Nerd on YouTube learning loads.

My aim is to learn skills and save money while improving nutrition

Anyone else trying homesteading?
 

KMA

Member
Location
Dumfriesshire
Good idea and one which I think anyone with any nous is at least thinking about if they have any idea of the sh!t-storm our politicians are getting us into. I'm having to stick with fruit/veg for now, hopefully chickens in 2018. Having to learn the fruit and veg side of things from scratch but If I ever have more land I'd have a couple of Dexter cows and half a dozen ewes which will be a change from the 140 sucklers and 2000 ewes we use to run:LOL:. Our neighbours have asked to buy any surplus veg in season and the school and nursery are just 100yds past our gate, so possibilities there with the passing traffic twice a day.
 

Blaithin

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Alberta
American's are paranoid the world will end and they're big on prepping. That's why a lot of them are turning towards homesteading. For good or bad. But for good, it's allowing a lot of actually good homesteaders to get their ideas out there. This summer I did the garbage can chicken feeder and I'm quite happy with it!

Facebook is full of homesteading types of groups and some I find very interesting. I think just the way I was raised a lot of what I do would fall under homesteading. Gardening, meat and layer chickens, pigs. As an adult I'm focusing on a house cow and learning more dairy aspects as I'm a beef girl. I'm learning more about soil and grass farming as well. One thing I absolutely have listed to learn is foraging. I'd love to be able to go pasture walking and river hiking seasonally and come home with all sorts of goodies. But it can be hard to get your head around "well what if I get sick". There's so much around us that, for some reason, we just don't eat. Like alfalfa, I really enjoy adding it to salads. The blooms give it some pop in the aesthetics department and are sweet! Same with dandelions, so many uses but we just spray them instead...
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
Taking into account I'm a townie and most of what I learnt is from youtube/books. Really like the American homestead they are much more switched on and practical.

Apart from raising the odd animal for our own freezer...

Raised a handful of Le Bresse eating chickens - Will buy day olds prob Sasso slow growing in spring over hatching own.
Growing my own to as much as poss but needs a lot of tweaking for next year.
Made bacon from pigs
Raise small flock of layers (sell most eggs)
Milking house cow for milk
Making yogurt
Started making butter from cream as above (seeing that we spend at least £10pw on butter this is a saving)

Next step is to make real cheese however the cave style cheese will have to wait for now. Watching Curd Nerd on YouTube learning loads.

My aim is to learn skills and save money while improving nutrition

Anyone else trying homesteading?

Wouldn't call myself a homesteader at all, but I've done or do a lot of what you are doing. Mainly to save money and eat quality food, also like the satisfaction of knowing the animal I'm eating. I've been a bit nomadic lately so have lapsed a bit.

I recommend butchering. My cousin and I are no good at it, buts it's so cheap to buy a hog/sheep/deer and cut it yourself. Even if you add in labor.

"Eating healthy is expensive" my ass! More people should be like you. Keep it up.
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
American's are paranoid the world will end and they're big on prepping. That's why a lot of them are turning towards homesteading. For good or bad. But for good, it's allowing a lot of actually good homesteaders to get their ideas out there. This summer I did the garbage can chicken feeder and I'm quite happy with it!

Facebook is full of homesteading types of groups and some I find very interesting. I think just the way I was raised a lot of what I do would fall under homesteading. Gardening, meat and layer chickens, pigs. As an adult I'm focusing on a house cow and learning more dairy aspects as I'm a beef girl. I'm learning more about soil and grass farming as well. One thing I absolutely have listed to learn is foraging. I'd love to be able to go pasture walking and river hiking seasonally and come home with all sorts of goodies. But it can be hard to get your head around "well what if I get sick". There's so much around us that, for some reason, we just don't eat. Like alfalfa, I really enjoy adding it to salads. The blooms give it some pop in the aesthetics department and are sweet! Same with dandelions, so many uses but we just spray them instead...

Now now Canadian neighbor, not every American is a prepper. There is a back to the land movement as well. (Joel Salatin) People yearn to have a connection to their food and do meaningful work.

My mom milks a few cows by hand and I milk larger herds. Would be happy to offer guidance on the milk cows.

Don't know much on foraging, but lambs quarter is good eatin. So are stinging nettles, better than spinach. Poke weed greens make a stand in for collards and come spring, the morels are out.

I always enjoy learning about people interested in their food.
 

Blaithin

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Alberta
Now now Canadian neighbor, not every American is a prepper. There is a back to the land movement as well. (Joel Salatin) People yearn to have a connection to their food and do meaningful work.

My mom milks a few cows by hand and I milk larger herds. Would be happy to offer guidance on the milk cows.

Don't know much on foraging, but lambs quarter is good eatin. So are stinging nettles, better than spinach. Poke weed greens make a stand in for collards and come spring, the morels are out.

I always enjoy learning about people interested in their food.
I definitely didn’t mean every American is a prepper, more that it seems to be an American thing more than other places.

As a funny, I literally just seen a lady on Facebook from down south somewhere ask what to cook for supper because the power was out due to the snow storm and the roads were closed. She admitted she was a bad prepper and needed help :ROFLMAO:
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
Yeah probably so. More the Mormons than any other group though. They recommend every family has enough food on hand at any given time to feed everyone for 6 months.

Well at least that lady was trying to cook and not make it to the nearest fast food joint. That IS an American trait.
 

multi power

Member
Location
pembrokeshire
Wouldn't call myself a homesteader at all, but I've done or do a lot of what you are doing. Mainly to save money and eat quality food, also like the satisfaction of knowing the animal I'm eating. I've been a bit nomadic lately so have lapsed a bit.

I recommend butchering. My cousin and I are no good at it, buts it's so cheap to buy a hog/sheep/deer and cut it yourself. Even if you add in labor.

"Eating healthy is expensive" my ass! More people should be like you. Keep it up.
Good food is cheap, it's the processed junk that is expensive
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Do any of you have a chicken tractor?
It's going to be one of my next projects, we don't have any real predators over here and it just seems sensible to have them out there, roaming and scratching with the other stock.
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
Do any of you have a chicken tractor?
It's going to be one of my next projects, we don't have any real predators over here and it just seems sensible to have them out there, roaming and scratching with the other stock.
Saw these yesterday in S Africa...they follow the cattle about. Like you, we are keen to try a few next summer, makes perfect sense, just need to work out best design/technique
20171214_105550.jpg
 

martian

DD Moderator
BASE UK Member
Location
N Herts
They get a lot of wind here too. Unfortunately I couldn't talk to the farmer to find out more about details, beyond the fact that they use donkeys to alert about/ward off predators. There are quite a few farming chickens this way out here, so it must work.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
They get a lot of wind here too. Unfortunately I couldn't talk to the farmer to find out more about details, beyond the fact that they use donkeys to alert about/ward off predators. There are quite a few farming chickens this way out here, so it must work.
I'm not really worried about lots of eggs, I feed spares to livestock at times.
Just great to have a few more beaks and feet around the place really!
 

Blaithin

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Alberta
Mines fairly tiny like the one Jameshenry posted. Convenient enough for shuttling a few bantams around the yard but not much else.

I’d like to find someone’s old tarp carport and repurpose it to a portable chicken shed. I’m also worried about it blowing away in the winds here but for the most part they don’t blow away as carports so shouldn’t be too bad as tractors. Still, I’d probably invest in some anchors or weights I can weight it down a bit more with.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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