Bliss Through Farming?

On LinkedIn this week, I saw this little graphic:

The happy intersection of passion, mission, vocation, and profession?

It's a nice cross-section and compartmentalization of different types of work. The point, of course, was to encourage people to find a career that satisfies the little blue star in the middle. Then, we would all achieve supreme happiness, live debt-free, rescue puppies, and live happily ever after.

Except, that just isn't reality.

Chicken Problems (and Potential Solutions)

Chicken problems. We've had 'em all. Let's start with the older chickens and work down, shall we?

Problems #1 and #2: Food Ran Out and New Pecking Order...At the Same Time

About a month ago, I had a small 4-day interruption in layer pellet availability at the same time I introduced the 8 new Araucanas to the flock. The 23 laying-age chickens had been laying between 14 and 18 eggs pretty regularly for the previous month, but then sharply went down to around 8-10. The food interruption and the new pecking order disruption were blamed for the egg drop.

The flock flocked for fresh feed.

Turns out, those factors were not entirely to blame.

Getting Ahead of Food Prices

I read recently that for some families, food prices have doubled in the last few years. I believe it. I don't have figures of our own family, but I do know that food has taken a disproportionately larger and larger percentage of our money each year. It is the fastest growing expense.

Even the national news outlets are coming around. See here, here, and here.

These are only gonna keep on climbing.

So with that, I believe there are 4 major things that influence food prices (listed after the jump), and none of those are in my control.

What IS in my control is my land, time, energy, and effort to produce my own food.

"The System"

I was fortunate enough to capture almost the whole "system" in place in one picture:

Left: the first product garden.
Middle pen: The pigs.
Right pen; The chickens.
Foreground left, the cow cart.
Foreground right, Bridget.
Also, that is a hose, not a large green snake.

It's especially exciting because, although this picture doesn't show it, there are a dozen or so "wild melon" plants growing where the pigs just vacated. Although, we did feed them extra watermelon and cantaloupe innards.

I hope for rain this weekend. I'm going to sow the garden with some seeds, but the soil needs to be wet.. I'm thinking carrots, sunflowers, tobacco, green beans - things that can be sown in larger section. The transplants will go to the "old" garden.

Oh yeah, and we reversed the flow of the system. We were heading (from that angle) left, but we're now moving right, and the chickens are going first. The chickens' egg quality declined (paler yolks), and they severely compacted the soil rather than loosen it. So now they lead and scratch/trim the grass, readying it for the pigs to go deeper.

I can't wait until the "system" hits its stride.

Choose Your Own (Homesteading) Adventure

In the wide world of project management, there's an old saying that goes something like this:

You can do this project fast, cheap, and correct. But you can only pick two. -Old Saying

I would call the setup of a farm, the initial infrastructure build, as a "project." And in something like building a portable cow care station, or constructing a winter dry lot, or designing a movable chicken coop, this "law" still hold sway.

Where's the "all of the above" bubble?

But what about everyday life? Is there a pattern that can look at the bigger picture of managing the day to day activities of a homesteader?

I believe there is. I've found that day-to-day life on a farm follows a similar pattern - you can't have it all. I've said it before, and I guess now I'll say it in print:

You can make farming as difficult or as easy as you want it to be. -Bubs

For example, if you wanted to cut a hay field, driving a tractor with a sickle bar mower is faster than hand-scything it. However, there is a trade-off. You gain something and you lose something in each of these two very simple scenarios. In the first, you opt for "quality" and "speed," but pay out the nose for the equipment. In the second, going for "quality" and "price" means it takes longer.

Projects are one thiung, and we all undertake them. But I've been thinking about the everyday activities - stuff we do every single morning and evening, as opposed to one-off or once-in-a-while projects. I like to call this daily flurry of activity "farm management." I think farm management, especially hobby farm management, boils down to a dance between four distinct elements:

Why Do I Homestead?

Sometimes, it's good for us (humans in general, I mean) to step back and take a good look at why we're doing one particular thing or another. For some, it's asking, "Why do I continue to buy all these magazines?" For others, "Why am I working two jobs and pursuing yet another degree?" Still more, "Why do I continue to wake up early and sit in traffic for an hour to spend 70% of my life behind this desk that I hate and with these people I can't stand?"

Those three pesky letters that separate us from the animals.

For me, it's "Why do I wake up at the crack of the sun, hit ice out of a bucket with a bat in negative temperatures, shovel cow pies and lug hundreds of pounds of water in a cart twice a day, rearrange my kitchen to accommodate new dairy experiments, spend my Sundays housing swine, give chickens a weekly ride in a rickshaw, and otherwise devote the first 30 minutes of my day to squeezing liquid from a cow's underside with my bare hands?"

Simple: I'm certifiable The short answer is that it's the path to a richer, more fulfilling life. But you came to read the long answer.....

HOLY COW! I GOT A COW!!

Actually, TWO cows.

Me, left. Bridget, middle. Brisket, right.
Holy. Freakin. Cow.

Bridget is a registered Jersey cow. She was born in 2011, a few weeks after Thing #3. Brisket is her first calf. He's five months old, and fully, ahem, intact. (We'll be remedying that tomorrow....). We just brought them home late Friday night, so we're all still adjusting.

We named Bridget after St. Bridid of Kildare (a.k.a., St. Bridget of Ireland). She'll help out with our long-term plans SIGNIFICANTLY, and provide us fresh, raw, healthy dairy right away. Brisket is loosely and alliteratively named after his ultimate destination.  :)

Economics of Backyard Gardening

I explored the economics of backyard egg-laying chickens and the economics of a milking cow last week. Today, i want to look at the ubiquitous backyard vegetable garden.

"Garden" is such a loose term. It can refer to anything from a few flowers set by the house, to a tomato and pepper plant in a pot, to a raised bed or two, to a 400-square foot plot of mixed results (like our garden last year), to perfectly manicured coifs of flowers and decorative trees, to anything and everything in between.

Yeah....there's no way I'm doing that.

In this piece, I'm going to focus on a garden that is totally dedicated to growing vegetables for a family to eat. Flower gardens are great and all, but for the practical homesteader, a veggie patch gets more return for the money.

The Economics of a Backyard Milk Cow

Earlier this week, I explored the economics of keeping backyard egg-laying chickens. Since I want to get and keep a milk cow for the family, I thought I'd do the same thing for a cow.

Hey! I don't wear overalls!

We're going to need to make a few concessions and constraints based on my situation here, though.

1. A milking cow need at least an acre of good growing pasture. Add in a growing steer for beef, and you can effectively double that. So a cow/calf pair should have 2 acres of pasture during the growing season. Let's assume I have that.
2. A milking cow must be fed hay in the winter at about the rate of 25-35 pounds of hay a day. We'll crunch the numbers using 30 lbs./day as the go-to hay rate.
3. Hay can be harvested in three cuttings a year at the rate of about 5 tons per acre in zones 6 and 7 (we are in 6b), and potentially more if fertilized. I will assume less than the ideal and guess it's closer to 4. Let's also assume that I have a separate section of land for hay harvesting.

So, those things being assumed, let's dive in and see what we can see.

Backyard Chicken Economics

You have to spend money to make money. -Old Saying

As with any endeavor in modern times, there is a "start-up cost." This may be, in our case, the cost of buying day-old chicks, incubating and feeding them until they're productive, and building a movable chicken coop.

Indeed, they do take them.

Then, they become "productive." This means laying eggs or able to be processed for meat. They still, ya know, eat during this time, so the cost of ongoing feed gets factored in as well.

So after our very first home-grown, backyard egg (valued at around the low, low price of $800) came through, needless to say we were a bit excited. Because at that point, the cost-per-egg figure goes down exponentially.

I don't have an exact egg-per-day count, but based on some milestones I've documented (first egg, first half dozen, first dozen, first 15 egg, 100% day), we have received roughly 620 eggs in 81 days. That's 7.5 eggs a day. Counting the cost of ongoing feed, we're still in it for over $1 per egg. An we don't even do the certified organic thing.