{"id":85,"date":"2011-09-14T05:52:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/back-yard-homesteading\/"},"modified":"2011-09-14T05:52:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T12:52:00","slug":"back-yard-homesteading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/back-yard-homesteading.html","title":{"rendered":"Back Yard Homesteading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-Gi1vHTH3ygo\/TnCl4kVB29I\/AAAAAAAAAIU\/vVTr1qsByaM\/s1600\/backyard%2Bhomestead.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-Gi1vHTH3ygo\/TnCl4kVB29I\/AAAAAAAAAIU\/vVTr1qsByaM\/s320\/backyard%2Bhomestead.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><br \/>City dwellers and country folks alike are realizing the benefits of back yard homesteading. It doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean you have to go out and buy a horse, cows, goats and fill acres with fences and animals. Back yard homesteading could be as simple as a few chickens and a nice garden for summer time vegetables. Homesteading is simply making the best use out of the land you have to use. If you have a small city plot, plant a garden in addition to flowers for an edible landscape design. If city ordinances allow, add a few chickens for a fresh supply of eggs. Despite a common misconception, you do not need a rooster to have fresh eggs. You only need a rooster if you want fertile eggs!<\/p>\n<div>Chickens are an easy addition to the back yard homestead because they require very little maintenance. A clean source of water is a must and a constant supply of a healthy chicken crumble from your local feed store will have you enjoying fresh eggs in no time. A great benefit to chickens is the built in composting option. They LOVE table scraps, vegetable peels and cuttings and pretty much any food stuffs you&#8217;d normally throw away. In return they will give you fertilizer for your grass or garden. We coop our chickens at <a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-xfZsQmJmOA0\/TnCmnpo0A2I\/AAAAAAAAAIk\/ftLgwGNMEBE\/s1600\/2008%2BNov%2B10%2B010.JPG\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-xfZsQmJmOA0\/TnCmnpo0A2I\/AAAAAAAAAIk\/ftLgwGNMEBE\/s320\/2008%2BNov%2B10%2B010.JPG\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a>night and let them run free in the yard during the day. This does require fencing around any gardens, as I said, they do love fresh vegetables and you&#8217;ll find a patch full of half eaten cucumbers and the lettuce will be gone if you don&#8217;t lock them out. I clean out the chicken coop every month or so. I compost the straw bedding for the garden soil. We use five gallon buckets in a wooden rack that we built for nesting boxes. This keeps the skunks and racoons from stealing the eggs. The buckets are at a twenty degree tilt to keep the eggs from rolling out onto the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Please comment with any questions and as always&#8230; Happy Homesteading!!!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>City dwellers and country folks alike are realizing the benefits of back yard homesteading. It doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean you have to go out and buy a horse, cows, goats and fill acres with fences and animals. Back yard homesteading could be as simple as a few chickens and a nice garden for summer time vegetables. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardening","category-homesteading","category-poultry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homesteadersupply.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}