NEWSLETTERS

Modern Homesteading Movement

Newsletter 1-31-05

1) Want to Be Independent of the Feedstore?
2) Cheap poultry and seeds. Want to buy ink for cartridge refills by the gallon?
3) Preliminary Version of Carla's September Tour to Just-About-Everywhere
4) Wind Power
5) News Bits
6) Selling Craft Supplies, Antiques, Old Cookbooks

1) Growing Your Own Feed When I go out to the garden, I wear my garden apron: one big pocket full of seeds to be planted, one pocket to hold my trowel, one pocket for miscellaneous. I take a wicker basket with me. The size of basket depends on my planned task. If I'm spading up new ground, I take a bushel-sized basket. My daily quota is one basketful of grass, weeds, and grass / weed roots per day. That means I clear about a square yard of new ground per day. If I'm weeding in the garden, rather than digging up new ground, I take a small basket that easily fits in a bare spot near where I'm working. My rule when working in the garden is that if I see a weed, I dig it out with my trowel. Then I plant seeds (making a planting trench from dug-out weed to weed) or I put transplants in where the weed or weeds were. I put each weed that I dig out into the basket.

Whenever the basket gets full I take it to the chickens. If I have a bundle of nice dry grass, I stuff it into a rabbit hutch. If a doe is expecting babies and has a bare-bottomed nesting box, I push a bunch of nice dry grass back inside there. She'll do the right thing with it. In severely cold weather I put lots of dry grass into all the rabbit hutches. Helps keep them warmer. I strew it on the floor of the chicken house. I put it into the chickens egg-laying boxes. I don't buy hay. Too expensive. Grass grows itself and dried grass is hay. Hay is dried grass.

My chickens LOVE weeds from the garden. The rabbits love certain weeds from the garden. I plan the garden so that I'll have lots of their favorite foods for both chickens and rabbits. I plant lots of winter squash and pumpkins and root vegetables of all sorts to store for winter feed for the chickens. And they'll enjoy anything green! The weeds supply themselves! Goats and cows can winter on stored winter squash and pumpkins, root vegetables, and hay. Getting from entirely buying store-feed for your animals to feeding them an entirely home-grown diet is a three-step transition. 1) Supplement store feed with home-grown feed, or kitchen-discards. 2) Increase the amount of home-grown feed until you are using the store feed merely as a supplement. 3) Rely entirely on home-grown feed. There is no rule that you must feed the critters only store-bought, or feed them only home-grown. There are definitely some good arguments for feeding them partly, or all home-grown. It's up to you whether you want to stop at 1), 2), or 3). Chickens and pigs are omnivores. They'll happily eat ANYTHING. In my experience, chickens much prefer homegrown, homemade foods. I start them out as baby chicks with a combination of dinner leftovers, homeground cereal grains (same as what we use to make bread and cereal), a little scrambled egg for protein, and surplus frozen vegetables. My chickens number one favorite vegetable is mashed pumpkin or squash or sweet potato for babies and chunks of uncooked pumpkin or squash or sweet potatoes for adults. They're smart critters. Scientists tell us that those brightly colored orange vegies are highly nourishing for people too. Chickens know what they need nutritionally. Offer them a variety of feeds. They'll take what they need. Please don't put any leftovers from cooking or eating into the garbage. That's such a waste. Put anything that was once alive onto your garden or garden compost heap, or feed it to your pets, or feed it to other critters. Homemade Food for Pets--Feeding pets a homemade diet is good practice too! When I was a little girl, there was no such thing as store cat food or dog food. Dogs happily ate table scraps. Cats got along on table scraps and a small dish of milk.

Sunshine--ALL critters need exposure to sunshine at least once a week (twice or thrice is better) to make vitamin D. Store feeds contain Vitamin D supplements, but if you're offering a home-grown diet you have to make sure they get some natural sunshine. All my rabbits are in roomy hutches that combine shelter (the little house), space (the larger hutch area), shade (roof, solid backside, and house), and a place where they can sit in the sun to make their Vitamin D. Although I raise baby chicks in our two bathtubs (showers only in chick-growing season!), I have my choice of chick-sized chicken tractors (6' x 2' box with chicken wire sides and raisable top and no bottom) and a roomy outdoor pen so I can get them out in the sunshine during the warm part of the day. If chicks don't get some natural sunshine (and they're without vitamin D containing feed), they'll develop rickets within two or three weeks. The symptoms of rickets are weakness, especially in the legs. The emergency treatment is to get that critter out into sunshine! With luck, they'll pull out of it, but it's better to avoid the problem. A chicken with a bad case may survive, but may always be gimpy. A chick with a really bad case will die. Home-fed Rabbits--Rabbits are a little picker than chickens. They are, of course, herbivores. They like to eat at night. In the daytime when I'm working in the garden, I stuff their cages with stuff I know they like: sunflower stalks, Jerusalem artichoke stalks, Bermuda grass, celery and celery root, carrots, prunings from fruit trees. In the morning, there'll be much less, as they eat their way through the jungle. A rabbit in a cage crammed with food is a happy rabbit! I grow wheat and snip off green tops for them. They love that too. Here's more info on what rabbits can and can't eat...

CAN EAT:

Acacia: no food value, but twigs can be entertainment
Alfalfa: fresh or hay
Apples: all parts
Barley
Beans and bean vines (not soybean)
Beets: both top and root of regular, sugar, or mangel
Bermuda grass
Blackberry bush leaves
Bluegrasses, including Canadian
Bread: dry, or soaked in milk
Buckwheat
Cabbage: some is okay, too much may cause goiter
Carpet grass
Carrot: root and tops.
Cereals (if fat-free and fresh)
Cheeseweed (malva)
Chicories
Clovers: any but sweet clover
Coltsfoot
Corn: fresh or dried ears, fresh or dried stalks.
Cow Parsnip
Crabgrass
Dandelion
Dogwood
Fescue: red, etc.
Filaree (stork's bill)
Grains: all types, unless dirty, damp, or moldy
Grapefruit: all parts (don't feed too much)
Grass: Lawn clippings, grass grains, as long as they carry no insecticides & are fresh
Hazelnut leave
Jerusalem artichokes: tops, stems, or roots
Kale
Kentucky bluegrass
Knotgrass
Kohlrabi: all parts of plant okay
Kudzu
Lettuce: all kinds
Lespedeza
Malva (cheeseweed)
Meadow fescue
Milk: fresh or sour, as well as milk products
Millet: foxtail and Japanese
Milo
Napier grass
Oats
Oranges: all parts (don't feed too much)
Orchard grass
Panicgrass
Parsnips
Peas and pea vines
Plantain
Poplar
Potato: but, not peelings, sprouts or leaves!
Prairie grass
Redtop grass
Rhodes grass
Root vegetables
Rye, rye grass, and Italian rye grass
Sheep sorrelSorghum grains
Spinach: in limited amount
Sprouted grains
Sudan grass
Sumac
Sunflower: leaves, stalks, or seeds
Sweet potatoes: vines or tubers
Swiss chard: in limited amount
Timothy
Turkey mullein
Turnips: all parts of plant
Vetch
Wheat
Willow


BAD FOR BUNNY:

Some greens are high in oxalic acid in the uncooked state: pigweed, amaranth greens, spinach, comfrey, and Swiss chard. To a small-weight rabbit, especially a young one, these can be a problem. I do feed some spinach and chard to mine because they like it, but I don't give them a whole lot. The plants listed below range from deadly poisonous, to hard-on-a-bunny, to no nutritional value.

Amaranth
Arrowgrass
Bracken fern
Bromweed
Buckeye
Burdock
Castor beans
Cherry leaves
Chinaberry
Chokecherry leaves or pits
Comfrey
Fireweed
Foxglove
Goldenrod
Hemlock, poison/water
Horehound
Jimson weed
Johnson grass
Larkspur
Laurel
Lupine
Mesquite
Milkweed
Miner's lettuce
Moldy bread, moldy anything
Oak
Oleander
Pigweed
Poppy
Potato leaves, sprouts, or peels
Rhubarb leaves
Soybeans or soybean vines
Sweet clover
Tarweed
Tomato leaves


2) Best Prices on Poultry, Seeds, and Refills for your Ink Cartridge Privett Hatchery: Nicely illustrated, free color catalog. Reasonable prices. Good service. PO Box 176, Portales, NM 88130. www.privetthatchery.com; privetth@yucca.net or privetth@yahoo.com ; 1-877-PRIVETT (1-877-774-8388).

Morgan County Seeds: Black and white catalog. Good selection, good prices, terrific volume discounts (yellow onion sets by the bushel, $18; Reid's Yellow Dent corn seed $1 per half pound...). 1-573-378-2655. Message 1-888-266-0014, then 2, Box 8475. 18761 Kelsay Rd, Barnett, MO 65011-3009. Fax: 505-356-6540

I buy ink to refill our printer cartridges by the gallon! That gallon lasts me about a year. I do a LOT of printing. The price for 1 gallon of black printer cartridge ink from Anita, including shipping and handling is $155.89. The DH, Don, can make one printer cartridge last through 6 to 12, or even more, refills before it wears out and we have to buy another. He pours ink from the gallon jug into a 1/2 cup size glass jar. To get details on his refilling techniques, e-mail us and he'll be happy to discuss it. I buy this ink from Anita at Arizona Inkjet, 20280 N. 59th Ave. #115, PMB 329, Glendale, AZ 85308. I correspond with Anita at AZInkjet@aol.com.

3) Very Preliminary Look at Carla's September Tour to Just-About-Everywhere

Some dates are firm, some aren't. There is still plenty of time and space to add more bookings. I could spend another week out there if I had the invitations.Final date for booking into this tour is April 2.

Aug. 31 Wed. CO, Delta?
Sept. 1, Thurs. Riverton. Harry & Josie Meekins, wrp@trib.com.
Sept. 2, Fri. Available.
Sept. 3, Sat. MT, Billings. Writing Workshop, Dora. 406-373-0028.
Sept. 4, Sun. SD, Porcupine. Stephen and Leah Leach sleachfamily@yahoo.com.
Sept. 5, Mon. SD, Porcupine. All afternoon seminars. Evening storytelling.?
Sept. 6, Tue. Available.
Sept. 7, Wed. IL, Blackstone.janet@edensharvestfarm.com 815-586-4797.
Sept. 8, Thur. Available.
Sept. 9, Fri. NY, Yonkers.
Sept. 10, Sat. NY, Yonkers.
Sept. 11, Sun. NY, Yonkers.
Sept. 12, Mon. Available.
Sept. 13, Tue. Available.
Sept. 14, Wed. MA, Wendell Depot. Jackie. tolzdorf2002@yahoo.com
Sept. 15, Thur. MA, Boston.
Sept. 16, Fri. MA, Beverly
Sept. 17, Sat. Available.
Sept. 18, Sun. VT, Terry. terry_ter@juno.com
Sept. 19, Mon. ME, Washburn. Debra, Thedentedcans@aol.com
Sept. 20, Tue. ME, Fort Fairfield. Jean quiver0f9@yahoo.com
Sept. 21, Wed.
Sept. 22, Thurs. ME, Unity.
Sept. 23, Fri. ME, Unity. Common Ground Country Fair.
Sept. 24, Sat. ME, Unity. Common Ground Country Fair.
Sept. 25, Sun. ME, Unity. Common Ground Country Fair.
Sept. 26, Mon. Available.
Sept. 27, Tue. Available.
Sept. 28, Wed. Available.
Sept. 29 Thur. Available.
Sept. 30, Fri. TN, Memphis. Tracie Kehoe. M2G@awardsforfjords.com; Moricia in2herbs@yahoo.com. Jennifer 901-682-4599.
Oct. 1, Sat. MS, Senatobia. Paula. 662-301-1611.
Oct. 4, Tue. Oct. 2, Sun.
Oct. 3, Mon. AR, Tumbling Shoals. Writing Workshop plus homestead talk. Kathy Phillips.kathy1217@hotmail.com.

4) Good Wind Power article...
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?2176&src

5) News Bits

Tsunami: The Indian Ocean tsunami is now reported to have killed more than 200,000 people, plus wrecking the natural environment across all affected areas.

Snow Statistics: 1 cu. foot of snow weighs 6.02 pounds. 1 square mile of snow, 1 foot deep, weighs 84,000 tons.

Oil Price: Last Thursday, crude oil closed at $48.84 a barrel, up 6 cents, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

US Economy: The US economy ended 2004 growing less than 1/3 as fast as the Chinese economy--and slower than the world economy.

Junk Food Advertising: In Ireland, ALL TV ads for fast food and candy are banned! In Sweden, Norway, Austria, and Luxembourg, ALL TV ads directed at children are banned! In Belgium, France, Portugal, and Vietnam, ALL marketing is banned in schools! In the US, on the other hand, more advertising dollars are directed at children, per child, than in any other country of the world.

6) Feedback -- Jeannie Wants to Sell Craft, etc.,
STUFF:

For years I collected craft supplies. I have at least 200 egg storage boxes packed full of STUFF: LOTS of lace....20 yard lengths is common....bears and rabbits to dress....There is enough stuff to open a small Mom and Pop craft store. I have at least 100 iron trivets, at least that many rolling pins.I 'm asking $450 dollars. We are close to Nashville. I - 24 is less than 5 minutes away.

I also have some older copies of Organic Gardening, back when Mike McG was editor. What a loss to a magazine! Also, have a huge cookbook collection for sale, including some from before 1900. Jeannie T. askgranny@juno.com