Guide to Choosing Chicken Breeds: Pick the Best Breeds for Your Flock

Want backyard chickens for eggs? Meat? Beauty? Calm companionship? For a cold climate? For a hot climate? For children? For showing? How about the best breeds are for a very small space? Here's a great guide to chicken breeds to help you choose just the right breeds for your needs.

Planning to keep chickens and wondering which breeds would be best for you? Use this guide to choosing chicken breeds to learn which are best for eggs, meat, showing, cold climates, warm climates, companionship, and a variety of other traits.

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Autumn Olive Fruit Leather

Simple autumn olive fruit leather is made from the delicious, nutritious berries of an invasive shrub. Transform a pest into a resource with this recipe.

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Save Money on Chicken Feed with Natural, Healthful Alternatives

Save money on chicken feed, reduce dependence on industrial monocultures, make your chickens happier and their eggs healthier. Give them access to good habitat, let help in the compost, feed them from the vegetable garden, grow fodder, and raise grubs are just some of the possibilities discussed here. In short, think of chickens as part of a permaculture design.

Save money on chicken feed, reduce dependence on industrial monocultures, make your chickens happier and their eggs healthier with these ideas. Give them access to good habitat, let help in the compost bins, feed them from the vegetable garden, grow fodder, and/or raise worms or grubs, are some of the possibilities discussed here.

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How to Grow Apples Without Pesticides

Grow your own organic apples! Plant trees in either spring or fall. Explains how to: choose disease resistant varieties, use permaculture techniques like guilding, prune branches and thin flowers, bag young fruit to protect from pests, and identify nutrient deficiencies.

Enjoy organic apples from your own backyard by choosing the right varieties, smart group plantings, and proper pruning and thinning. That alone will reduce blemishes sufficient for home consumption. To produce perfect apples, you can go the extra mile by bagging young fruit. Learn all about these practices here.

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Bread and Butter Pickles

What makes these bread and butter pickles so special? Mostly it's the combination of spices, but using all brown sugar and apple cider vinegar also add to the deliciousness. My favorite way of preserving cucumbers.

What makes these bread and butter pickles so special? Mostly it’s the combination of spices, but using all brown sugar and apple cider vinegar also add to the deliciousness. My favorite way of preserving cucumbers.

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Limited Free Range Chickens: 12 Tips to Balance Freedom & Safety

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The idea of true free range chickens is great, but in reality it’s dangerous. To balance freedom and safety, we use a modified free range system which we describe in detail, along with tips on fencing, layout and location of chicken yard, providing cover, choosing appropriate chicken breeds, etc., so that you can develop your own limited free range system.

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8 Reasons to Grow Daylilies

Beauty, vigor, edibility, medicinal uses, permaculture possibilities, butterfly appeal, breeding opportunities, and use in selling/trading are all great reasons to grow daylilies, the perfect perennial. Read the details on this interesting and often misunderstood plant.

Beauty, vigor, edibility, medicinal uses, permaculture possibilities, butterfly appeal, breeding opportunities, and use in selling/trading are all great reasons to grow daylilies.

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What To Raise On Your Homestead or Backyard Farm

Deciding what to raise on your homestead or backyard farm involves taking inventory of your resources and yourself. This guides you through 15 critical considerations,

Deciding what to raise on your homestead or backyard farm involves taking inventory of your resources and yourself. This guides you through 15 critical considerations, such as climate, soil, existing ecosystems, lay of the land, storage space, market research, what you like to eat, and your own ability to deal with livestock illness, injury, and death.

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Raising Baby Chicks Without A Hen: The First 6 Weeks

A thorough guide to raising baby chicks without a hen. Where to buy chicks, setting up a brooder box, feeding, watering, spatial needs, stimulation, and problems to look out for. Everything you need to know for the first 6 weeks.

A concise but thorough guide to raising baby chicks without a hen. Covers where to buy chicks, setting up a brooder box, feeding, watering, spatial needs, stimulation, and problems to look out for.

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How to Preserve Strawberries

My favorite old fashioned recipes for strawberry jam, strawberry rhubarb preserves, strawberry chips, and frozen sugar packed strawberries, along with other methods, are featured in How to Preserve Strawberries.

Learn how to preserve strawberries by drying, freezing, and canning, including my favorite recipes for jam, preserves, and dry sugar packing.

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