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I live in the UK, England. Homesteading is really an American concept, and we sort of fell into it. Over time our life choices have slowly led us to homesteading. The last time we moved we wanted land to grow trees, we bought an ex farm. We started to build an arboretum,.
The land was flat, the trees were small, but we laid out an orchard, an American and an Asian area, we sourced seeds from Europe and the USA to grow unusual trees. we got on with our lives doing various other things. My dad came to live with us and we built stables for his pony. The farm had industrial greenhouse and a barn and a packing shed. Over the years most of the trees survived, we built a large pond, and the land around us grew as the trees grew.
Over the years the food we bought has often be scandalised in the newspapers with one scandal after the other. As the trees grew we added fruit bushes. We extended the house. Our kids grew up. we became more interested in our health.
The U.K. has had some horrible scandals over animal care, Turkey farms beating turkeys using them like balls in games, chicken meat bleached or chlorinated in order to make supermarkets more money.Now I sympathise with vegetarians but I always have eaten meat, and am likely to always do so, but it does not mean I do not want to eat them with a clean concience.
We bought three hens and were given a cockeral free, I was told he was weird, in as much as he was a dead ringer for a light Sussex, but she owned now light Sussex...stranger stilll he throws plenty of light Sussex children. I went to pick up what was 3 cream legbar, it was late in the season, and there was one cream legbar but her neck feathers looked as though she had been attacked and had a. And patch, the smaller one I was told was still growing not yet POL (point of lay) that was like she never got bigger and is almost certainly part bantam as we do also get smaller chickens, and the last was definitely not a cream algebra and the woman seeemmd amazed there was not 3, and offered a daisy marsh instead, having gone so far knowing it was late I took the daisy marsh she was actually a nice chicken but in months she stopped eating refused to eat and died - reason unknown, a friend better experienced said it could be anything egg bound being as likely as anything, olive oil did not help, and she slowly weakened and died.
We then succumbed to 3 blue belles (one died on checking afterwards it had a wound on its leg not visible under all the feathers, and 2 rocky Rhodes (this. Are smarter birds and soon ingratiated themselves with the cockers; and ruled the roost literally he would give them any tasty morsel to come his way even strawberries. one of the rocky Rhodes went broody, she managed to hatch 2, but lost both - to ears I think, we should have caged her and them but did not realise how vulnerable they were.
But those little chicks were darling and so we bought a Brinsea 14 and started breeding our own.
My husband also wanted ducks I saw some eggs for sale and were told they weee fertilised, we ended up with ONE duckling, what on earth do you do with ONE duckling well it lived in our bath and our lounge, mystified the dogs, and favoured my husbands beard.My husband so wanted it to not be bullied by the chickens he asked me to find some friends, so I checked and found some similar aged ducklings, but the advert was old and the ducklings were older, and my husband bought 20 ducklings, at a reduced cost for quantity, our one duck was black and now had 20 white friendly who took one look at her/him and tried to eat poor pepper (black pepper}) so we then made a duck home duck pond but poor pepper could not join them until big enough to not end up as atasty morsel
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