Armchair Economics

[12 Acres]

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Exactly.

 

[12 Acres]

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Good point! Everything has value, and the entertainment factor along with the fresh eggs are worth a lot.

 

[2dream]

Mississippi has not passed it yet either. But they are trying.
Like you I will not comply. But eventually - they will come and confiscate our animals. Or make examples of us.

 

[12 Acres]

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Another excellent point. I don't waste anything and all that good chicken poo is going to help feed our garden, which in turn will help feed us.

Last fall I couldn't believe the Japanese beetle invasion and how they impacted my cousin's soybean crop. I plan to unleash my can of "chicken whoop-a$$" on those beetles this year!

My cousin will thank me.

 

[12 Acres]

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I hope they can run 800 ft/sec. "Molon labe" applies to chickens as well out here in the sticks.

 

[KingsCalls]

I drew my "line in the sand" a while back..........I stopped buying things that were made in Mexico, China, Pakistan and just about anywhere else! If I could I'd stop buying gas! I am also putting in a garden this year after a year without one. I still wonder if "we the people" have any say so, because government is bought and sold every day by BIG business!

 

[12 Acres]

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Good for you! Your comment reminds me of a conversation I had with a co-worker last week about keeping our money local. Buy the local farmer's corn instead of the "plastic corn" shipped in from the guy in Florida. Buy local! You will be supporting your neighbors when you do.

 

[2dream]

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I hope they can run 800 ft/sec. "Molon labe" applies to chickens as well out here in the sticks.

800 ft a sec. Funny - I feel the exact same way.

Sorry did not mean to hijack your thread.

Back on topic.
Raising our own chickens may not be as cheap as I pretend to my DH but oh well. At least I know where my chickens have been. I get my rabbits next Sunday and hopefully I will be able to get a couple of goats next year. I sure miss having goats milk every day. And I absolutely love fresh goat cheese.

 

[12 Acres]

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No need to apologize, this is exactly the kind of dialog I was hoping for. We seriously need to think about what our individual limits are as far as how much we are going to let our government meddle in our lives. Better to be mentally prepared than to be caught off guard if they come knockin'.

Personally, I'd rather live off the land as much as possible. Raising a few chickens, rabbits and a goat are something I can feasibly do. I've done it before and there's nothing to it. It's so good to see people snapping out of their trances and waking up to the reality that they can raise some of their own food and get better quality food in the process. SO WHY NOT?

 

[ivan3]

John D. Rockefeller suggested that American proles should rush to raise chickens, and had his gophers construct a cute table top model of how the `standard' chicken ranch should be arranged.

I came across an article in American Heritage recently on the history of chickens in the U.S.. The following quotes are not intended as a comment on either the value of the dollar or of factory farms but, rather, as an observation on the relative nature of what we consider economically `cheap'.

"The first person on the peninsula to raise chickens expressly for the market rather than simply sell what exceeded domestic needs was Mrs. Wilmer Steele. She ordered 500 chicks in 1923 and sold the 387 that survived to two pounds for sixty-two cents a pound, live weight."
"The shopper who bought one of those 387 chickens that Mrs. Wilmer Steele first raised deliberately for market in 1923 paid well over ten dollars a pound for it in 1994 dollars. Today a shopper can buy one from Perdue, Tyson, or any of dozens of other chicken companies for less than one-tenth of that price."

The article is here: http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1996/5/1996_5_52.shtml

Now, I might wish my neighborhood still looked as it did in 1910 (that's the Missouri Supreme Court building in the background)

But I'll settle for the USDA sending me `free' information every year (not a bad return on my tax dollars, considering... IMHO). Their calendars always have great pics and they'll send you posters in Hmong! And the NAIS boys won't register us unless we are operating a rendering facility... (maybe if they received more funding than what we pay for three Joint Strike Fighters I'd worry)

We give away most excess eggs (though I sold a dozen for ten dollars to an exchange student from Zambia - told me he had to have only fertile eggs - some religious peccadillo). When you're selling eggs keep Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance in mind: If one pays more - it must naturally be better... or something like that

).

For a bit more on Americans and the economics of chickens and eggs search the American Memory section of the Library of Congress (search for poultry related terms). Ignore the photo of the idiots shooting at chickens on the snow packed main street of Upper Crede, Colorado in 1892 (some things never change).

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

Though it's often necessary to be scrambling to Always Be Closing those cartons
our girls and their eggs are a priceless `commodity' in a market that has little to do with fins and sawbucks (IMHO)
I'm guessing that in a year our number of members will double and, after watching how VERY effective our goverment has been in closing down the drug trade, maybe we should invite `em to come after us too (though it wouldn't be necessary to subsidize us to the same degree).

(ed: spelling)