Chickens and Veggie Gardens?

Chickens and Gardens: one, the other or both?

  • Both chickens and a vegetable garden

    Votes: 19 90.5%
  • Chickens only

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Vegetable Garden only

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I have chickens and used to have a garden but no more

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • I have a garden but no longer keep chickens

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Neither, I'm just on here for the social aspect

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    21
I live on a working farm. Every inch of the 100 acres is farmed. I have 5 gardens & three chicken coops & three quail pens.I sell what I can & eat the rest. You gotta be crazy to do what I'm doing. But I'll take it over moving back to the city thats for sure.
 
We have just over 7 acres with a garden and chickens, been thinking about fattening a steer like or family did when I was a kid, but I'm afraid I would get attached to the darn thing and not be able to eat it. Didn't bother me back then, but the older I get the softer I get I suppose.
 
We have a garden but sometimes, I wonder why we bother. Sometimes it seems that no matter what we plant, there's something around here that will work harder to eat it than we can work to produce it. As an example, this is the story with tomatoes. We need as many letters after the variety name as possible, 'cause we have nematodes and all manner of diseases here. At least the deer and rabbits don't (usually) eat tomato vines, though we do have flea beetles, potato beetles, whiteflies, hornworms - you get the picture. A lot of the fruit winds up cracking before it ripens, but that almost doesn't matter, because I can't let tomatoes ripen on the vine, anyway. The birds and squirrels have discovered how tasty those red things are. I have to pick tomatoes as they start to turn, and let them ripen on my kitchen counter. If anything gets more than a little bit pink out there, it'll be munched or at least pecked at. I once found a box turtle chowing down on a low hanging tomato! Damaged or otherwise spoiled veg often gets tossed to the chickens or goats (nothing really nasty, of course!). Over the course of the growing season, I swear they eat more stuff out of the garden than we do!

On the up side, there's always something to watch from the windows!
 
We have a garden but sometimes, I wonder why we bother. Sometimes it seems that no matter what we plant, there's something around here that will work harder to eat it than we can work to produce it. As an example, this is the story with tomatoes. We need as many letters after the variety name as possible, 'cause we have nematodes and all manner of diseases here. At least the deer and rabbits don't (usually) eat tomato vines, though we do have flea beetles, potato beetles, whiteflies, hornworms - you get the picture. A lot of the fruit winds up cracking before it ripens, but that almost doesn't matter, because I can't let tomatoes ripen on the vine, anyway. The birds and squirrels have discovered how tasty those red things are. I have to pick tomatoes as they start to turn, and let them ripen on my kitchen counter. If anything gets more than a little bit pink out there, it'll be munched or at least pecked at. I once found a box turtle chowing down on a low hanging tomato! Damaged or otherwise spoiled veg often gets tossed to the chickens or goats (nothing really nasty, of course!). Over the course of the growing season, I swear they eat more stuff out of the garden than we do!

On the up side, there's always something to watch from the windows!

My grandfather always said you gotta plant enough for everybody. Meaning the bugs the birds ETC. Guess he was right.
 

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