Author Archives: bigfootgardens

How to build our chicken hoop house

I spent countless hours on YouTube, reading online PDF’s as well as paper books (like Ussery’s the Home Grown Flock), and attending the three-unit mini-series I set up with the Boston Food Forest Coalition keeping back yard chickens.  Our design result is a combination of clever things other people have done to make chicken-care better,Continue reading “How to build our chicken hoop house”

How to design a home for compost-fed chickens and relaxed chicken care.

I want to write two posts on designing a run and coop (home) for chickens fed on compost. This one is about the design requirements. We ended up building our own chicken run and coop, in part because it was fun and because it was cheaper, but also because if you are feeding chickens onContinue reading “How to design a home for compost-fed chickens and relaxed chicken care.”

Chicks in the time of corona

It is evening and I am sitting upstairs in one of the attic guest rooms next to a box of 40 sleeping baby chicks.    It is so peaceful; all is right in the world – as it should be.  These tiny new lives, so delicate, are utterly calm and content.  Their feeling of contentContinue reading “Chicks in the time of corona”

Short how-to article on feeding chickens with scraps

I was a little disingenuous when I said that we were going to raise old-fashioned chickens because back in the day, I am not sure people intentionally used the compost pile approach.  It was more that chickens roamed around, fed themselves, and happened to find compost piles.   The compost and chicken system that Karl HammerContinue reading “Short how-to article on feeding chickens with scraps”

Meet our raised-on-compost chickens!

In the last post, New Old-Fashioned Chicken Theory, I wrote about the idea of raising chickens without grains or other chicken feed from the store.  At the time, I felt excited to try the experiment, but also some trepidation about whether we might not end up leaving our new birds hungry and unhappy.   So weContinue reading “Meet our raised-on-compost chickens!”

New old-fashioned chicken theory

Featured photo credit: Photo from Backyardchickens.com: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/composting-with-chickens.64531/ Permaculture and regenerative agriculture are full of innovators and experimenters, and some of them have found ways to do things – to do with raising food – that are vastly more efficient in their use of human resources, waste reduction, and building up nature than mainstream practices.  IContinue reading “New old-fashioned chicken theory”

A lot can happen in between seasons

The last time I wrote in this blog, it was September 2018; today, it is the end of May, 2019.  At that time, we were looking back at the wonderful season of putting together our Bigfoot Food Forest  – cutting trees and branches; laying out the paths; taking the Applied Permaculture course with David Homa;Continue reading “A lot can happen in between seasons”