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”
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Week 2 of Chicks
Guest post: Charlotte In spite of our best intentions, documenting the chicks has not been as thorough as we had hoped. Big Foot and her inhabitants have been busy as ever with all sorts of projects. Many of these pertain to the chicks and so, an update is due. It’s been a mixed bag ofContinue reading “Week 2 of Chicks”
One year comparison September 2018 and 2019
2018. Big Foot Food Forest Lab laid out! Paths, rows, baby trees, hugel in the back, espaliers and kiwi trellis. 2019. Chickens, pond, strawberry beds filled in, failed “wheat field”, paths still there, bigger walnut tree, almond tree.
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”
Screw it!
Originally posted on Post-Grad Tent-sion:
Squaring a floor joist. Well here we are. What started as an odd tongue in cheek idea about a month or two ago has materialized into a full blown platform on some friends land, around $500 spent (and many more saved, we hope), and two impassioned (or crazy) post-grads embarking…
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”
Big Foot Grew!
The Summer was amazing, mostly due to the experience of seeing all our plants, bugs, and fungi doing their exuberant Summer-thing: growing and multiplying. Some plants shot into the air. Others hung out more or less their initial size, but hopefully growing taproots or something to boost them more next year.
A grand seasonal overview
It is September 23 and the entire Summer has passed. It was busy, fun, and there was no time for writing blog posts. Some recapitulations of what happened will follow. Here, for now is a photo review of the food forest as seen from the third floor window from February through September…
We collect trash, throw it in the yard, and call it permaculture
To help us put our food forest in place, we’re working with David Homa, to come and coach us a couple of days.
Root magic
Root magic is when you take a little stick, or a little seed, and you coax it into making roots – the foundation of plant life. No roots, no plant life.
Big Foot Food Forest Gardens 