My project to achieve a self-sufficient "farm-garden"

simmed

celerity wrote: »

Sorry, but I am not really qualified to answer this question.
I can tell you that nobody I know (and I frequent various poultry forums) feeds their chickens on sweetcorn/maize. As I said, you can get maize in bags of "mixed corn" but quantities are small. Also, they seem to crush the sweetcorn before drying, so it is more of a flake.

If I had to guess I would say that growing a bit of wheat could be worthwhile, but as I have no idea of the yield per square metre of wheat, I wouldn't like to say whether it would be space-efficient or not. If you had a small garden, obviously not, but if you had a few acres then maybe.

Speaking of which, how much space do you have?! It really is important to know, as plenty of advice people can give you on here will be redundant if you have way more or way less space than we guess.

Chickens eat greens too of course, so most brassicas would get eaten - you'd need to dice them up finely first. Some chickens are fussy and won't eat their greens, but they will eventually if nothing else is offered .

Oh, after you harvest your crops, let the chickens into your veg patch so they can eat slugs and pests and fertilise the area too.

I'm assuming you have been doing research on how to protect your birds from foxes too? They need a secure coop at night and if your run isn't fox proof (at least 6' high fences and no weak points) you'd need to be on hand to supervise and/or have a guard dog. I'm lucky, I work from home and can see my chickens free range as I type this - we don't leave them unattended without putting them in a fox-proof run though.

As an aside, I would thoroughly recommend keeping chickens - they really aren't much trouble and add real joy to your garden (as well as delicious fresh eggs of course!)

/\dam

At the moment, virtually no space, unless you count my window-sill
In a few months, maybe a small-ish garden (about 15mx15m, idk).
In a few years, maybe a big 50x30 garden (which is more like having "land" than a garden)

Mojisola

simmed wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of debate about carcasses and meat on composting piles. On one hand, it might attract rats. On the other, it's obviously a great source of nutrition for the compost. Is it illegal, or just frowned upon?

https://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1086962522&r.l1=1079068363&r.l2=1086048413&r.l3=1086961307&r.s=sc&type=RESOURCES

simmed

point3 wrote: »

Sounds like a nice idea, but I'd go with the general consensus to not use human poo and meat in compost.
Apart from the vermin issue, modern diets include all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't necessarily want going back into your soil.

I think you may be too ambitious in aiming for all your food from the garden. Modern farming methods rely heavily on artificially introduced fertilisers, pest control and processed seed to sustain a high density of produce. In your small garden you would struggle to maintain the same variety of fruit and veg in a limited space and your diet would be limited to stuff in season. Bit like a River Cottage experiment, eh?

That's not what I'm aiming for.. read the OP again >_>

celerity

simmed wrote: »

At the moment, virtually no space, unless you count my window-sill
In a few months, maybe a small-ish garden (about 15mx15m, idk).
In a few years, maybe a big 50x30 garden (which is more like having "land" than a garden)

Ok, that's helpful, thanks.
Your future small'ish garden is easily big enough to keep some chickens. They'd obviously need to be fenced away from your veg though, and they do appreciate as much space as you can spare, which means less space for crops.

1500 square meters is a nice sized garden, but is still only a bit over a third of an acre. I'm not knocking it, and you'd have loads of scope to experiment, but it still limits what you can do. For example, I suspect rearing pigs would be a non-starter.

You could perhaps consider a couple of goats to provide you with milk though.

/\

lostinrates

simmed wrote: »

but also quite brilliant IMO.

not if you go ahead with the rabbits.

valk_scot

simmed wrote: »

At the moment, virtually no space, unless you count my window-sill
In a few months, maybe a small-ish garden (about 15mx15m, idk).
In a few years, maybe a big 50x30 garden (which is more like having "land" than a garden)

Have you ever actually done any sort of gardening? Or grown crop sized quantities of vegetables and fruit? Kept any sort of animal?

Might be worth putting your name down for an allotment come to think of it. Three or four years of bringing an allotment up to full production would be invaluable horticultural experience for you and you might find it enough to satisfy your desire for at least partial self sufficiency.

valk_scot

simmed wrote: »

Someone mentioned to me that they pick up roadkill/general carcasses, and hang it above a wire mesh in their garden. Maggots then devour the whole carcass, and eventually drop off and are then gobbled up by chickens (they're extremely nutritious). Sounds quite extreme, and obviously unsightly/smelly, but also quite brilliant IMO.

Some of the keener self-sufficiency folk just eat the roadkill, if it's fresh enough. Cuts out the middle man...or at least the maggots.

I ended up spreading a sackful of maggots on the allotment yesteday come to think of it. One of my bags of composted chicken manure had got wet and it was more maggot than manure by the time I noticed it. I just spread it out on top of one of the fallow beds and when I left there were about thirty assorted birds picking it over. I'll rake the non-maggoty bit in tomorrow when I go up.

Other good sources of maggots are the rats. For some reason they like dying in my compost bins and I find the carcases when I'm turning out the bins. Usually plenty of maggots there. So you could put meat scraps into the compost bins to help attract the rats (I don't), kill the rats (a spade blade on the back of the neck is pretty effective, though you have to be fast) and hang the corpses up to generate maggots for the chickens to eat. Then you could chuck the scraps of the Sunday roast chicken back in the compost heap to attract more rats. Good example of a closed loop system actually. :cool:

yorkieorchid

_pale_ feeling a bit sick....

mrbadexample

simmed wrote: »

Because if you were a farmer thousands of years ago living out in the middle of nowhere and your crop failed, everything is pretty much going to die, no?

No. The failed farmer would go back to the local shop. Only in those days the shop was the environment - hunting & gathering meat & wild food. Not sure about the hunting, but no reason you couldn't supplement your diet from wild plants, roots, berries etc. Have to work all day just to keep yourself fed though.

Sambucus_Nigra

So.....you want to run a self-sufficient plot and have no idea what animals actually eat; and get all shirty when people suggest that you might want to try and learn stuff to assist you in your endeavours.

Hmm.......