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Tag: space
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7 Reasons You Should Start Raising Rabbits
Rabbits are quickly becoming one of the most popular animals to raise on the homestead. They are low maintenance, provide a healthy source of meat, can thrive on a small amount of space, have a short turnaround time from birth to butcher, and are very feed efficient. Not to mention, they’re just fun to have around! Although it may be hard to fathom using something as cuddly as a rabbit for meat, it’s hard to deny they are a great animal to raise on any homestead.
1. Free Fertilizer
Rabbits are an abundant source of fertilizer for your garden. On average, one rabbit can produce up to 500 pellets of waste per day! These pellets are packed with nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, and are a great addition to the garden. Rabbit manure won’t burn your plants like poultry manure will, which means you can apply it directly to the garden without composting it first. On our farm, we raise our rabbits in cages with wire bottoms. During the spring and fall, we place these cages directly on our garden space and move them along every day. When it comes time to plant the garden, all we have to do is till under the rabbit manure and our soil amendments have been done for us!
2. Feed Efficiency
Rabbits are more efficient at converting pounds of feed to pounds of meat than many larger animals. On average, rabbits will produce one pound of meat for every four pounds of feed consumed. Compare this to cows, which need seven pounds of feed to produce one pound of meat. The feed efficiency of rabbits means you will get the most bang for your buck when it comes to turning purchased feed into meat. These numbers are based on a pellet-based diet, of course, and the amount of feed needed to produce one pound of meat will be higher if you raise your rabbits on a pasture-only diet. Here is more information on what to feed rabbits.
3. Short Turn Around
From birth to butcher, rabbits fed on a diet of pasture and pellets can be ready to eat in between eight and eleven weeks. That’s about the same amount of time as your commercial broiler chicken breeds. And, because the gestation period for rabbits is only thirty days, you can have a steady stream of rabbits available just by staggering your breeding dates by one month. Using an average litter size of six, a single breeding pair of rabbits (doe and buck) can produce up to 72 baby rabbits (kits) a year. That’s over 200 lbs of meat a year!
4. Healthy Source of Protein
Rabbit meat is quite possibly one of the healthiest meats around. It is extremely low in cholesterol and saturated fat, and it boasts one of the highest protein contents per ounce of meat. A three-ounce serving of rabbit meat has about 28 grams of protein, much higher than chicken or beef. Rabbit meat is also a good source of iron and a wide range of other minerals including phosphorous and potassium.
5. Cost Efficiency
If one of your criteria for raising livestock on your homestead is to cut costs, rabbits can be a great option. If you choose to raise your rabbits completely on pasture, their feed is free during the summer! They do very well eating nothing but grass and vegetable scraps. Raising them this way will result in a slower growth time, however. Up to 23 weeks in some cases. But, when you weigh the extra time against the cost savings of not having to buy pellets during the summer, rabbits can be very appealing to the cost-conscious homesteader.
6. Ideal for a Small Space
If your homestead is limited to an urban backyard or even an apartment rooftop, rabbits can be a great livestock option. The infrastructure needed to raise rabbits is fairly minimal and, with the right planning, can be done in a fairly small space. Each breeding rabbit needs its own hutch, but there are lots of plans available that show how you can stack hutches for maximum space efficiency. You can even hang your rabbit cages to make working with them easier and protect them from any ground predators that may lurk about.
Rabbits that you’ll be using for meat production (typically called “fryers”) can be kept in a larger hutch together, colony style, as long as they are butchered before they reach sexual maturity. If you will be raising your fryer rabbits together in one rabbit hutch, it is usually better if they are all from the same litter. This ensures that there won’t be any dominance issues when mixing two different litters and will make knowing your butchering date easier.
7. Quiet & Easy to Handle
Many people love waking up to the rooster’s crow at dawn, or walking outside to a goose’s loud greeting. But many people don’t. And, for those people, rabbits are a wonderful option! They are very quiet, won’t bother the neighbors and, when socialized well, are very easy to handle and move around as necessary. Because they are so easily handled, rabbits can also be a wonderful animal for teaching young children the responsibility of caring for livestock.
http://homesteadsurvivalsite.com/reasons-start-raising-rabbits/
On – 10 Apr, 2017 By Aryn Young
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Building off the grid 3 ways
What would your home look like if you unplugged for good? Tour these one-of-a-kind versions of living that dream as seen in three DIY Network specials of Building Off the Grid: Mountain Man Cave, Tiny House on a Lake and Coastal Maine.
Rugged outdoorsman Joe Donovan decided to build himself a permanent base camp on 10 acres of mountain wilderness. That camp takes the form of a 24-by-28-foot straw-bale cabin, a very old—and, in modern America, very rare—type of dwelling.The insulating straw bales beneath thick layers of stucco at this southern Montana cabin are held together by chicken wire hand-sewn with rope. The load-bearing frame itself is made of massive logs.Composting toilets aren’t for everyone, but this one more than compensates for its rustic ways with a spectacular view of the Montana wilderness. (Bonus: No need to abandon said view to fetch water for the cistern, or to scamper to an outhouse in the middle of the night.)The versatile space behind a Montana cabin’s bathroom features a television and turntable powered by solar panels, as well as a painterly reminder of why its owner chose to build in the wilderness.Thick straw walls are designed to help this space stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter—but given how quickly the weather in the northern Rockies can change, concentrated heat from a wood-burning stove is a must.Scenery is the star of Joe Donovan’s off-the-grid plan, as he designed his home around the Missouri River view he envisioned having from his front deck. Bonus: It’ll face the warmth of the sun in the wintertime.At the northern end of Montana, yurt-dwellers Sean and Mollie Busby take their independent-living plan to the next level by building their dream home overlooking Whitefish Lake. This 12-by-20-foot, two-story home comprises about 480 square feet of interior space.This diminutive dwelling at the edge of Glacier National Park affords its owners plenty of room. The spacious deck nearly doubles its footprint.The live-edge siding on this tiny house can last for up to 30 years. It shares space with reclaimed wood, which rings in at a fifth of what local stores charge for new lumber.The wood from this portion of a tiny home on the shore of Whitefish Lake comes from a timber swap (where the owners exchanged fresh-cut pieces from their property for drier logs that were already seasoned for building).While this northern Montana cabin’s owners plan to live off the grid, their nameplate reflects their interest in maintaining close connections to their community.This outdoorsy family of six built their 16-by-20-foot off-the-grid retreat on Maine’s remote Pemaquid Peninsula in less two weeks (with a bit of help from their friends).This 6-foot-tall black bear welcomes guests to a self-sustaining cabin in Bristol, Maine. In keeping with the homeowners’ lickety-split building plan, their friend carved the sculpture in less than eight hours.A gutter-and-downspout system collects rainfall in a catchment for drinking, cooking and bathing—a very good thing, since the nearest alternative source of water is a half-mile away.While the kitchen in this remote cabin has no light switches or running water, a granite slab countertop and vintage canister set deliver ample (and appropriately rustic) style.On – 22 Feb, 2017 By Lauren Oster
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The Easy Way to Grow Loads of Potatoes: In a Trash Can
Potatoes are one excellent staple crop to grow in the home garden, but isn’t there a lot of digging and back pain involved?
Not necessarily! You can grow loads of russets, reds, golds, and even sweet potatoes in a trash can or bucket with minimal work, space, and effort.
It’s common to get up to 25 pounds of potatoes using this method, and it’s really simple too! This takes container gardening to another level.
The perfect bucket for growing any type of potato will have some sort of drainage holes drilled into the bottom–or, you can even cut the entire bottom out. That way, instead of dumping the bucket out to harvest your potatoes, you can just lift it up and they’ll fall out.
A metal or dark-colored can is preferred, to retain warmth and keep sunlight away from the root zone.
The how-to is slightly different for sweet potatoes and regular potatoes, so I’ll talk about regular potatoes first:
Basically, any organic potato you’ve already got will work perfectly as a seed potato. Ideally, they’ll be a bit past their prime for eating, and will have some eyes starting to form.
Don’t cut the potatoes up to look for seeds inside, because you won’t find any! (I once met someone who did this; you’re not alone.)
Instead, cut them into quarters, ideally with at least one “eye” on each piece. Allow these to dry out on the counter for a day or two before planting them.
These potato pieces will be planted cut-side down into your trash can or bucket, and each one will start growing into a new plant.
If you’re growing sweet potatoes, you can buy some organic ones at the grocery store to start your plants with–maybe just one or two.
This time, you’ll want to begin by doing that toothpick-balancing trick that you probably did as a science project in grade school.
Spear the sweet potato around the middle with four toothpicks, and balance it in a glass or jar of water. The sweet potato should be at least halfway submerged. You’ll want to add more water every few days to maintain this level.
Eventually, your potato will sprout stems and leaves, and these are called “slips”.
You’ll cut off these slips with a small sliver of the potato attached, and plant the slips into your trash can or bucket.
How to plant your potato “seeds” and/or “slips”:
Fill your trash can or bucket with about 8-12 inches of compost, and add in your seeds or slips. For white potatoes, bury the seeds with about an inch of compost. For the slips, plant them sideways about an inch down, leaving a few leaves and an inch or so of stem exposed.
As the plants grow, add more compost. You’ll want to keep burying the new growth until only a few leaves remain exposed, about 4-5 inches of compost for every 7-10 inches of growth.
Burying the stems forces plants to generate new root growth (in other words, potatoes!).
Keep them well-watered, and be patient. The whole process will take about four months.
When your trash can is full to the brim, simply continue to water it. The plants will eventually start to flower, and soon after, the whole plant will start to wilt, yellow, and die back.
Stop watering them at this point. This allows your potatoes to mature, which will take about two weeks until they’re ready to harvest.
With sweet potatoes, you’ll want to harvest them as soon as the leaves wilt and blacken from frost.
Then you’ll need to let the sweet potatoes cure for two weeks or more, in a dark, cool, dry place. This will ensure their sweet flavor, and allows them to be stored at room temperature for up to a year!
Incidentally, sweet potato greens are also edible and delicious when prepared like cooked spinach. They’re also pretty in urban landscapes!
Growing potatoes in this way can be a excellent supplement to your food bill, and a great DIY skill to learn.
https://thehomestead.guru/grow-potatoes-trash-can/
On – 05 May, 2017 By Krystal Trammell
