WOW, adorable! I know I'm a newcomer to your journal so, just out of curiosity...what do you breed them for? Eggs? Meat? Companion pets? Pardon my daftness, lol. They're wonderful, seems very rewarding regardless.
Oh no, don't worry about questions. Questions are how we learn. (Former school teacher, could you tell?)
To answer your questions, for a lot of reasons. Hubby and I are trying out the hobby farm thing on our little 1/2 acre and if it sticks (which it seems to be) we're hoping to get a 5 acre farm and do the farm thing when he retires. We're both city kids (me, Brooklyn and he, Phili) so this has been a huge learning curve for us. We've been very fortunate to have great teachers in farming and keeping animals, and fortunate to find great people in our local agricultural community. I meet the nicest folks in the poultry community, I truly do. Nice sheep folks (maybe), nice goat folks (definitely, nice pig folks (hubby hates them, I had a ball when we had one), etc.
So right now we're raising them for the experience, for fresh farm eggs (yummy!), for the meat (when they get too old to lay well), to donate birds to the 4-H kids to support our community and for the spiritual connection to the Wheel of the Year. A few are pets, so they'll be the grand old dames of the coop, setting the rules and keeping things peaceful - our Rhodies, Scarlett & Ruby are just too precocious to be dinner. :)
And certainly, I'll admit, the cash is great - I made almost $500 this summer in bird sales - lots of folks want chickens and ducks but don't want to go through the mess and work of incubating, brooding and raising them to layer age. Me, I love that part. I also help network buyers to sellers and so have been declared the unofficial poultry agent of our local Grange. :)
I've been completely dazzled at how rewarding these experiences have been. I'm also exploring the spiritual connection to husbandry, using your energy to calm an animal, visualizing with them for preparation of events, how animals are a barometer for one's own energies, etc. Things we're all very much cut away from in this modern world, which I like to think we're rediscovering for ourselves.
Granted, I'm going overboard, as I usually do in research. I find myself watching movies (like Robin Hood last week) and yelling "They didn't have Rhodies in the UK back then!", etc.
Then there's the poultry community. If you ever find yourself thing the pagan community (which I'm sort of assuming you've got a toe in, apologies if not) is the craziest you've ever met - come to a poultry meet or join a poultry online community. You will see chicken addiction, chicken clothing lines, chicken technologies, chicken acronyms and jargon, chicken bits of wisdom, and chicken controversies that outshine anything I've seen in my years in the occult community. They are hoot!
Granted, we're a bit different than most animal communities. In ours, if you breed too many animals they don't go homeless, they don't go on the streets, they go to Freezer Camp. Makes for some wonderfully dark and twisted humorous moments, let me tell you.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 07:06 pm (UTC)To answer your questions, for a lot of reasons. Hubby and I are trying out the hobby farm thing on our little 1/2 acre and if it sticks (which it seems to be) we're hoping to get a 5 acre farm and do the farm thing when he retires. We're both city kids (me, Brooklyn and he, Phili) so this has been a huge learning curve for us. We've been very fortunate to have great teachers in farming and keeping animals, and fortunate to find great people in our local agricultural community. I meet the nicest folks in the poultry community, I truly do. Nice sheep folks (maybe), nice goat folks (definitely, nice pig folks (hubby hates them, I had a ball when we had one), etc.
So right now we're raising them for the experience, for fresh farm eggs (yummy!), for the meat (when they get too old to lay well), to donate birds to the 4-H kids to support our community and for the spiritual connection to the Wheel of the Year. A few are pets, so they'll be the grand old dames of the coop, setting the rules and keeping things peaceful - our Rhodies, Scarlett & Ruby are just too precocious to be dinner. :)
And certainly, I'll admit, the cash is great - I made almost $500 this summer in bird sales - lots of folks want chickens and ducks but don't want to go through the mess and work of incubating, brooding and raising them to layer age. Me, I love that part. I also help network buyers to sellers and so have been declared the unofficial poultry agent of our local Grange. :)
I've been completely dazzled at how rewarding these experiences have been. I'm also exploring the spiritual connection to husbandry, using your energy to calm an animal, visualizing with them for preparation of events, how animals are a barometer for one's own energies, etc. Things we're all very much cut away from in this modern world, which I like to think we're rediscovering for ourselves.
Granted, I'm going overboard, as I usually do in research. I find myself watching movies (like Robin Hood last week) and yelling "They didn't have Rhodies in the UK back then!", etc.
Then there's the poultry community. If you ever find yourself thing the pagan community (which I'm sort of assuming you've got a toe in, apologies if not) is the craziest you've ever met - come to a poultry meet or join a poultry online community. You will see chicken addiction, chicken clothing lines, chicken technologies, chicken acronyms and jargon, chicken bits of wisdom, and chicken controversies that outshine anything I've seen in my years in the occult community. They are hoot!
Granted, we're a bit different than most animal communities. In ours, if you breed too many animals they don't go homeless, they don't go on the streets, they go to Freezer Camp. Makes for some wonderfully dark and twisted humorous moments, let me tell you.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 08:32 pm (UTC)