"Feed yourself first"

    I have gardened almost all of my life. Some years more sucessfully than others, kind of like farming. We don't try to grow everything. but we do try to produce a reasonable level of our own food. We do not have the time to fuss with a lot of exotics or high labor food crops. We tend to depend mostly on such things as tomatoes, greenbeans, carrots, lettuce, beets, onions and other very common veggies. Neither of us care for peppers, egg plant, okra etc. so we just don't grow them. Sweet corn is a big love as are strawberries. The sweet corn will be planted along the edge of one of the pumpkin patches this year. The couple of acres of pumpkins we will grow this year are being planted mostly for sale.
 

 "With a cluck, cluck here. And a cluck, cluck there..."

    We have kept laying hens for a long time. Not many, often only 8 to 16 hens but they are very useful. They are currently kept in an unused old wire rod type corn crib with a small shelter they can get in for protection from the weather. About a half hour before dark most days they are turned out to free range a bit. Their favorite target is of course the flower beds and other landscaped areas. We will be moving them soon into a movable "chicken tractor". They will be moved to a fresh spot each day but will not be allowed to go to the flower beds. A second simpler chicken tractor will be built for meat birds. We have raised meat birds in pens before but they soon strip a pen to bare dirt. The tractors will keep all of them on fresh sod all of the time.

"This little piggy went to market"   But we will eat the others...   :-)