The basic idea is to give the chickens a mobile coop which can be moved between the garden and the chicken yard, depending on the season and how worn out the ground in the yard is. The coop and the yard will be in a corner of a 3/4 acre, fenced-in pasture, eventually being protected by dogs and accompanying sheep or goats. During the daylight hours, the birds will spend most of their time in the general pasture.

The chickens we start out with will come from a local farm, and could cost anywhere from $0 to $60. We plan on starting our flock with a couple of pullets and a cock, sometime in late winter, around the end of February or beginning of March, 2010. That gives us a few months to save money and collect all the materials we’re going to need, and build everything. The reason for the particular selection of birds is that they will be able to hatch and raise their own chicks, and teach them how to be self-sufficient. This way, we won’t need to specifically raise chicks, or have animals that depend on our hands for food rather than their own wit. Hens simply make better chicken-mothers than humans. The reason for the particular timing is that the birds we initially start with will most likely have been raised on a farm where they depended on store-bought grains, and in a yard smaller and with less diversity than what we can provide. By starting them out in late winter here, I think it will be relatively easy for them to adjust to the change in farming style, as there will be plenty of insects making their presence, and lots of fresh plant-life surfacing everywhere. Additionally, the chickens can scratch through sections of the garden while it’s still too early to plant many things in there.

Though they will eat mostly forage from the pasture, garden, and chicken yard, their diet will be supplemented with red-wiggler worms raised near the coop, maggots raised in a bucket inside the coop, garden fodder, and occasional kitchen scraps (if there are too many for the worms to devour).

In the various projects related to chickens, there will be a few things that have to be bought brand-new, but we will look for and use as many salvaged/recycled materials as possible. If there is anything that you would like to contribute to these projects (materials, connections, ideas, wisdom, time, money, etc.), please click here to contact me, or leave a reply at the bottom of this article if you just want make a quick comment.  Maybe you have a chain-link fence in your backyard that you’re tired of looking at, but you don’t want to take the time to remove… I could do it for you. Perhaps you know just the right breed of livestock guardian dog to suit a farm with chickens and goats. Or, maybe you think I’m completely wrong about something, and you want to correct me. Maybe you live in the local area and want to give me a hand with something.  I’m interested in considering anything you have in  mind.

Initially, it’s going to take a lot of energy to make all of this happen, as there are many things to prepare. Once everything is in place, however, they may last years and year. Here are the things we need to make happen:

• Mobile chicken coop
• Chicken yard
• 3/4 acre of fenced in pasture
• Increased worm population
• Trained livestock guardian dog

Mobile Chicken Coop (chicken trailer)

The mobile chicken coop is going to be made out of our old 21 ft. park trailer. The internal dimensions are about 7′6″ x 18′, which will make a very spacious home for a flock of 10 to 20 chickens when attached to the chicken yard. Some of the materials need to complete the project are already here on the land, and a few will need to be bought, or otherwise acquired (like scraps from someone’s project). Here’s the list:

• Seven 1/4″ x 4′ x 8′ concrete panels to cover the floor and first two feed of inner-wall around the entire perimeter. I’m choosing concrete over other materials because it is completely rot-resistant, tremendously decreasing the chance of needing to replace the floor. These will most likely need to be bought brand new. 7 panels x $22 = $150
• Two gallons of Snow-Roof sealant to seal up the roof that won’t stop leaking. May last for years and years. I just bought these yesterday at my parents’s hardware store. 2 gallons x $19.79 = $39.58
• 324 square feet of almost any kind of plywood. There are a few scraps of board laying about the land, and I think I can find people who want to get rid of their scraps. If I end up having to buy most of it, say, 150 square feet, the plywood would end up costing about $53.
• A role of plastic sheeting to create a vapour barrier in the walls. There is still plastic on the ceiling that hold up the insulation, so that is already accounted for. One roll costs about $9.
• Several 2″ x 4″ x 8′ boards for several things that will need framing, including a giant door in the side of the trailer that will swing upward to make a roof and create a dry space to work in just outside the coop. 15 boards will probably be enough. 15 boards x $0.89 = $13.35.
• Hinges for the giant door. These will most likely be found attached to something that doesn’t need them. if not, I can find them for a few dollars probably at the recycle store in Glenwood (Bring Recycling).
• Insulation. There is already plenty of mylar bubble insulation in the trailer. We recycled it from a local yurt manufacturer a few years ago.
• Scrap boards to build a few nest boxes. There is probably enough here on the land, but otherwise I can probably salvage them from someone’s project.
• Small tree-branches for roosts. We live in the woods.
• 36 square feet of 1/2″ x 1/2″ galvanized hardware cloth to cover cross ventilation holes, windows, and large opening created by the giant door. $0.44 per square foot x 36 square feet = $15.84
• Fasteners: screws and staples. We have plenty from old projects. Recycled from old projects, though the staples are unused, of course.

Expected cost: $250 to $300
Anticipated completion date: February 1st
Amount saved for project so far: $120
Amount spent so far: $39.58

Chicken Yard

The chicken yard will be a chain-link fence structure about 20-foot wide, 30-foot long, 6-1/2-foot tall. One-inch chicken wire will be buried about 2 feet into the ground and turned out a foot to keep critters from digging under the fence. Chicken wire will also wrap the first 3 or 4 feet of wall above the ground (maybe all the way up, but I’m not sure if that is necessary) The same wire fencing will also be attached across the top of the structure, preventing aerial attacks. A 10′ x 20′ space in the yard will be roofed over with something solid, like corrugated tin, creating an outdoor dry-space in the wet months and shade in the summer. Inside, there will be trees, roosts, a growing salad bar (with wire surrounding it so the chickens don’t eat it all at once), and other things to nourish, entertain, or otherwise provide comfort.

We intend to allow the chickens to free-range over a 3/4 acre of fenced pasture, but the chicken yard will be very useful for when we or a dog cannot be around to discourage predators from grabbing a snack. The yard will be big enough to be comfortable for 10 or 20 birds, especially considering the spacious coop, and frequent visits to the rest of the pasture.

I believe it is possible to find the materials for the chain-link structure for the price of removing and hauling them, or at least for a greatly reduced price through a recycling center or private seller. The corrugated tin roofing is often easy to come by, as it sits with no purpose in many people’s backyards,  including our own. The chicken wire, however, will probably need to be bought new, for about $168.

Expected cost: $200 to $250
Anticipated completion date: March 1st
Amount saved for project so far: $0

3/4 Acre of Fenced in Pasture

We want to allow our birds to free-range in the majority of the pasture because they will be able to find most of their food on their own, only being supplemented with home-raised worms, maggots, garden fodder, and kitchen scraps. Having the wide range will give them a diverse array of food and environments, making happy, healthy birds that are also healthy for us to eat.

We have about 3/4 of an acre in which we could regularly pasture the chickens, and fencing it in will be our first line of defense against large predators including foxes, coyotes, cougars, bob-cats, bears, stray dogs, and humans. A fence alone will not indefinitely keep out most of these predators, but it will provide a strong deterrent because of the effort it takes to pass the fence. Large cats are the least likely to worry about a fence, but they usually don’t come around in the daytime when the chickens would be out and about anyway. Once we have a livestock guardian dog or two, however, the fenced boundary will hold a lot more meaning. Also, about another year down the road, we would like to have a few sheep or goats around, so the fence will be useful for keeping them in.

The current plan is to make the fence out of 16-foot sections of cattle paneling, holding them up with t-posts driven into the ground. To enclose about 3/4 of an acre, it will require about 600 feet of fencing. That’s about 38 sections of paneling 76 t-posts, a few packs of t-post clips, and a roll of wire. I think it’s possible to find the paneling and t-posts for free or cheap if I look around enough. If the paneling and t-posts were bought brand new, altogether they would cost about $1800. The clips and wire probably wouldn’t be much more than $25. Alternatively, we could use field fencing instead of cattle paneling, which would cut the cost of new fencing in half, but when we get goats or sheep, it will not hold up as near as well

If it turns out that all the materials need to be bought new, we will probably wait on this fencing for several months after we get chickens until we can save up enough money. Going without a fence would put a huge damper in free-ranging our chickens in the pasture, but we could get by moving them back and forth strictly between the chicken yard and fenced-off sections of the enclosed garden.

Expected cost: $100 to $500
Anticipated completion date: March 1st
Amount saved for project so far: $0

Increased Worm Population

I recently started raising red wiggler worms (Eisenia Fetida). I finished making the bin for them just a couple weeks ago, and promptly found a few red wigglers under boards and carpet on the ground and put them in the bin with some kitchen scraps (banana peels, coffee grounds, etc.). The bin is about 4′ x 4′ square and 18″ deep, covered with a sheet of plywood. The plywood is attached to the frame of the bin with hinges, and covered with corrugated metal roofing, creating a heavy, weather-proof door to keep the worms safe from predators and excessive moisture during the rainy times of the year.

The current worm population in the bin is very small, only 10 or 20 worms at most, and it would take many months to increase their numbers to the point that they could be harvested for chicken food. To expedite the issue, the next time I’m in town I will be buying pound or two of worms (about 1000 per pound) from a grower and use them to inoculate the bin. If I don’t get them in town, I will order them on-line. Each worm can produce two to three cocoons per day, and each cocoon contains two to three new worms. The cocoons hatch in about 21 days, and the new worms reach sexual maturity and start breeding after about 60 to 90 days.

With 1000 worms, in about 60 to 90 days there may be between 4000 and 10,000. In another 60 to 90 days, their numbers could raise to between 16,000 and 100,000. If there population can increase to between 4000 and 6000 by late February, I think that there will be enough worms to sustain their population while feeding chickens and selling them as bait to the local fishers. If I get a pound Once the population increases to about 16,000 (16 pounds), however, a new been will have to be made if we want to raise even more worms, as the worms generally require about one square foot of space per pound, and the bin is 16 square feet.

This bin cost me only time and effort to put together. I found all of the materials laying about the land or salvaged from the chicken trailer when it was being cleaned out. The bedding material I found in the next field, under an alder grove.

Expected cost: $15 to $30
Anticipated completion date: March 1st
Amount saved for project so far: $30
Amount spent so far: $0

Click here to read more about the worm project

Trained Livestock Guardian Dog

A dog will be vital to the farm, as it will be our best defense against predators. Two would be even better, especially once we have even more livestock to keep safe. They will be able to enforce the boundary line that the fences create, keep the birds herded if we need, and provide us with protection from the increased number of large predators that will likely come for visits. It would be great if we could raise the chickens and dogs side-by-side form the very start, but it will be much easier for us to devote enough time to properly training dogs if we wait until next fall or winter. The period of time without dogs have an increased change of disaster for the chickens, but it will be worth the wait, as patience is more likely to bring prosperity. Also, if we raise chickens a few months or so before dogs, then we will be able to feed the dogs farm-fresh meat and eggs, mitigating the need for store-bought dog food.

We hope to find our dogs via a Humane Society location or similar avenue, but we are willing to pay if that is what it will take to get an appropriate breed for our purposes. Whatever happens, it’ll be about a year from now, so there is plenty of time to find the best breed. The intervening time will be a good opportunity to read  up on training livestock guarding dogs, and talking with others about their experiences with them.

Expected cost: $0-$300
Anticipated date of arrival: October 1st to December 1st, 2010

Altogether, all the preparations mentioned above could take as much as $1400, maybe more… maybe a lot more. Let’s see if it can be done for less! As these projects happen, I will continue to write articles here about what’s going on. I also plan to visit a few different farmers around the local area to see what some people are already doing, what’s working and not working for them, and what I might do the same or different. With their permission I will publish what I learn from them.

As internet security issues continue to be brought to the surface, people who want user accounts on many web sites are being asked to come up with passwords that are more secure. They’re asked to do things like include both letters and numbers, as well as punctuation, to break up some of the logic behind figuring out people’s passwords through systematic guessing and brute force methods. This is great advice, but to me it sounds kind of difficult for the user to follow through with.

Just following the instructions, many people end up with passwords like cammy21 (the user has a daughter, named Cammy, who was 21 at the time) or 53acres! (the user lives on 53 acres of land, and loves it). Even the most amateur of computer users can guess passwords like these if they know a little about the user. The same passwords, however, could be made a bit more secure:

• cammy21 could turn into c@mmy21? or 2c4Mmy1! etc.
• 53acres could become 53.4cr3s or @cr35,53 etc.

With a little imagination, letters can be replaced by similar looking numbers and other symbols, punctuation can be placed in relatively logical positions, and letters can alternate between lower- and uppercase, creating passwords that would be pretty difficult to figure out unless someone was really determined.

How do we make passwords even more secure?

Forget using passwords. Instead, use passphrases.

A secure passphrase can be easier to remember than a secure password because the punctuation can be more logically placed, words that one might say in the flow of a sentence are more memorable than combinations of words which happened to be related, and they may even hold more meaning to us.

For instance, perhaps a few years ago you just LOVED making fun of Ronald Reagan, our 40th president here in the States. Perhaps something silly went through your head a lot, like “Ronny Donny Reagan Bacon!” You could certainly turn that into a very secure password, especially if you haven’t repeated your mantra to a million people, but even then it would still be a difficult one to guess because of the combinations of numbers, puntuation, and other symbols:

“Ronny Donny Reagan Bacon!” could turn into:

1. r0nnY,DoNNy,R34g4n-bac0N!
2. RoNNY,d0nny,r3464N>B4KOn?
3. rh0nnY,D0nnY<RayG4n,B4yKun…
4. Rawny,T4wny-R4yGun,B4k3-in!
5. r4hnny,D4wnnY;Re46en,Bayk1n:

The above list can’t be infinite, but it sure can be completely, ridiculously huge for all practical purposes. The key is to find a phrase you are familiar with; figure out new, creative ways it could be spelled; replace some letters with numbers and other symbols that look like them; and throw in some punctuation where you think it makes the most sense, or where it makes no sense (if you can remember where it all goes).

If the phrase is familiar to you — especially if it’s hilarious — it is possible to memorize the the passphrase easily after a few repetitions of using it to log into your account. With some practice using this style of passwords, typing out and thinking about passwords in these ways can become second nature, as though you have simply learned more letters in the alphabetic system you’re already familiar with.

Below is a list of the letters of the alphabet and several symbols that could be used to replace them (separated by commas):

What other symbology can you use? Your mind has no limit.

E: The package adobe-flashplugin needs to be reinstalled, but I can’t find an archive for it.

It turns out that a lot of people have been having this problem, and it seems to be an issue with the package itself. The package that Adobe provides does not work for many people on Linux, not only that, but it stops up Synaptic until you can manage to remove the corrupt package. After a bit of searching, I found a solution that worked for me:

Open the terminal and type in the following commands:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/adobe-flashplugin.prerm
sudo dpkg-reconfigure adobe-flashplugin –force
sudo dpkg –purge –force-all adobe-flashplugin

After that, if you want to install the Adobe Flash plugin, search for flashplugin-installer in Synaptic, or in the terminal you can type sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

I found this solution, and a couple others that might work at: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1141450.html

I hope this post can help other people in the same predicament!

Please leave a comment to let me know how it worked for you and if you have any other solutions.

Peace,
Brandon

I made the bin by digging a square hole in the ground, about 18 inches deep (down to the clay where the moles don’t burrow), and about four and a half feet square. The walls of the hole were then lined with plastic bread trays that used to be in a bread delivery truck. The trays were tied together with plastic zip-ties. Next, I built a wooden frame on the ground surrounding the hole, and attached a piece of plywood on top of it with a few hinges. Finally, I added some 2″x4″ framing to the top side of the plywood to support some corrugated metal roofing at a slant so that it sheds rainwater quickly. 2 1/2″ and 3″ star-drive outdoor wood screws were used to fasten everything together. The roof-door is so heavy that there will be no problem keeping out rodents looking for food scraps. I will post some pictures soon so you can see exactly what I did.

The bin was created almost completely out of recycled materials, and most of them pieces or leftovers from old projects. Plastic zip ties are the only things I bought as they are, but they were originally bought for a similar project last year when I made a giant potato bin in the ground. Everything else was either scraps from other projects or given to me by people who were reusing the materials. The bread trays came from a friend who used to do a lot of indoor gardening. The 2″x4″ scraps, plywood, and screws came from a home-made bed frame that I recently dismantled (from our old trailer which is turning into a chicken coop). The metal roofing — which has many holes in it — has been sitting around on the land for several years and I am completely unaware of its origins.

Note: I plan on getting some caulk to seal up the holes in the metal roofing to keep the framing and plywood from rotting because of the rain. Also, I’m planning on adding a gutter to the roof and directing the outflow away from the walking area surrounding the bin.

Once the bin structure was complete, I made bedding for the worms. I dumped in several wheelbarrow loads full of newly fallen alder leaves mixed with rotting leaf material from the past few years. Additionally, I tore up about 10 bulk-food paper sacks into random shapes and sizes and mixed them into the leaf matter. The bedding was ultimately about 12 inches deep.

I was in town a few weeks ago (about 40 miles away) and called a few people about buying a pound of worms to start off the bin with a lot of momentum, but had no success in getting them.  I don’t know when I’ll be back in town again, so I’ve been collecting worms I find under carpet scraps and boards laying on the ground around the garden shed. For a couple days, I collected the worms in a 1/2 gallon plastic tub that contained a few handfuls of composted garden material, and a handful or so of rotting kitchen scraps (banana peels and coffee grounds). After a cold evening that had dipped below 40°F (the worms really don’t like to go below 50°), I checked on them and noticed that most if not all of them (about 10 or so) were all snuggled together, tucked into the corner near the bottom; they just seemed cold and miserable. I didn’t want my friends to suffer, so I placed them into the worm bin by digging a small hole in the middle of the bedding material, placing the worms and the other contents of the tub into the hole, and covering them with a few inches of the bedding.

Every day or so, I take the daily coffee grounds down to the worm bin, uncover that same hole I dug in the middle of the bedding, toss them in, and cover it all back up. Since there aren’t a lot of worms in the bin yet, I’ve only been feeding them a few tablespoons of coffee grounds a day so that I don’t overwhelm them with more rotting food than they can manage, as I don’t care to cultivate flies in the worm bin. I think I will start feeding them about twice the amount, though, since it’s been about a week since I put the worms in there. If the population does not increase to my satisfaction by the time I manage to go to town again, I will most likely try again to get a pound of worms to expedite the process. A pound of worms, from what I’ve read, will process a pound of food a day, so that will take care of most of my family’s kitchen scraps at least while I wait for the population to grow.

As this project continues, I will post more articles and pictures detailing its evolution.

1. Mix together 1 tbsp. of dry active baking yeast, 1 1/2 tbsp. sugar, and 2 1/3 cups water into a large bowl. Allow the bowl to set in a warm place for about fifteen minutes, or until the liquid appears bubbly or foamy.
2. Mix in 4 cups of flour (about 100 strokes or so will do). Allow the bowl to set in a warm place for about half an hour, or until the dough sponge has expanded a bit. Put a moist towel over the bowl when setting it in a warm place, that way the contents of the bowl will lose less moisture.
3. Mix in 2 cups of flour, and knead until consistent, adding up to another half cup of flour to make the dough smooth and stretch. Lightly coat both top and bottom of the dough with flour. Allow the bowl to set in a warm place for about 45 minutes to an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. Thoroughly grease a bread pan while you’re waiting.
4. Punch down dough, place it into a greased bread pan. Set pan in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size.
5. Bake the dough at 375°F for 45 to 55 minutes. Remove the bread to a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon of water
• 1 1/2 cups sugar, any kind except honey because through time it will kill the culture
• 2 tablespoons of tea, or 3 tea bags, any kind will do, though I highly recommend black tea
• 1 kombucha SCOBY with 1/2 cup of kombucha tea

Procedure:

1. Mix half of the water and all of the sugar in a pot and heat to boil.
2. Once mixture is boiling, add tea, stir, and remove from heat.
3. Allow the sweet tea to steep for several hours until the liquid has cooled to about room temperature.
4. Strain the sweet tea into a gallon-size container, preferably one with a spout near the bottom.
5. Add remainder of the water and stir it until completely mixed.
6. Add kombucha kombucha and 1/2 cup kombucha tea to the sweet tea. Stir.
7. Cover with a breathable material such as cloth or food-grade screen.
8. Place container somewhere dark and warm, such as on top of a refrigerator or in a cupboard by a stove.
9. Wait 8 to 14 days for the culture to digest most of the sugar and tea. From about day 8 and on, take a little taste test to see how far along the tea is in the fermentation process. Once sweetness is no longer the main property of the beverage (and usually fizzy), it is ready to drink. From this point, if you continue to wait, the tea will eventually turn into vinegar.
10. Drink some kombucha tea, save about 1 to 2 quarts to inoculate the next batch, and place the rest in a cold environment to slow the fermentation so that you may enjoy the same quality beverage for several days.
11. Make a new batch by repeating the above steps, adjusting the amount of water, sugar, and tea you use depending on how much kombucha tea you saved. (If you saved 2 quarts of kombucha tea, then use quarts of water and 3/4 cup sugar, and 1 tablespoon of tea or 2 teabags.