I have gotten the spring bug now. It is official. I am ready for it. As we make our plans for the first batch if chickens (broilers), I am talking to more and more people that are interested in non-modified food. I really think, and am happy, that people are beginning to see that giant agribusiness is not all it's cracked up to be.

We have modified, a bit, the way the birds are killed. In the past, we scalded them prior to picking the feathers without changing the water but a couple of times. We received rave reviews, nonetheless. The last batch of last year, we changed the water every five birds. This enhanced our already clean operation and made it cleaner. The result was even better reviews. We are also looking at some kind of mechanical picker as we have done it by hand thus far. We don't mind the work, mind you. It is truly a labor of love. But we have decided to expand the quantities this year and are looking to streamline a bit, make things go a little faster.

There is a design, or invention of a picker, I have seen that involves using pieces of a bungee cord, a 4" PVC cap, a bolt and nuts and a cordless drill. We simply cannot afford to buy a multi bird picker nor do I seem to ever have the time to build one.

We also had a predator problem last season that I hope to take care of this time around. I have built the chicken tractors out of PVC pipe and they work very well. The problem is that the raccoons pull the birds out from the tractor through the wire at the bottom. I plan to add a wood frame at the base of the tractor this year. It will add some weight, but that is OK. Truth be told, I have never been impressed with chicken wire. It is very flimsy and breaks easily. On our coops, I used 1" welded wire, or, hardware cloth. These are much more durable, but also much more expensive. I didn't use them in the first place to save money. Now I think of how much we lost in dead chickens, I should have used the welded wire and been done with it. Now I may have the added expense of changing it all out. We'll see how it goes this season.

On the rabbit side of things, we should have our other two does bred and should have kits at the end of the month. We will be breeding the mother of the existing kits again soon. We have decided to try a "rabbit day" at the local feed store to promote their rabbit pellets, cages, food dishes, etc. and sell our babies for Easter. We will then look at butchering the next ones.

New for this year, we will be getting into vermacompost. This is exciting for us. What can be so exciting about worms? Well, we can get rid of a lot of scraps that the chickens(layers) don't eat and we will always have worms for the garden. We will also be trying to sell to local bait shops for a small, added income. This is ideal here as we live in between two major fishing lakes, Bull Shoals and Norfork.

As for the garden, it didn't fair as well as we had hoped since I posted pics a while back. All the snow and ice were hard on the plastic hoop house and caused it to collapse. Couple that with extreme low temps in February and it couldn't make it. Although, we now have fresh lettuce, cabbage and broccoli growing again. Myself and a friend peeked under the hoops and were quite pleased with how warm it was under there. I don't have a thermometer in it, but I know it was considerably warmer than the outside temp, which was around 40. I am pleased with the results of the hoop house, but displeased with the durability of it. Like I said, it was too weak to hold up under the weight of snow and ice.

We plan to add a bunch more raised beds this year and expand. Our goal is to provide as much as we can for our now expanded family and, maybe, have some to sell at the farmers market. I am interested in selling meat rabbits at the market, along with eggs and chickens, as well. We will also be offering buckets of rabbit manure for sale to those that use it on their gardens.

Wow. Now that I have written this, I realize what a big year we have ahead of us. I'll probably be lucky to get half of it done.

Keep checking for more on "Quality Pasture" by Alan Nation, I'll be writing more in the coming week. Until next time...