Oldfield Family Farm in the Making

So I was laid off from my job about a month ago. One of the ways we are cutting costs is through homesteading. We've been interested in providing our own food for as long as I can remember. Here's our step one (of many I'm sure):

Poultry

We are building a poultry palace to house our egg layers, meat birds, and turkeys. Talk about food storage, right?

We've invested in an accurate and reliable incubator and have our first round of turkey eggs in there (28 day cycle-here's hoping for baby turkeys to celebrate Easter)!

I didn't know anything about the poultry process until recently. The babies start in a warm place (most people would put them in a box in the garage). These chicks will be in the house for 3 weeks, or until they have grown most of their feathers.

Here's our recycled brooder box (quite proud to say this project is 100% recycled stuff from the yard, not Martha Steward approved but useable and free)! Once the chicks have their feathers they come outside, staying separated from the rest of the poultry until they are an appropriate size.

Look at those plump Organic hunks of meat!

 The last step will be to get them out here in the poultry palace. Well, last step before slaughter I suppose. We've got the egg layers in segment one, turkeys in segment two, and segment three is TBA (maybe if there's a tax return next year).

Raising your own meat can be just as expensive as buying prepared meat at the grocery store. However, there are great opportunities to save if you do your homework…I'll post more on our Fodder system soon.

Happy to be a redneck!