Hello again, friends! Before we get started, let me just give a brief news update. Sometime this week (probably Tuesday) the blog here is going to be featured in the Mormon Times section of the DesNews. Not sure if its just the online or the actual print version. Also, at the end of the month I'm going to be making a presentation at the Utah Pioneer Heritage Arts quarterly breakfast. And sometime between now and then I'm going to be doing some foodways lectures for volunteers up at This Is The Place Heritage Park (a.k.a TITP), helping them to use pioneer foodways to hook visitors.
As I was doing some of the research for TITP recently it struck me that the core of the pioneer Utah economy was agriculturally based. Agriculture was their only significant production industry, and their only large scale export. In 1864 for example, historian Leonard Arrington documented 200,000 pounds of dried peaches being shipped from Utah to the mining communities in Montana. Similar shipments of wheat sustained the early settlement of Denver, Colorado in 1859.
So this brought me to look at all the elements of agriculture a little differently. Sometimes in the past I looked at the timber-framed barns of early Utah and thought, "If they could build such a large barn, why would they live in such small houses?" This past week I came to understand that the barn was an economic engine for the family farm. The barn sheltered the horses and oxen that plowed the fields. The barn supplied the clean sheltered space for threshing grain. Additional outbuildings stored corn, or helped to process milk, or preserve hams. Most of the output from these structures was headed to market. Often we think of self-sufficient homesteads, but the agricultural efforts were for cash crops, not simply home production.
So I was thinking about building a chicken coop for our family, and I got online to look at plans. Most of what you find online is very hobby-oriented, aimed at just a handful of hobby chickens. I have something bigger in mind, more than the occasional feel-good omlette. I'd like an economic engine. Something to house 50+ hens...
On a different topic, what are y'all doing for the 24th?
Potato Paste/Peppermint Chocolates (1912)
3 months ago
5 comments:
The Love's all vote for you to raise blue foot chickens. They're supposed to have wonderful meat.
Our friends the Bear's had a chicken coop, and Brother Bear was thinking recently on two separate occasions that he should put some wire over the top of his chicken coop. Of course, he didn't, and the other night a fox got in and beheaded all 12 chickens. Then he carted one down to Brother Bear's shop and ate it while the sad man watched. There is going to be a dead fox before this week is out.
We have some other friends who have a farm out in Melba; they have 700 chickens, and a bunch of Kobe Beef cattle and Berkshire and Kurobuta pigs. They're looking at having some other families raise livestock for them to market and sell. They want people who are willing to feed acorns to special Spanish pigs for Jamon Serano. We're going out there for dinner this weekend. You should meet them. Here's their FB page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Melba-ID/The-Princess-Farmer/110835808945339?ref=ts
Incidentally, did you know that when chickens are scared (such as a barn fire) that they all pile on top of each other and smother to death?
Sorry for the lengthy reply. I've been thinking for some time that you might like to meet our friends Dan and Dani, though. They grow the best porkchop money can buy.
Before you build your 50+ chicken coop, I would seriously consider what a mess 50+ chickens can make. When I was in California, a family I lived with had about a dozen chickens and 2 roosters in a fairly large coop, probably 12 feet wide and 8 feet deep, including an outdoor area where the chickens could run around in. I can't imagine what it would take to house 50 chickens. Lately I've been thinking of building a shed, and a lot of people buy the home depot shed kits and turn them into coops.
When I was in Littleton, we kept two flocks with about 50 birds, so I know a little about chickens. We cut down an ugly pine tree in the back yard last year and had it milled into lumber. So... we'll see...
You could sell your chicken poop, right next to your home grown peas, and of course, fresh eggs.
Often, the large barn was the first building to go up. The saying was: A barn will build a house, but a house won't build a barn." Knowing the barn was an economic engine for the family, makes sense of the saying.
Molly
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