Chicken Food Forest! 3 years in and HUGE production
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 เม.ย. 2023
- www.edibleacres.org
The area in this video is a fenced in area very roughly 1/10th of an acre, maybe 1/16th... Planted extremely densely in an existing lawn in 2020, this was meant to hold the option of providing fodder for sheep or other ruminants and also centrally offer a summer run for our chickens to browse immense amounts of fresh greens and harvest elderberry and black currant fruit to enhance their health and their eggs...
This project was VERY inexpensive to do since it used mainly dormant hardwood cuttings to establish the area and very low total maintenance. It feels like a success!
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Edible Acres is a full service permaculture nursery located in the Finger Lakes area of NY state. We grow all layers of perennial food forest systems and provide super hardy, edible, useful, medicinal, easy to propagate, perennial plants for sale locally or for shipping around the country…
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Happy growing!
I want to be reincarnated as one of your chickens.
😂 made my day! 🙏🏻🤣
Sí tienen buena vida pero luego se las come😢 , tiene un vídeo sobre ello , no sé como no es vegano un chico que le gusta tanto la huerta y la naturaleza.
I remember watching you push in those cuttings; amazing change in just 3 years or so.
You make a profoundly profound point about planting a variety of species to react with a variety of liklihoods of weather. I think there's a huge need for growers of all kinds to understand that this is the the most pressing reason for growing a plurality of types of plants. We know its good for soil, erosion, biodiversity, etc but to have backup plans upon backup plans for extreme weather shifts is paramount for a sustainable system. Good shit!
Thanks for picking up on that and highlighting... Yes, the nets we cast need to be ever increasingly widening!
I’ve been garden since I was 5 years old with my brother who was 10. We are in our 40s now. We both still love it. We learned from each other. Watching this show, I’m still learning each time there’s a new video. Thank you for making these videos.
What a wonderful image of you two growing together in literally many ways, so great thanks for sharing!
🎉 Thanks Sean and Sasha. Your work is inspiring. Blessings 🙏
❤️I absolutely love listening to you and your thought processes, experience, and understandings. Thank you so much for making these kinds of videos.
Yay loving the chicken videos!
I am looking at my elderberry starts all budded up ! Also the huckleberries! I’m so excited! Thank you .
Aesthetically beautiful ❤ just how nature intended but with a bit of very knowledgeable management. ❤❤❤
I'm trying to learn what to plant for my hens, Shade and for them to snack on. I admire how much you know. I have so much to learn.
We're just learning as we go!
Over the years, watching your videos--watching your land mature, I've implemented some of your ways and means. I have no lawn to mow, now! Yay! The diversity of my garden far outstrips that of our neighborhood. I love lambs quarters and let it go to seed. I was poking around out there just now, and there are hundreds of lil lamb quarter seedlings greening up! Yay! Looking forward to salads and greens in a pot & crops of current and elderberry this year, our lil food forest now being in its 4th year. Thank you Sean & Sasha!
SO SO wonderful to read this and really so very happy to have you with us on this journey. You have been a consistently positive and thoughtful contributor to this community and we really value you!
I love seeing updates on that space! 💛💛💛
The chickens are going to be so happy when you'll let them in that area tomorrow, I can already imagine the noises they'll make, hehe.
We just let 'em in and they certainly don't seem to mind :)
I hope to establish 1/10 acre into food production this spring (September for us down here) these videos are very helpful
It will be awesome to see what characters pop their heads up! Thanks much for sharing your processes.
For sure. SO many characters already in there, I'm excited to see how it can unfold
Your ingenuity (and, presumably you are influenced by the ingenuity of others around you, such as Sasha and Juan and probably many others) seems to know no bounds.
Too kind Tim, and yes, we collectively share ideas and develop solutions, so I'm VERY glad you are including Sasha and Juan and the wider world too!
Your videos always inspire me to action. Thank you!💕🌿
Amazing process! I'm just beginning to implement some of the ideas you have shared in your videos. My chickens love it! Thank you!
The willow would make great tree hay to dry or to grind up and fermenting for the hens in the winter months... thanks for sharing
Neat idea, I should look into that...
@@edibleacres yeah Nick Ferguson has info on it...
Thats a brilliant system 😸
I love this and am about to re-watch now that I'm actually sitting down to pot up seeds. I love having a day to catch up on your videos :)
Enjoy!
Brilliant! Started implementing this process this year ,,thanks for the inspiration
So glad you find it of use!
I love reseed gardening. My beds are full of free lettuce.
I live by the theory that there is no such thing as weeds, only flowers and herbs. That being said I do remove the "weeds" from our flower bed out front and it's become incredibly relaxing to me. I think part of the relaxation aspect is due to using the pulled plants to feed our Goats and Chickens, nothing goes to waste.
Same... When we are 'weeding' we are actually harvesting a crop that provides value to our hens, which gives us food, which nourishes us to do the work we do... If that loop is happening it sustains me and encourages the action. Without it the effort is, to me, an energetic drain I have to refill from...
Bulk seed really frees up the "design" process.
If you had bought those seeds in the usual tiny envelopes, each one would need to be treated as a precious resource.
This is one reason seeds languish in drawers, dying unplanted.
Better to give them a chance at life while they are still vital.
When you actually plant a seed, the worst that could happen is they fail to sprout, and they feed the soil, as you said.
True! Well, most of these started as a $4 sack of 10 seeds we had to baby, but when you let plants bolt and set seed magic can happen with how much liberation unfolds!
I’m in central Maine and your ecosystem is definitely further into spring than I am lol. We are only just starting to get buds on trees up here
in Virginia I actually have to put wire on the ground outside my chicken pens, to keep foxes, possums, and other predators from burrowing in.
"carpet bombed - in an exquisite way!"
:)
I wish I had a homestead
… sometimes it’s coming faster as you can think… six month ago we lived in our van, wished a place to stay and thrive and now we‘re having a homestead…. 😊
Question : that spot used to be quite wet 1st or maybe 2nd year : how ( if) has the soil percolatio capacity evolved ?
It is still very wet in that area because the overflow of the pond system aims through this area, specifically through the willows... I suspect it will always be on the quite wet side.
So great to see your progress! What do you do to deter mice and deer? Do the chickens scare off the mice?
They haven't been a problem in here... Deer don't come in since it has a fence around it all...
Great walkway update! Question about pulling weeds. Should I, in general, pull weed roots or chop and drop? I have Thistle all over.
I really can't say I have a particular thing I think anyone should do, it's so dependent on situations. That said, thistle is pretty tough and personally I dig them from the roots when they show up, but thats just me
Cut thistles in May, they grow the next day; cut them in June, that is too soon; cut them in July, then they will die.
Chicken !, es ver esa palabra y entrar corriendo a ver el vídeo😊 , yo estoy subscrita a este canal en gran parte por las chickens , ...qué lo sepas !😂.....Vaya , en este vídeo las vemos poco , ooh qué pena ..
Un vídeo muy interesante de todas formas
Great video
How high off the ground will you cut those willow ?
SO variable. There are spots we want more privacy, so we'll cut around knee height to have regrowth happen mainly at human eye height. Some we want easy access to walk through so I'll cut lateral branches to support that, on and on...
Great video! Can you please do a video on where your chickens lay their eggs & where they stay at night? :)
We can try to do that, we have a coop we have set up for them that has simple nesting boxes they use
How do you source your hay/straw from for all your projects? How do you make sure it hasn't been sprayed with something you don't want?
We ask :).
I've found a way to ask about spray is to say to keep our certification we have to ask what sprays are being used on what we buy in... It's a little white lie but it allows space for them to tell me whats on the mulch without feeling judged. Around where we live it isn't a common practice to use sprays on mulch so so far so good...
Love the build quality of the tool at 7:46 does someone know what brand/make? I have a cheap version that I used to try out the tool type. Love it now I want a good one.
Yeah, super rad tool... I bought this from One Scythe Revolution. It was NOT cheap but you are absolutely right it is incredibly well made and does wonderful work
@@edibleacres Unfortunatly only available in US. Brand is Kusakichi and the tool is called IKA. Available from 24$ (hida tool)
Cleavers? I found some in my young orchard around my youngest apple tree,I was going to mulch heavily with wood chips but should I try to keep the cleavers and if so , why?
I think in a developing food forest they can be a nice ground cover... They can be rough on very young shrubs and trees so you can decide... You can always cut them back as needed if they crowd the apple
I'm curious, do you have a general sense for how many square feet your chicken food forest is? And how many birds are in that area? I'm trying to figure out how much space a dozen chickens would need to roam, without putting too much pressure on the plants (e.g., pecking them down to the ground before they have a chance to recover).
I would guess in grand total it is .1-.3 acres they have access to, and roughly 80 hens, most of whom are quite older and so more gentle in impact. With enough compost happening and nice sized rocks around key plants you care about, you can pack things in a bit more...
@@edibleacres Appreciate that information, thank you!