I live in a relatively urban area and have a pretty small farm, but this talk of chickens got me thinking. What if I were to purchase a tract of land somewhere just to create a garden or do aggie type work on? (Anyone who knows me personally at this point has just fallen on the ground dying with laughter... but whatever... :) ) Do people do this sort of thing? How much land is reasonable for such a modest endeavor?Etc? Anyone have any ideas where I might find info in this regard? Maybe I'd build a toolshed on it, lock up a few tools there... but otherwise it would not be where a house was... just a sort of garden where the kids could go work, and the chickens could roam... and maybe a monster pig... or something...
--Ray
PS> I think more than anything I'm interested in if it would be possible to do while keeping costs relatively low...
-- Edited by rayb at 12:31, 2007-05-31
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If you can't watch your livestock, they may dissappear. Same goes for vegetables. Other animals or the animals of the two legged variety will come and get them. So you might want to choose a tract of land near where you live. This sort of thing is done by people all the time. We call them sundowners or hobby farmers. It can become an obsession though and sometimes there are costs that guys don't account for when they buy the ground. You can also lease or rent ground which might be a good idea if this is something you are thinking about doing.
Yeah, isn't the cost of land in western Wash. like... prohibitive???
While we lived in Seattle we kept our horses on our land in Woodinville and later on some land we purchased in Monroe. It was 30 and 45 min. away respectively. We had two horses stolen once, but they were returned to the field (I think because it's illegal to sell freeze-branded horses for meat and they were all freeze-branded. These two mares were grey, and you had to shave under their manes to find the brand, so it wasn't obvious to the culprits at first. Plus the publicity was EVERYWHERE.)
I agree with sales, though. You can probably kiss your chickens good-bye if you're not there to protect them. Most cities allow you to keep 3 or 4 chickens as "pets" and that's all we need for eggs...
Where's this chicken thread?
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