Our new blog is finally up and running!

Please check out www.radioacresfarm.blogspot.com to check out our newest ventures!

In a (crazy) nutshell and on a whim, we bought an urban farm plot together! We all are in the process of moving in together to continue our journey together. Follow our emotional travels as we strive to build our farm, friendship, community and faith together at Radio Acres!

To be continued...

Moving right along...

Just a quick update. It seems as though things are moving right along! We had the inspection done about a week and a half ago and the appraisal right after that. Everything is checking out just fine, it really seems like this project is going to be a go. Begin hyperventilation phase...

We just got pictures taken of our house so that we can begin trying to sell it. Wish us luck in that arena. We also found that the house directly across the street from the new one we are purchasing is just being listed as a foreclosure. It's on about 1/2 to 3/4 of an acre. Anyone want in? Anyone want to be an investor? It would be very cool to have you!

As it goes right now, escrow should close on the third of May. Sarah already purchased two dozen new chicks for us and we are figuring out how to get a fence around the property sooner rather than later. What's next? Goats? Alpacas? A mini-cow? I'll let you know what we decide!

Project #2

hi, guys! It has been too long since we've posted this, and for a while I thought we were just going to throw it to the wind. Everything seemed to just be peddling along fine with nothing too exciting to post. Oh, sure, there were random things. Our chickens have probably finally paid for themselves in eggs, for instance! It's been forever since I've done a price breakdown and I should do that again just for fun. We hit our 1 year anniversary with the car share, and it's been fantastic! Well, along the way someone gave us another car, so I suppose we weren't really as eco as we should have been. That happened sometime in December, so we made it ALMOST an entire year on just half a car. Right after that, someone threw a full time job at me. It seems like our life has been so wrapped up in making ends meet and working that this blog project has kind of been thrown to the wayside. My aspirations to live simpler and with less consumption have been tossed to the wind with mounting bills and a ridiculous mortgage. Just scraping by was getting tougher and tougher as our side incomes were getting whittled away and raising a family of four off of just one teachers salary wasn't cutting it. Anyhow, I joined the rat race at the end/beginning of the year and have been a little bummed about it ever since =) And then comes project #2...

Sometime in the last week of madness, we have decided close our eyes, hold our breath and jump into a communal living project. I feel like such a hippie. My husband says we need to get more tattoos or something and revolt against the stereotype. Anyhow, we'll see what the next crazy year will hold! It will be fun to blog more and have new material to write about, record the process and experiments that we have in mind. See how it goes barn-raising, kid-raising and chicken-raising. We will be on 1.6 acres here in the beautiful city of San Diego, roughly 6 miles from down town. Our lovely counterparts happen to be the same people we started this blog with over a year ago, so it should be fun for you all to keep up on this and get varying perspectives along the way. Hopefully this will coax us all back into writing a little bit. It's a massive project, and we have a lot of stuff planned SOON! Will keep you updated =)

small businesses in san diego

whoa, it's been so long since i've last posted that i almost forgot how to sign in.

In honor of Labor Day!



This Project is a fabulous encouragement to buy locally... of every $100 dollars spent locally, $68 returns to the community, vs. $43 spent at a national chain... (from the website.)

in honor of labor day, if you're going to spend some money, think about a local grocery store or restaurant!

by the numbers

With some egg-laying time under our belt, the two new chickens and the loss of our other girl, I thought it might be a nice time to crunch some numbers:

Previous total, on April 21st = $357

Food bought since = $0.

Eggs produced since then = 148

Previous eggs = 29

Total per egg = $2.02

Total per dozen = $24.24

This is averaging 5 eggs per day when we had all 6 hens and dropping it down to 4 per day once we lost the one. This has consistently been our average. No, I am not keeping a tally!

The case of the missing hen

Yes, it's true. Our first loss. No blood, no feathers - just completely gone! We really have no idea what happened to her. On friday I let them run around the yard for a while, put them all back in their cage and then left for a couple of hours. When I came home there were only 5 in the coop! I thought she was laying, but when I peeked there was no hen in sight. I thought maybe I had forgotten to put her away with the rest of them before I left, but the next day Jeremy found a huge spot in the chicken wire on the back side that had been pulled up. Looks like some animal may have had poor Sally for lunch. We posted a few signs around our block, anyway, thinking maybe I did leave her out and someone found her wandering. No luck so far. So now we have 5!
6 chickens = 5-6 eggs per day.
So far, 5 chickens has meant 4-5 eggs per day. We are losing about 1 per day, which means we should get about 2.5 dozen per week. We only had all six of them for just over two weeks. I will do the math again sometime soon and come up with the cost analysis per egg.

eggs and hens

First, a picture of our approximately $357 egg, laid on Sunday, April 5th 2009.


Damn, chickens are LOUD when they get all proud about the eggs they've been laying! I had no idea. Everyone always seemed a little surprised at how quite and cute ours sounded. They hadn't started laying EGGS yet, and announcing it proudly and loudly the world. Thank goodness it's not as loud or early as a rooster's crow. It makes me giggle when I start to hear the classic "CLUCK-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-CLUCK" of the hen call and I can't wait to run out and raid the nest. It now happens 3 or 4 times a day, and each time there is a new egg sitting amongst the golf balls and plastic chicken eggs that I hijacked from my children to fill the nest. Will it ever get old? Will I ever not get excited when I hear that call and just let the freshly laid egg stay nestled in that warm little nest for a while? Maybe, but for someone who's new to this hen business it may take some time before the excitement wears off.

We decided to get two more hens, a couple of Ameraucanas. They are smaller and a little scraggly, poot little girls! My big brootish ladies keep picking on them, too, as they are trying to figure out their pecking order. Every day that goes on seems a little bit smoother, though. I sure hope all of this picking is over with soon! I am tired of being the intervening "rooster" trying to mediate the fighting. The new girls lay blue-green eggs. Our current ladies all lay brown. We got 5 in one day the other day, and I think that will be the norm once everyone adjusts and settles in. Yesterday we only got two and I think it will take a while for the stress of the newbies to wear off and for everyone to get in their natural groove again. 5 a day! That's, um, just about 3 dozen a week! We decided to sell the extra 1 - 1.5 dozen we will be getting so that we can supplement the cost of the organic feed and make the whole venture more economical. Gimme a holler if you wanna buy some eggs, yo!

So far (roughly):

Coop = $200.

chicken tractor = $50.

Chicks = $12.

New layers = $30.

Food = $65. (the price has jumped to about $17 per 5 weeks. Only organic whole grains)

Total = $357.

# of eggs thus far = 29

Cost = APPROX $12.31 per egg.