New old farmsteaders

[Kimi BK]

Hey there!

My husband and I are recently retired relatively new farmsteaders in NW New Mexico. We are still living in a tent camper, and are building a house out of tire bales, so have barely started our farming operations, but we do have a small garden, a 90' geothermal passive solar greenhouse, and a coop with 24 chickens hatched in October 2020. We had backyard chickens for years before retirement, and we plan to raise meat and fur rabbits.

Searching on the BackYard Chicken forum for info about raising rabbits let me to this forum...

We'll probably start with rabbits after we have moved into our house, so it might still be a year into our future... but we also said that about chickens until a coop fell into our laps, and we couldn't help ourselves!

I blog about our homesteading efforts (as bumbling newbies, not as experts by any means) at brownkawa.com

Thanks for being here!

 

[Hideaway Pines]

Hello, Sounds like you are on an adventure for sure. I understand the process. We sold our home in Dallas and bought 30 acres of woods and lived in our 5th wheel while we built our home (which took us two years). We also had a tiny apartment in town for the days we had to be back for work. But the jumping into homesteading is so rewarding. We made our jump in 2014, would never go back. We raise rabbits for meat, and have found them to be wonderful animals for meat and they provide me with great nutrients for my garden. They are quite, do not require much upkeep and are so dang cute too. We also have chickens and use them for eggs not so much for meat, but we have eaten a few, they are just a lot harder to clean and prep for food.

 

[Kimi BK]

Thanks for this! Encouraging to hear your story, as you are ahead of us on the path. Nice to have trailbreakers to follow! We bought straight run chickens and will eat the "extra" roos, and keep a couple for possible future breeding. We also don't plan to get into meat chickens, but at this (unproven) point we think we are OK with eating the roos we don't keep (or the older hens). Time will tell!

It's nice to hear the implication, though, that rabbits are easier to prep? We have butchered chickens (visited a neighbor's farm to help out one day and see how it's done). I wonder if it's mainly because of 1) no feathers, and 2) not trying to keep the belly skin intact? Is it more like cleaning fish?

I think we will try skinning some birds rather than plucking, just to see how that goes...

Thanks again for your note!

 

[Baymule]

Y'all are building an earthship house? I've read about tire earthships, made by fastening the tires together and filling with packed earth, but haven't heard about tire bales earthship homes. So I had to look them up. That is going to be one solid home when y'all are finished. Are you going to stucco over the tire bales? What an adventure!

We love pictures! Post pictures and we will oooh and aaah over your home building efforts. We are great enablers and offer lots of encouragement!

 

[Beekissed]

I think we will try skinning some birds rather than plucking, just to see how that goes...

Much easier, especially with regular chickens, whose feathers are more plentiful and better attached than meat birds. I've been skinning them for years and then had my son design me a setup that helped me do it even faster. My old hands are arthritic now, so pulling hides off of birds when they seemed like they were superglued on was getting harder to do. I had him mount me up a table vise and put wood widgets in there to hold the neck better and more tightly without crushing any of the structures.

This helps me put my weight into pulling down on the hides instead of all the work being put onto my hands.

 

[Kimi BK]

Y'all are building an earthship house? I've read about tire earthships, made by fastening the tires together and filling with packed earth, but haven't heard about tire bales earthship homes. So I had to look them up. That is going to be one solid home when y'all are finished. Are you going to stucco over the tire bales? What an adventure!

We love pictures! Post pictures and we will oooh and aaah over your home building efforts. We are great enablers and offer lots of encouragement!

Yes! The tire bale house is vastly easier than hand-pounding individual tires as in a traditional earthship. Our landfill is only 7 miles away, which simplified the hardest part of tire bales: transportation (each of the 90 bales for our 1000 sq ft house weighs almost a ton). Here's a pic of the current state of our house... and there are many more (along with in-depth description of our whole build process) at Getting Tired (first of three so-far blog posts about the actual build). We will cover the bales in earth plaster after the roof is on and the temperature warms up! Thanks for your kind words!

 

[Kimi BK]

Much easier, especially with regular chickens, whose feathers are more plentiful and better attached than meat birds. I've been skinning them for years and then had my son design me a setup that helped me do it even faster. My old hands are arthritic now, so pulling hides off of birds when they seemed like they were superglued on was getting harder to do. I had him mount me up a table vise and put wood widgets in there to hold the neck better and more tightly without crushing any of the structures.

This helps me put my weight into pulling down on the hides instead of all the work being put onto my hands.

Wow, this is so helpful! When we helped our neighbor, she is a "certified humane" producer and has the whole setup -- killing cones, stunner, scalder, feather plucker machine -- and we processed them to shrink wrap whole and freeze, gutting through the holes, etc.

One thing is that we want to harvest the feathers to use in crafts (I can't wait for our silver wyandottes to develop their gorgeous adult plumage!). The feather plucker machine totally trashed their feathers. I don't know if it's easier to scald and hand-pluck the feathers we want to keep, or to skin and then dry the skin and pull the feathers. I've heard that fly-tiers usually buy saddle or hackle feathers with the dried skin on, and just pluck each feather as they need it. Seems like other craft feathers are sold as bags of feathers with no skin. We'd mainly be using the feathers ourselves, so I'm not sure what's easier. Do you ever pluck off a few feathers after skinning the birds?

So with your son's contraption, do you keep the head on until you've skinned the bird? It seems like gutting would be so much easier and cleaner that way, too.

 

[Beekissed]

Wow, this is so helpful! When we helped our neighbor, she is a "certified humane" producer and has the whole setup -- killing cones, stunner, scalder, feather plucker machine -- and we processed them to shrink wrap whole and freeze, gutting through the holes, etc.

One thing is that we want to harvest the feathers to use in crafts (I can't wait for our silver wyandottes to develop their gorgeous adult plumage!). The feather plucker machine totally trashed their feathers. I don't know if it's easier to scald and hand-pluck the feathers we want to keep, or to skin and then dry the skin and pull the feathers. I've heard that fly-tiers usually buy saddle or hackle feathers with the dried skin on, and just pluck each feather as they need it. Seems like other craft feathers are sold as bags of feathers with no skin. We'd mainly be using the feathers ourselves, so I'm not sure what's easier. Do you ever pluck off a few feathers after skinning the birds?

So with your son's contraption, do you keep the head on until you've skinned the bird? It seems like gutting would be so much easier and cleaner that way, too.

It's easier to pluck feathers off the bird while the skin is still on and I've saved feathers for various things. One rooster I'd had a long time and really liked, I kept his hackle feathers as a memory of him...they are incredibly beautiful. I tend to keep something from animals and pets I've had a long time. For my dogs I usually find bird's nest that have been lined with their fur and keep one for each dog we've had that wrote a wonderful story in our lives.

Head is off while skinning...easier that way by far. You'll understand why once you start skinning your own. Gutting is definitely easier after skinning.

 

[Kimi BK]

It's easier to pluck feathers off the bird while the skin is still on and I've saved feathers for various things. One rooster I'd had a long time and really liked, I kept his hackle feathers as a memory of him...they are incredibly beautiful. I tend to keep something from animals and pets I've had a long time. For my dogs I usually find bird's nest that have been lined with their fur and keep one for each dog we've had that wrote a wonderful story in our lives.

Head is off while skinning...easier that way by far. You'll understand why once you start skinning your own. Gutting is definitely easier after skinning.

Thank you! That is sweet, finding bird's nests lined with your dogs' fur.

 

[Madhouse Pullet]