Ohana Farm and Market

Chicken feed can get expensive. Especially the organic stuff. Luckily, there is a way to make your feed go further, and that is by fermenting it before giving it before giving it to your chickens.  You don't need any special enzymes or additives to make it work? Just add water. How to Chicken Feed? (more on the "why" a bit further down)  1. Fill a container with dry feed, about one third full.  I prefer 5 gallon buckets for their strong handles. I also prefer whole grain feed, or scratch that has all the same nutrients that the pellet feed would.   2. Cover the feed with water so that the bucket is 1/2 to 2/3 full.  The feed will expand.  The goal here is to keep it covered with a thin layer of water so that it stays moist and keeps the fermenting bacteria alive.  My feed tends to expand from 1/3 to over 2/3 of a bucket full.  That's where the cost savings come in. 3. Let the feed ferment for 3-ish days.  The warmer the environment, the ...

One of my dreams is to grow 100% of the produce that we consume or sell -- It would be a difficult, but exciting goal!  A practical strategy to work toward this goal would be to simplify our diet and quit eating whatever we don't grow ourselves. This way, if we really want to eat sweet potatoes, we have to learn how to grow them.  If we want to eat our own apples, we have to figure out what kind of apple will actually grow here. In the meantime, peaches grow here easily, so we can just eat more peaches. Later on, whenever we fill out our orchard to make a food forest, we'll need to figure out what kind of ground cover and medium height bushes will grow here too.  At the same time, there are some things that simply cannot stay outside all year here.  Anything made for a tropical or moderate climate, such as medjool dates or bananas, need shelter from the harsh temperature swings here in central Texas. During my first winter here ... the temperate was 70° F (21° C) on ...