Living in a rural environment brings many rewards, and a few challenges. We have a large vegetable garden, egg-laying chickens and wooded acres to hunt in. The main self-sustaining food sources are the eggs and vegetables, and they provide a yearly cycle of self-sufficiency. 

The cycle starts with the hens. In addition to giving us eggs daily, “the girls” also make dirt by composting vegetable scraps, weeds, grass clippings and end-of-year garden vegetation. They enhance the dirt with their own “in-house” brand of fertilizer. Because the chickens are such an important cog in our self-sufficiency wheel, we keep them safe from four-legged predators with fencing, plus netting overhead to deter the two-winged predators. It seems everything likes chicken.

We keep the cycle going by gathering leaves into a pile during the fall months. These will be used the next spring as mulch in the garden.

During the winter, we remove the old mulch from the garden and give it to the chickens tha...