Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

In a message dated 6/5/2006 11:55:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
erthnsky AT bellsouth.net writes:

> My second consideration is not what the grasshoppers can do, but what
> the hawks, eagles, and owls will do.  I have lost quite a few birds to
> hawks and golden eagles. 

First, hi Bev.  We're here too of course.

And we most definitely ARE still homesteaders, ever moreso.  Although exactly 
what we do and how we do it changes all the time.  But we ever eat more of 
our own food, get by on less cash, do without more engines, do with less 
oil/gas/exploitation.

On your hawks and chicken moat thing, a modification of what we use to keep 
the crows out of hard corn might work for the chicken moat.  Let me see if I 
can explain this.  With the corn, we pound in stakes around the patch (all 
three 
sisters in hills of course, no agribusiness rows for us) and string black 
thread from each post to each post which makes a web over the patch.  The 
crows 
will not violate it.  Sometimes a deer or dog runs through it but it only 
needs 
to be up for about three weeks.

Transferring this idea to the chicken moat would mean a more permanent 
design, but using something cheap and durable like electric fence wire and 
just 
zigzagging it from outside fence to inside fence might do it.  To my 
understanding, one of the reasons for the chicken moat is to not have to mow 
the perimeter 
so maybe you could widen it.

good luck,
Denise