permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Meg Mullett wrote:
> Hello,
>
> My family and I moved to our little farm in NE Kansas 2 years ago.  We've got
> 12.5 acres, a little 70 yr old house, 1 acre of vineyard, a small orchard, a
> little woods and several acres of pasture.  We spent the first year mostly 
> just
> seeing what's here and putting in our vineyard. (I'm a winemaker)  The second 
> we
> started a large garden and got a couple pigs.  This coming year we wish to 
> fence
> more and add some more animals.  We're thinking about chickens (a few for 
> eggs),
> guinea hens (for bugs in the vineyard) and some meat goats (helping to clear
> some brushy areas and for cash - we've got large hispanic and muslim 
> populations
> in Kansas City and we believe we've got a good market for them).

Hello Meg and welcome to the permaculture list, glad you found us. I just 
watched the
last episode of Frontier House on PBS TV so am pretty fired up about the rural
homesteading life. Soon I hope to get chickens (Dominiques and Aeaucanas and 
some
mixed breed hybrid meat bird) this Winter and goats and sheep for meat only 
next Spring.
Sheep: Gulf Coast  (very low maintenance and feeding needs)
Goats: Boer (put on a lot of meat)

I am looking for more info on these breeds and also sources for them.

Forgot about pigs, maybe I should consider getting a few of them too.

I got on beehive set up this Summer and plan on several more next year.

You might want to consider joining Nafex since you are into grape growiing;
they have their mailing list (NAFEX   
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex)
at the same location as this list.

Cheers and hope to hear more about your homestead.

Lawrence
Chapel Hill, NC
--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/pcwiki/index.php/london