Paradise in Disguise Hobby Farm Blog

January 4, 2018 was a big day. I had agreed to do a presentation about composting with chickens and food waste to a class of students. However, I'm not a "public speaker", and most of my life, I have been known as shy & quiet. The last few years, though, I've begun to "come out of my shell". It's like the metamorphosis process of a caterpillar to a butterfly. It's been my relationship with Jesus Christ that has enabled me to change, because in and of myself, I would have remained that caterpillar my whole life. So, speaking in front of a group of "strangers" is not something the "old me" would have jumped at the opportunity to do.Yet, I here I was, actually excited about this presentation. I'm pretty sure I had adrenaline flowing, as I was more excitedly nervous than scared nervous. The teacher, Dawn, introduced me as the "chicken lady" 😍 and said a few things before turning it over to me. After a q...

As some of you know, we've been composting with our chickens for many years now. In 2012, I wrote this article for a Backyardchickens.com contest & won!  Composting with Chickens   A lot has changed since then. We've moved.  We moved 75 -80 cubic yards of finished compost for our new garden.  (photo below - Nov 2014) We have a lot more chickens.  I've made mistakes and learned from them.  But, I'm still composting with chickens.  This is the 5th year we've been recycling food scraps from Cross Roads Cafe & Tuna III in Delhi.  For a few years now, I've been looking (and continue to) for more sources of food waste, whether it be a small or large amount.  I've put a few "ads" out there on FB, craigslist, etc, but only had a few short-term contributions of food waste.  We mostly used compostable material from our garden, mulch hay from local farms and leaves we'd scavenged ...