George, Yes, opinions do often run high with animal issues as opposed to plants. Part of the reason, I believe, is that the wrong opinion or outlook can negatively affect the breed and it's preservation, especially for some of the very rare breeds. There's also a lot of time, energy, money and emotion invested in many animal enterprises, even backyard ones, and beginners who are given poor birds or incorrect advice, often have more to loose than a seed saver who was sent a bad batch by a dishonest or foolish seller. If you haven't noticed, I'm big on correcting misconceptions and wivestales, because they often lead to misunderstandings on the part of the general public about the desireability of keeping livestock. The animals rights movement has grown out of a complete misunderstanding of the basic needs and behaviors of animals, as well as the anthropomorphism which I also battle against almost daily. Sometimes it's difficult to just accept the foolish old (or young) coots, when their misperceptions may help in the long term decline in noncommercial livestock agriculture. FF, I agree about those who don't know what they're doing causing harm, but don't be so hard on those who just want to keep a few animals without any real breeding program. Those people are a good outlet for culls which shouldn't be bred from anyway, and just by keeping the breed, they're promoting it to friends and neighbors. It's a longshot, and a more intangible type of promotion, but sometimes their children or neighbor's children grow up and return to keeping the breeds which they remember as a child. Sometimes those are the folks which spearhead the saving of a breed, when they realize that they can no longer find what everyone had when they were kids. Sometimes these backyarders learn from their mistakes and realize that they don't have quality animals. Sometimes they mature into more sophisticated rare breed preservationists. Sometimes just their interest promotes the cause by their membership in the organizations. The opposite is the big breeders who are doing a valuable service by improving a rare breed, but which rarely allow any to go to other breeders because of their fear that the beginner won't stay with it in the long term. It happens, but you're not going to sustain the breed long term if you don't spread it around. Sure, they shouldn't let their best animals go until a new breeder has proven that he's committed, but I've seen some people get discouraged when they couldn't get what they wanted because the big breeders wouldn't release any stock. How does that promote rare breeds? I agree that the specialists are the backbone of salvation of rare breeds, but there are other factors to consider. Nightingale, I sympathize with your situation. It's a good example of the urbanization of our society, or in the case of your town, the yuppification. I'm not that old, but even I remember when Derry and Londonderry were rural farming communities. Still, we are stuck with the world we have, and if you wanted to move to NH and keep chickens why on earth did you choose that town? I also moved from MA, to get away from what you're experiencing, and just by driving through some towns I realized that they were not livestock friendly. I specifically chose a rural town that had not yet become suburbanized, and made a trip to town hall before hand to check on the rules and see which areas of town allowed livestock and which didn't. Sometimes you have to learn to help yourself before you can complain about your problems.........and, chickens ARE livestock.

I am a new member to gw and hope I am not intruding here but Wow! We are attempting this exact same thing right now. We moved to 82 acres of sand and sage brush just over a year ago and are starting with absolutly nothing but what we brought with us and can provide or build on our own. We are 38 miles from the edge of town and we are 100 percent off grid. We have no address, so no fire , police, or medical services of any kind out here. When we moved here our plans were to gradually build up to a self sustaining life style over a period of a few years. We had a savings and job options all lined up. Instaed, the economy tanked and I lost any hope of working due to my health. We were kind of forced to decide on the spot if we realy wanted to do this or if we were going to go back to the city. We decide this realy is what we want to do and have been sticking to it. We haul water, we are building solar panels, have a very small geni for night time power and heat with scavaenged wood and use straw for insulation for both us and the animals. It took a full year for my partner to find any kind of work at all we lived off of saving and my tiny disability income until then and now most of his pay goes for fuel to get to work(79 miles round trip every day) . I was not able to get a pair of goats until Aug 25th of last year. We still need two more does so that we can keep a clean heard of 3-5 goats going at all times for both meat and milk. We have chickens ( the first thing we put out here, Reds, Amercanas,Siklies, and Bantoms) as well as Ducks and Pheasant. We plan on Turkeys and Geese this year. We also plan on rabbits in the future ( the new zelands )but have a large wild population to hunt for now. We will be saving for American Guinea Hogs and Irish Dexter Cattle. If we must, we will do a Dexter / Jersy cross for the cattle. We only want the smaller heiratige breads of the larger livestock since they are much nicer to the land ( I can comfortably range 3-5 dexters on the same amount of land as 1 of the standard breads of cattle and that 3-5 animals is all we will need ) and they can comfortably handle our major temp swings with out health issues. I only managed a small experimental bed last year. It was to see if I could grow all of the things that the folks here has major dificulty with since they are some of the mainstays in most home gardens (tomatoes , peppers, beans, greens, and mushrooms ). With a lot of creative gardening , it worked. So this year will be my first real garden attempt. A large percentage of what others have posted is on our list of things to plant or grow. This is not an all inclusive list but we have also added things Quinoa , flax , sorgums, sunchokes, sunflowwers, barley, oats, rye, buck wheat, soybeans, alfalfa, millet, wheat and clover ( because all of these they are good for both human and animal consumption). Most of these things can be grow together because they devolpe and mature at different times, many are symbiotic relationship plants ( think 3 sisters planting,like corn, beans and squash in the same bed), and they also build and maintaining the soil. We have not yet aquired most of these but hope to soon. They provide food crops and fodder crops at different stages so the production is double duty. With carefull and selective harvesting and seed saving we can set aside next years crop of some of the anuals like the buck wheat. We have plans on a small orchard and I received a gift of a few nut trees for birthday ( 2 hazel nuts a pecan and an almond) and they should arive in june. We will also try to take advantage of the native plants to incourage the continued diversity of wild life we have out here. If the Fox, Cyotes ,hawks,eagles, mountain lions , badgers and other bigger preditor types have an ample food sources, our animals are less attractive to them. We also get better polination , and bug controls. I am an experianced gardener but not in this zone 5 and with these kind of temp swings ( We are alpine high desert with -5 to -15 in the winter , 100 plus regularly in the summer and a last frost date of june 10 ). I can tell you it will be a challenge to everything you think you know. So, Thank you, Your efforts do not just benefit those you seek to help but also some of us at home. I wish you the best of luck with your experiment and will follow your post for any lessons you may be able pass on.

Affordable ford able bale lade lad fad fade doable dare drab brad loaf foal for deaf leaf barf fade fed led lead load lead deal dole flab blade dale fab fable able lade ade fade fore rad doff And I know there are lots more, but that is enough. GLISTENING

Red can work beautifully on an exterior... thousands of old barns can't be wrong! Personally, I think the "barn red" colors can definitely benefit from a tweak of white, especially in such a shaded setting - I would do a bit less of the trim in charcoal since you're planning a charcoal/black roof (charcoal overload!), and add white to pick out details, especially around the entry which is much more Classical in style. A paler version of the charcoal, up a few levels on the chip-strip, would give you a slatey blue-gray which would be fantastic for the front door, with bright-brass lighting, hardware (entryset, knocker, kickplate). High-quality brass doesn't have that weird bright-yellow plasticky appearance - check out Baldwin for some nice things that aren't budget-breakers. I notice you have a cupola with a weathervane on the plan and a bright brass weathervane will show up well againt the trees, picking up the sunlight (I love thickly-wooded lots - we left one behind with our last move and I miss it). Consider bypassing the generic louvered shutters in favor of a very slightly dressier panel style. Remember that shutters should at least LOOK like they're functional, even if they don't actually open/close, including hardware like hinges and shutter-dogs or hooks. I'm probably going to p___ off more than a few people but the "obviously-fake shutter stuck flat to the wall with no hardware" look is IMO really tacky, doubly so if they're plastic.