#214

In this episode Becky shows you how to cook the perfect fried egg, the baby ducks get hatched!!!, and Becky answers a viewer’s question about what chicken breed lays the best eggs.

#213

In this episode Becky shows you what to feed chickens so you get plenty of farm fresh eggs. Raising chickens in your backyard is really easy if you know a few simple things about how to keep your hens fat and happy.

#212

In this episode Becky shows you how to harness up a donkey or horse, she talks about all the parts of a harness, and then shows you how to teach a donkey or horse how to drive and pull a cart.

Gardening with Chickens

I’m assuming you have a backyard vegetable garden and you want to start raising backyard chickens. Or you already have both, but want to know how to make them work together.

How can backyard chickens help my garden?

Fertilizer. Chicken poo is one of the best fertilizers for your garden. If you’re keeping your chickens in a chicken tractor–a chicken tractor is a house your chickens sleep in that is light enough so you can move it around–you can plant your garden beds where the chicken tractor used to sit.

Or you can simply scoop a shovel full of chicken poo and mix it into your garden soil. Either way, you’ll have a great source of organic fertilizer at your fingertips.

Pest Control. Chickens eat bugs. Ask anyone who starts keeping backyard chickens. They will tell you how it’s like all the bugs just disappear.

Farm Fresh Eggs. Best of all you’ll be rewarded by the quality and flavor of your fresh eggs. Imagine visiting your backyard garden and coming back inside with a couple tomatoes, some sweet corn, and a handful of fresh organic eggs.

How can backyard chickens hurt my garden?

Too many. If you have too many chickens for the size of your yard they might start eating your vegetable plants.

How to avoid this:

Don’t buy too many chickens. Baby chickens are such cute little puff balls. When you’re in the store you might be tempted to buy a lot of them. Don’t buy more than 3. If you have a normal sized back yard 3 chickens total is how many you should have.

Digging up your garden. Chickens do a lot of really fun things. They like to lay down on the ground and give themselves a “dust bath”. If you’ve never seen this before it’s really cute. Unless they do it right on top of your best tomato plant!

How to avoid this:

Don’t leave your chickens loose to run around the yard 24/7. You should have a little chicken coop they are comfy in. Then you can let them loose to run around the yard and eat bugs when you feel like it.

Have a little fence around your vegetable garden. Your chickens don’t need to go right on top of your garden beds. They can run around the yard and eat bugs perfectly fine without stepping right on your plants.

During the winter you can put your chickens in the garden. They can till and fertilize it. Then in the spring you can put them back in the Triangle Chicken Coop.

3 Tips for making chickens and gardens work together better.

1. Use the chicken poo as fertilizer. Mix it into your garden beds.

2. Feed your chickens yucky produce you don’t want. If a tomato has an icky worm in it and now your kids won’t eat it, guess who will, your chickens! To them the worm is an appetizer. They will turn that waste into eggs.

3. Think of the chickens as another plant in your backyard vegetable garden. Organic gardeners know that planting different things together gives you better produce because they compliment each-other. Make this the year you plant tomatoes, corn, peas, and chickens. Come harvest time you’ll be collecting all your herbs, vegetables and eggs.

The bottom line:

If you already have a backyard vegetable garden, raising chickens is a natural fit. The two compliment each-other and have overlapping benefits.

#301

You might already have a product or service that you sell, or you might be just starting a new business. Either way you are going to need to write your own advertisements.

The hard truth is that being able to put food on the table (let alone becoming a millionaire) has a direct connection to how effective your advertisements are.

Sadly most people just wing-it when they sit down to write their advertising. Like these nice people who just pulled down my driveway literally this afternoon as I write this. Let’s look at the advertisement they handed me and see what we can learn…

Not Like This

How to Do It Right

I know you don’t want a big wordy lesson on marketing. So to help you make better advertisements I have put together a series of questions and answers. You can read through them in 4 minutes before you sit down to work on your ads…

What is the object of advertising?
To sell goods.

If you have done other kinds of writing in the past, what is your new challenge?
Writing words that convince the reader to buy your product.

If you lack experience in sales & advertising what pitfall do you need to avoid?
Learning how to make the right choices, because when you’re writing sales copy you have to make a lot.

NOTE: The word “copy” means “the text of an advertisement.” And a “copywriter” is someone who writes words for ads.

What is the first step in writing copy that sells?
Write about benefits and NOT about features.

What is a feature?
A descriptive fact about a product or service. What it is or has.

What is a benefit?
A benefit is what the product does. It’s what the user of the product or service gains as a result of the feature.

According to Learning Dynamics inc. what is one of the top ten reasons why sales people fail to make the sale?
Poor ability to present benefits.

What do customers buy?
What products or services are going to do for them.

What damaging false assumption do sales people make?
They only describe the features, and assume the customer knows the benefits.

What is vital for sales writers to know hot to do?
How to translate features into benefits. Then present them in a customer-centered language.

What do experienced copywriters do?
Turn features into customer benefits: reasons why the reader should buy the product.

To write your list of benefits ask yourself…
What benefit does this feature provide to the customer?
How does this feature make the product more attractive, useful, enjoyable, or affordable?

Once you have your list of benefits what 3 things do you do next?
1. Decide which sales point is the most important.
2. Decide which of the other points you will include and which you will not use.
3. Arrange these points in some sort of logical order.

What does the acronym A.I.D.A. stand for?
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

What does the acronym A.C.C.A. stand for?
Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction, Action.

What are the 4P’s?
Picture, Promise, Prove, Push.

What is Robert Bly’s motivating sequence?
1. Get attention.
2. Show a need.
3. Satisfy the need and position your product as a solution to the problem.
4. Prove your product can do what you say it can do.
5. Ask for action.

What is the job of the headline and visual?
To get attention.

What should the headline focus on?
The single strongest benefit you can offer the reader.

What mistake do some copywriters make?
They try to hook the reader with clever phrases, puns, or irrelevant info. Then save the strongest benefit for a big windup finish.

How do you get the reader past the headline to read the whole ad?
You hook the reader with the strongest benefit. The most important reason why they should be interested in what your selling.

What do all products do?
Solve some problem or fill a need.

What might not be obvious or ingrained in the mind of your customer?
The problem your product solves or the need it fills.

What is your job as a copywriter?
Show the reader why they need your product or service by pointing out the problem or need. Then making it clear and present.

Like This

Using what we’ve learned I redid the same ad from above. It’s not perfect and could use some more work, but I think we are moving in the right direction…

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below. Tell me about the ads your writing now.

A rooster is a boy chicken.

A hen is a girl chicken.

Only girls lay eggs.

#302

We love to cook and we love getting together to eat and having our own homegrown food makes it just that much better and more enjoyable.
Once you have a good hog pen and know where to get a piglet the rest is easy, until you get to the butchering, cutting, wrapping and freezing part.
I was going to do it myself at first, but once I thought about the setup I would need just to cut and wrap the hog I reconsidered, and found a local butcher. Now, the second time around will be a breeze.

A few people have asked me about the price comparison between raising your own and buying at the store and I always answer from my heart (and stomach) I haven’t figured it out, BUT I am going for quality not price, and I have a top notch product. I took some chops over to my friends house to cook for dinner and nothing made me happier than seeing the husband chewing on the chop like a caveman and saying “this is a GOOD chop” several times. That’s what its all about, good friends, good food, simple life!!

The reason I like to do my web sight is because I want to encourage other people to consider homesteading as a choice. We have LOTS of directions to choose from now a days and homesteading is one of them and I want to put that out there for people to see.

I didn’t grow up on a homestead or a farm, but it has been in me sense I was a little girl about 6 or 7, My father use to tell me your going to marry a farmer which I didn’t. I ‘M the homesteader. I just want to say if it’s in you, don’t fight it, go with it. You and your whole family and friends will benefit

Happy Homesteading!
-Becky