Three days until I go home for a week!

I'm still voraciously planning my farm. I decided that I want to raise chickens and pigs for meat, in addition to the turkeys. The chickens I would process myself, but the pigs would go to the professionals and come back in neatly wrapped packages. Pigs only take 6 months to grow from piglet size to 250+ pounds! Hence the expressions, "pigging out," "eats like a pig," etc.

You know where this is going, right? My "yearly food challenge" ten years or so from now will be to grow all of our fruit, veggies, poultry, and pork for a year. For the two of us, a year's supply of the meat would be roughly one pig, ten turkeys, and eighty chickens. Yes, I said eighty chickens, but don't freak out yet. Chickens only take three months to reach eating size, so we could maintain a flock of 20ish birds, with the itty bitties replacing the ones sent to freezer camp.

I don't see us ever raising beef or dairy cows, though. Even though filet mignon is tasty, 1000+ pounds of beef would take us years to get through. We don't use all that much dairy, so it would be a waste to have a milk cow. Plus both are more long-term animals (as opposed to 6 months or less), so veterinary care would be an added cost.

Ryan thinks I'm nuts. He was fine with the idea of 3 chickens for eggs, but he is greatly overestimating the amount of work and expense that the other animals will require. After all, people have been raising livestock for centuries. I've done my research. Maybe he's forgetting how tasty bacon is...I'll have to buy some while I'm down and persuade him that way.