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Luckily, Allis and I had literally memorized MOTHER NO. 2 (the Homestead Issue) and had depended upon the "Now Easy Way to Raise Tender Chicken" article (page 40) the year before ... when we'd raised 65 chickens In an abandoned school bus In Nashville, Tennessee. So we found a local source for baby chicks, at a cost of $45 per hundred delivered ... Invested another $30 in a supply of chicken wire ... scrounged some discarded downspouting, bamboo, scrap lumber, and ordinary light bulbs ... and set out to build a home for our finefeathered friends. Soon the chickens' feeding/ housing equipment—and a separate brooding chamber—were constructed, and we'd spent another $150 for commercial feed ... which brought our total initial investment to $225.
Then the fun began: The 10 weeks that followed Involved little more than leisurely feeding chores while we watched the chicks grow (a real treat for our two-year-old child) ... and before long it was time to reap the harvest. We dressed out all 100 of our homegrown chickens and sold every one of them—at well under store cost—for a total profit of $125 (a significant addition to our budget, above and beyond the added bonus of fresh chicken manure that we used to fertilize our garden).
Meanwhile ... our second batch of growing chicks promises to bring In even better profits than the first: Our supplemental corn soybean, and mung bean plantings—plus vegetable trimmings contributed by our pleased chicken recipients—have already helped cut our feed expenditure. And—as an added benefit—some of our native neighbors have begun to volunteer us their services at "harvest time" .. . In order to loam the "art" of chicken plucking themselves.
Though chicken farmers in the States these days face a market with lower profit potential than ours, most folks still agree that fresh food-raised on a healthy diet is reason enough to homegrow chickens. For my family, though, MOTHER's guidance and a little "making do" have given us back the lifestyle that we've always loved: It's so nice having chickens around the yard again!
Lynn Thomas Papua, New Guinea
My husband and I wore In the process of saving some money to purchase land for a home In the country when the loss of my job put a roadblock In the path to that dream. So—during the first few months of my unsuccessful search for now employment—I started experimenting with the satin-stitch feature on my now Singer sawing machine (a Christmas present from my husband), In an attempt to learn machine applique.
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