steve hoffmann

North facing slope and heavily wooded looking for something that doesn't take much care... I would suggest looking into growing a patch of ginseng. It would take a bit of work to get the ground plowed ,shaped and planted but after that the maintenance is pretty minimal provided plant spacing is far apart. Mind you if you do plant that crop,don't tell anyone. Ginseng would take about 5-7 years to fully mature, after that you would have a pretty good income.

My vote goes to the blue andalusian breed. I got 7 chickens to start out and while only one was a blue adalusian, she has outlayed the australorp,leghorns and easter egger in both number and size of eggs. she did molt back in november and went about 60 days with no production during that time(laying now though at full force). But during production I got an egg every day but 2 and each time that happened it was because the day before she had layed a double yolker that would weigh in at 90+ grams. So I will guesstimate she gave me 303 eggs the first year I had her. One drawback is she's a good flyer so she can get out of probably any pen setup I have(except for one with a roof). But she does like to get out and forage. I haven't measured feed intake on these birds but she's not fat like a couple have seemed to get so I would guess she's easy on the feed bill considering she likes to be out scratching all the time. I like the idea of setting up different pens to measure that though and when I get to my new farm I may give that a try.