Amber Hendrickson

My boyfriend has been raising chickens to sell eggs for almost 3 years. We have between 130 - 175 dozen eggs a week going out, depending on the season. He is very concerned about maintaining production as we do home deliveries and sell out of eggs almost every week and customers aren't happy if they can't get their eggs when they want them. I want to start incorporating more permaculture concepts and reduce our need for grain-based feed, but he is concerned that if they aren't getting a regulated protein percentage, egg production will suffer. Ok, well my goal for the place is to maintain all of the chickens off of only what we grow on our land and cut feed costs to next to nothing.

At this point we have somewhere close to 1000 birds from newly hatched chicks up to broilers and laying hens. We are constantly incubating & hatching our own eggs to cover the birds aging out plus additional to grow the flock. The birds are free range - we open the barn doors in the morning and they have run of our 150+ acre property - although they hardly venture that far. During the summer they feed largely on what they forage, but during Colorado winters, we have to provide all of their feed. We do grow fodder and are partnering with a local juice place to get their leftover pulp (keeps it out of the landfill and our chickens LOVE it!) so they do get some greens, but not enough to make a dent in what we need for grains.

Does anyone have any experience or recommendation for resources on how to maintain egg production in a permaculture environment with this many birds? We live on the high plains where it's flat, windy, altitude of 6500 ft and very little plant life growing on the property with the only trees right around the house (the guy who owned the property before us chopped everything down and overgrazed it with cattle and horses until it was all almost bare ground ). So we pretty much have a blank slate to work with as far as what we can do with the property. I am trying to plan things over the winter so I know what we are going to do once the ground thaws in the spring. Any advice or recommendations greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello, I am brand new here and am hoping that someone has some resources on using the earthbag tubes to build a retaining wall for a 12ft wall on the high plains of Colorado. We are looking at building an inground greenhouse, 32'x16' and 12ft deep on North wall and 8ft deep on South wall. We want this to be 100% passive so looking at building a "cooling tunnel" as our entrance in the middle of the structure as well, preferably on the south wall. I should mention that the soil here is heavy clay.

Along the north wall I thought about either cutting in 2ea 3 tiered growing beds during excavation or adding them in after the wall is retained. The base would extend out about 10ft and the top one would sit about 6ft high. They would both be shaped essentially like a half circle to allow for more strength in retaining the earth. I want to do this 1) because it should help the load for retaining the earth where it is stepped and 2) this would allow us to utilize more space for the plants. I don't want to go higher because I am not sure how the temperature fluctuations will be closer to the glazing and roof and I need the upper space to be covered with aluminum to help reflect winter light down to raised beds towards the south wall. I plan on building the walls of the tiers with the earthbag tubes.

Questions:
1) Is this even doable?
2) Is stepping the wall back during excavation enough to be able to use the earthbags or do I need to add rebar or something else to get the strength required?
3) If we cut in the tiered beds, would there be an issue with drainage when (the few times a year) it rains or the snow melts?
4) If the earthbags won't work, is there anything that would be cheaper to use than concrete?

Any and all advice or points to quality resources would be greatly appreciated! If this works out, we plan to put 4 larger ones on the property and be a year-round farm to supplement our egg business (1000+ pasture-raised chickens and we do home-deliveries and our customers love fresh produce). Plus we would have the ability to grow just about anything we want off the grid.