Animal Systems – Page 4 – Gallifrey Forest Farm

urban agriculture and space habitats

2015/12/09 Danielle 0

I’ve been thinking a lot about space, recently. As in, spaceships and stars and planets. I know, I know, that sounds like it has nothing to do with our fledgling smallholding – but in reality it has quite a lot to do with it. When I say I’m thinking about space, I mean I’m thinking about humans going to space. Space habitats and the ecosystems we’ll need to support them, producing enough food not just for a few scientists but for entire villages of people living in colonies on the moon, or Mars, or Venus, or even in permanent space station […]

Pasture

2015/12/03 Danielle 1

I’m sure anyone who reads these posts regularly knows that we’re pretty keen to increase our menagerie, but I don’t think I’ve explained clearly why that is. It isn’t just for the milk and meat that we want to get goats and a cow, although they are part of the reason. It’s for the soil. Soil is the heart and the root of any ecosystem, including farm ecosystems. Healthy soil is absolutely essential if you want to grow healthy plants, and produce any sort of yield from the ground. The modern methods of land management call for huge inputs of […]

All the animals

2015/06/12 Danielle 0

When I was little I wanted a house of my own, and a dog and a cat. I didn’t realise then that goats and cows and alpacas and chickens and so forth were an option. Now I do. We’re working on the house part. And we already have three cats, who are the most adorable purr-faces ever, as well as four chickens, and three quail (it used to be four quail, but one of the quail died a couple’ve months ago for no apparent reason). And I do still want a dog. I also want some more chickens, some guinea […]

Lessons Learned: Bunnies

2015/04/09 Danielle 0

This has been a long process so far, and we’ve learned a lot – mostly by doing it wrong and having to deal with the mistakes. The rabbits, for example, haven’t been nearly as successful as I’d hoped. We brought Tsuki the British Giant home almost 2 years ago. She was a bright, inquisitive bunny, about 4 months old, a soft tawny colour with good bone structure, good teeth (no hereditary issues visible) and she was already a big rabbit. The idea was that we’d get a boy bunny, and Tsuki would be the mother of a line of meat […]

Cats and Permaculture

2015/01/12 Danielle 0

Cats are often – almost always, in fact – regarded by gardeners and permaculture practitioners as nuisances at best. Words like vicious and useless are applied, cats are describes as being inclined to torture and kill small animals and birds if they can get access to them. I don’t understand where this animosity comes from. Cats are no more nasty or cruel than any other predator. Feral dogs will hunt animals, run them down and worry them to death. Chickens will peck a smaller bird, like a pigeon, or a small animal to death and then eat it if it […]