[Carmen]

That was a delightful post Baggwrinkle. I have had similar experiences with my hens. Had a great permaculture book written by an Australian lady (can't put my hand to it at the moment so can't give you the name) .I made a chook dome from the design in her book and thought this is it, the ideal system. It was really light to move and the whole system was designed to be part of the veg garden. I would work really well too, but it gets quite windy here at times and the damn thing kept getting blown about. Last year also, we had lost our old dog, and I didn't appreciate till after she was gone, just how her presence kept away unwanted predators. It was a nightmare trying to protect the hens. We don;t have many predators here, actually none at all except the introduced ferret. Bad idea, they are real little killing machines. Can't help admiring them tho, they are very courageous when confronted by dogs. Well, anyway we had ferrets, wild cats, even hedgehogs taking chickens. We now have a large Mareema (Italian sheep dog, and he keeps anything away.

I was thinking about gardening while feeding chooks and milking cow this morning. There are lots of great gardening methods and they all work. The touchstone for me is that your soil in your garden should improve every year. Your farm should improve every year, the depth of soil and the micro-organism/worms should be more abundant every year. Your crops should be healtheir every year. Then you will know that "nature approves" of what you are doing. Farming and gardening in the conventional manner is not farming or gardening, it is "mining" and the soil is being depleted, or blown away, or salted. Its absolute madness. The principal of planning for the seventh generation is an excellent one.