City Farming in Jacksonville, a Permaculture Narrative

Read about Kevin and Judy's experiences with all things Urban farming.  Ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, hens and thousands of plants all on a city lot!

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The Real Scoop about Urban Farming!

Florida Permaculture, Urban Farm Geese & Hallelujah

Video clip of our  Jacksonville Urban Farm Geese, Ducks and Turkey enjoying Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah while foraging for their morning snacks.

Geese especially, love to sing and dance to the music.  Ducks generally follow the lead from the geese.  The turkeys love the geese and ducks but do their own thing,

Florida Permaculture, Life on the Urban Farm

Never name an animal that you plan to cook later and don’t be surprised if the critters jump and fly or run after you’ve removed their heads.

Animals are put on the earth here for food for us, plain and simple.  And the whole purpose of starting with twenty six chickens was to have enough to cook one every couple of weeks on top of all the eggs we’d get.

Kevin & Judy's Urban Farm Fowl (Turkeys)

Kevin & Judy's Urban Farm Fowl (Ducks & Geese)

Kevin & Judy's Urban Farm Fowl (Baby Goose)

Even Momma told me about her Mom, my Grandma, who’d clean a chicken each week in Miami and cook the very best fried chicken one ever tasted. 

Never mind the fact that it has taken ten to twenty weeks to raise up the fowl from the cute little fluffy balls of chirps, gobble and quack, fifty pounds of weekly scratch feed, countless thousands of gallons of fresh water and the emergence of a strange but strong love-hate relationship, the animals are meant to be eaten.

My friend Pascale, the green roof expert from France even recommended mustard with cooked rabbit on a stick.

Judy however has decided that raising an animal from babyhood commands too many feelings of love and protection to take the killing and eating of what have essentially become our pets lightly. She woke up breathless one night from a dream in which we were eating rabbit stew.   We were eating Jack, Ruby, Thumper, or Midnight. This was when we understood we'd probably not try to breed more rabbits for food, them being mammals and all. 

The chickens should have been easier, but Judy grew very attached to the hens also. Raising them from fluffy little day old chicks (what could be cuter?) to awkward but endearing pullets and on to beautiful hens with iridescent beauty and sweet natures has made it very hard to want to eat our cluckers. I think we are just not hungry enough perhaps. 

Then there is the question of “embodied energy” and not just the spiritual idea of sacred life force. Embodied energy is the issue of how much water and food it takes to raise a chicken, duck, turkey, goose, or rabbit to a mature eating size. 

Judy has come to the conclusion that it isn’t wrong to eat meat or to raise and kill your own animals for food. Animal food is nutrient dense in a way that our bodies can utilize well. Raising your own meat animals is kinder to the critters in the long run than buying factory raised animals. 

Killing and eating an animal is a momentous act and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Perhaps this is why there were so many laws concerning the killing and eating of animals in the Old Testament, such as a lamb not being cooked in it’s mother’s milk and other rituals concerning the slaughter of animals including offering them to God. Contrast these ancient ways with the modern practice of supermarket meat wrapped in plastic and styrofoam and the practice of basing our diets on meat, such as some of  the ill-advised “low- carb” diets. 

Moreover, I’d suppose many of us would stop eating meat if we had to kill the critters and dress them out, disposing of the innards and carcasses.  Importantly, most cities and municipalities who allow for Urban Farm animals prohibit the slaughter of said animals in residential areas.  However, there are many licensed butcher and slaughter houses across the country, one probably not too far away from your farm.

A sharp machete and well placed swing will quickly dispatch most of the Urban Farm animals.    Butcher block and butcher knife will also work.  The knife’s motion must be swift though, to minimize pain.  Don’t be alarmed if the hen, goose or turkey continues to cackle, hoot or gobble, even without their heads.  A large, twenty pound headless turkey can especially put on a show, flying across the Urban Farm backyard, slinging blood everywhere.   If you are going to clean your own meat, be prepared to handle the gore.

Our uncomfortable adversity to killing and dressing backyard farm critters is only a couple generations displaced.  Grandparents thought nothing of slaughtering, cleaning and cooking a backyard bird or rabbit.  Really, it was the early Baby Boomer generation first forsaking the raising and killing of hens for Sunday dinner.  My mother has spoken of watching her momma cutting the hen into fryable sections soon to become delicious fried chicken.

Keep your knives sharp.  A sharp knife makes the job so much easier.  Once you’ve mastered the art of beheading and cleaning a farm critter, it should take no more than ten minutes from picking up the critter slated for the kitchen to the final wash of the meat.

I recommend a heavy butcher knife, a large, long serrated knife and a small paring type knife.  The head should be removed first, with a swift blow from the heavy butcher or a swing from a machete.  Be sure you don’t cut off your fingers and be ready for the blood.  A handy hose helps with the mess.

Separation of the legs and wings using the serrated knife follows the head.  Place the head, legs and wings in a garbage bag and using the small paring knife, slit the outer layer of skin from the neck down the chest about four inches.  Set the knife on the butcher table and using both hands pull the skin and feathers away from the underlying meat.  The skin should easily come off, similar to a pair of pajamas pulled off in the morning.

The feathers and skin goes into the same garbage bag as the legs, wings and head.  Once the bird is de-skinned it is time to remove the entrails.  Open the birds chest with the small sharp knife and reach in, grasping all the internal organs and intestines, pulling them out and placing all the guts in the garbage bag.  Try not to puncture to intestines.  Be sure to remove all internal parts and wash the cleaned bird down with the pressurized water nozzle.  Wash the carcass even more thoroughly if the intestines are punctures during the cleaning process.

Cleaned critters can be cooked immediately or wrapped in plastic grocery bags and placed in the freezer.

Urban Farm critters that are allowed to free range grow tough and stringy very quickly.  If you choose to eat your animals, consider cleaning the young and tender.  Sinewy meat may smell good in the oven baking or on the range frying but once stuck tightly in between teeth, opinions quickly change.

Killing and dressing your Urban Farm fowl and rabbits is the most honorable way to eat meat if you choose to do so.  Taking full responsibility for the death of and cleaning the of a creature before enjoying his or her meat is an educational opportunity.  Understanding the full impact of meat’s life cycle creates sustainability, it creates an intimate awareness of our actions.  Though we may choose for a season to ignore how  grocery store meat arrived on the shelves or in the freezer, the ignorance will eventually catch us individually and as a nation.  Participatory meat preparation celebrates the gift of meat made by your critter and sheds light on the true value of life.

Even better, consider becoming a vegetarian.  This may be easier than you think, for once you experience killing and dressing out a bird or rabbit, your personal attitude concerning carnivorous habits may change.   

Judy may agree to eat some of the ducks, geese and turkey that are already put in the freezer, but meanwhile it is still summer and it is easier to have a vegetarian diet supplemented with our fresh eggs and organic yogurt right now.   Me; due to the spiritual complexity and cost effectiveness of killing and dressing out, I am pretty much done with the meat (though it is amazing just how quickly we soon sometimes forget).

Florida Urban Agriculture and Rabbits

Judy’s Maxim to Remember:  Best thing about the rabbits is their poo, because you can use the rich manure right on your garden without waiting. 

Kevin’s Maxim to Remember:  Our rabbits were intent on eating and mating, not necessarily in that order and irrespective of whether the other rabbit was a male or a female.

Rabbits can be a wonderful addition to the Urban Farm.  The hoppers are truly one of the easiest critters to provide care for.  Rabbit poo can be likened to steroids for plants, giving them the required nutrients for a rich and deeply vibrant color, encouraging the plants to grow fruits and vegetables  of monumental size.  Rabbit pellets and composted chicken poop combined are the only fertilizers your Urban Agriculture venture will ever really need.

And rabbits don’t take up much space.  Compared to the farm birds, rabbits can survive in a much smaller cage.  Therein lies a serious dilemma we came to struggle with.  Though many raise rabbits to feed their pythons (or sell to pet stores for python food) we raised rabbits first for their poo and second as a source of high quality meat.

Interestingly, we were very successful  with the use of poo, yet we quickly came to realize we could never kill our bunnies for a meal.

We fed our rabbits pelletized feed made for bunnies, packaged in fifty pound bags and bought from Standard Feed.  Of course the vitamin filled feed was supplemented with the better stuff, fresh greens from the garden and the occasional carrot from the kitchen.

Rabbits must have their water checked several times a day.  With heavy fur coats, they desperately need hydration during Florida’s long hot summers.  Be sure to give the water dispenser a good daily spray down, keeping it clean and free of algae or gunky growth.

As mammals, rabbits are different than the Urban Farm birds.  Looking you in the eye, sniffing and then cuddling up against your neck, a rabbit is more like a pet dog or cat than a hen or turkey.  


Culturally, most of us are used to eating chicken or turkey on a daily deli basis.  Though my green roof friend in France loves rabbit on a stick with mustard, we here in the U.S. have not developed that tradition to any extent.  And so for us the killing and dressing of a half year old rabbit for a five minute meal did not present itself as appetizing. 

Additionally, here in Florida where heat and humidity abound, our rabbits appeared to dread the summertime extremes even though we built their cages high above the ground with green roof shade and all the amenities we could think to include in a rabbit cage.

Not wanting to subject our rabbits to tiny, confined spaces, we tripled and quadrupled our bunny pen sizes.  Cruelty though still has a way of occupying even the largest of rabbit cages.  Rabbits were meant to be born into the wild.  Even the most spacious of outdoor cages creates a prison for the critters.  Our rabbits would stare at the veggie filled raised beds through their coop’s chicken wire sides and wonder what freedom would taste like.

Living cramped up in a four foot by four foot cage must be hard.  However many rabbit pens I’ve seen at the feed stores are much tinier.  I recommend at a minimum, rabbits be provided with twenty square feet be critter to allow for exercise room.

Bunnies enjoy running and hopping.  I suppose it is hard to do so in tiny cages and reminds me of being stuck in a way to tiny car for a very long trip.

Yes, rabbits can be very easy to take care of because they are not as vocal as the other farm critters.  The easiness is more of an out of sight, out of mind paradigm.

Before we gave Jack, our final rabbit away,  I let him out of the cage to run for a couple of days in the backyard.  Jack was our oldest rabbit too, solid black with a touch of oncoming gray. Of course he ran straight for the collards and arugula.  Jack had been staring at our practically unlimited array of leafy greens for the better part of a year.  He feasted like there was no tomorrow.

Jack was fine with running through our Urban Farm for the first day or two.  He’d leap, bounding across the rear three quarters of an acre as though he was a young bunny again.  Though he’d not allow us to come near him, he’d sleep up next to our house.  I suppose he felt some sense of security being near us at night.

But when my neighbor began to tell me he’d seen Jack in his garden I knew something had to be done.  Armed with a fishing net, the next morning I crept out and hid behind my neighbor’s tall tomato bushes and waited.  Before I knew it Jack had hopped through a hole in our fence and was headed straight for the neighbor’s turnip greens.

Though he had more organically grown greens than he could ever eat in our permaculture kingdom, Jack wanted what he could not have.

The fishing net swooshed through the air as Jack neared and before he knew it Jack was back in his cage, having experienced a brief but very happy few days of real life.

A note of caution here.  Always hold both rear legs of a rabbit very tightly when carrying as they pack a powerfully sharp punch, especially when the bunny knows they are headed back to the cage.

Though rabbits are some of the easiest of the Urban Farm critters to care for, I wouldn’t recommend starting off with bunnies.  Yes their poo is the perfect fertilizer.  Yes they are quiet and relative docile (Monty Python unfortunately gave them a bad name).  Yet subjecting the little mammals to a life in a cage seems more like cruel and unusual punishment.  Even if life behind the wire protected them from our neighborhood red tailed hawk.

Intense Urban Permaculture & City Farming - Plunging In!

We are serious about turning our Jacksonville lot into a productive, food-producing, permaculture based, organic Urban Farm!

And we are going to do it on the cheap!

So far the 1985 GMC pickup truck cost less than $900 bucks and we are recycling all things useable.

Though plastic is petro based and not a favorite material, it will be used if it a stable polymer type that does not oxidize as easily such as polypropylene AND if it is post-consumer recycled material.

Raised Beds made from modular wetland boxes, planted with cabbage

Use it rather than send it to the landfill.

Though I'm sure the photos of garbage bags full of leaves are becoming old, I posted another this am.

Green Roof Garlic for the rabbit hutch

Yesterday we collected 6 truckloads of huge heavy duty garbage bags full of leaves.  Judy and I laughed at the labor we received for no cost - all those hours of raking and bagging organic material for us to pick up for free!  Surprisingly, the entire lot of leaves came within a couple block radius of our Urban Farm.

Some of the bagged leaves are full of sand also, perfect for filling in those uneven holes in the back.

Rooftop Veggie Garden

We also picked up two truckloads of very clean pine straw for the pathways and the barn all for free, saving the organic matter from ending up in the landfill and providing free heavy duty garbage bags and mulch!  We stay away from those lawns that hire fertilizer companies to come and spray.

Additionally, the number of raised beds have increased from two to seven now.  Five old modular wetland boxes were adapted with drainage holes and filled with leaf compost and seasoned horse manure from a friend.

Chicken Coop being constructed from Greenhouse

Cabbage plants are planted directly in the seasoned manure over leaves in much the same way the French would plant their famous intense vegetable gardens in horse manure hundreds of years ago.

Chicken boxes from milk-crate type boxes

The garlic is sprouting now on the rabbit hutch green roof and spring is just around the corner.  Potato beds are readied and every day brings a new challenge.

Judy is reading up on chickens and I am converting our greenhouse into a chicken coop - see the photo, using scrap wire and fencing.

Free Compost, truckloads

We are using recycled milk-crate type chicken boxes for the fowl's nests!

Rooftop vegetable gardens are growing strong!

Urban Permaculture and city farming at its best!

More later!  Happy permaculture & Urban Farming from Jacksonville!

Kevin

Urban Permaculture - Composting the Hood's Leaves

Free Compost, Cations and pH tools

We gather many truckloads of leaves every week destined for the landfill and recycle the bags and the leaves.

Not too glamorous yet very practical ( remember Louis Sullivan and functionalist architecture) collecting your neighbor's bagged up yard leaves can benefit your permaculture garden, your green roof and benefit your wallet.

Cation exchange capacity and pH are two important variables of a gardens and green roof.  Additionally, leaf compost can add valuable trace minerals needed by both the ground level and rooftop plants.

Leaf compost typically contains twice the amount of trace minerals by weight as does horse manure.

And heavy duty garbage bags are expensive.  We used to pay about ten US dollars per box at our local home improvement store.  Now we have all the free heavy duty garbage bags we need.

Interestingly, leaves from different species of trees offer varying characteristics.  While ash leaves are relative neutral in pH, some maple species leaves are documented to possess a pH of around 4.5.

Research shows use of properly composted leaves greatly increases the cation exchange capacity of soils.  One of the important functions needed in both garden and green roof soil media is cation exchange capacity.

Save $10 per month on garbage bags

 Though varying opinions of organic compost value to green roofs exist throughout the industry, many believe organic material in the soil media is highly beneficial to green roof plants.

Remember, both gardens and green roofs are individual ecosystems, intricate webs of life with complex interactions.

Collecting heavy duty garbage bags filled with fresh raked leaves (we avoid those lawns heavily treated with fertilizers and herbicides/pesticides - those lawns are easy to spot here in the US due to the small advertising signs the lawn companies stick in the lawn after a fertilizer application - and speaking of lawns and fertilizers - a short must-see video of the history of the American Lawn will have you rolling in your chair and scratching your head at the same time can be viewed here) is a positive step for the environment.

Other benefits include;

• Free highly effective cation exchange capacity supplements from the leaf compost
• Free organic matter from the leaf compost
• Free trace minerals from the leaf compost
• Free pH adjustment material from the leaf compost (this is especially important when using higher pH soil media or media high in calcium)
• Free garbage bags
• And a lesson to your children riding with you to scavenge that recycling is more important than pride. :)

Free Organic Mulch and Free Garbage Bags, Urban Permaculture

Enjoy the photos of the free leaf compost we gathered last week and also the free heavy duty garbage bags and as always - its great to have an Urban Farm!

Kevin