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.

Florida Permaculture, Time for Ocimum and Solanaceae Seeds to be Covered with Soil

Spring is here to stay in Northeast Florida.  Sure we will have a few more cold snaps but with daily temperatures warm enough to begin heating our pool water, the basils and peppers are ready to sprout!

Sprouting seeds is so much more of a cost effective way to grow your own vegetables and fruits.  Judy and I were in the Wal-Mart yesterday.  Amazingly, the seeds were hidden way back in the rear portion of the garden center, far away from the main aisle view.

72 Count Seed Trays, Potting Soil & Seeds for Permaculture

Surprisingly, there was a fifty cent (USD) seed rack alongside the more expensive two dollar packages.  I purchased several envelopes of tiny black seed (Genovese and Spicy Globe) and cilantro.

You can never have enough cilantro and basil during the spring, summer and fall (and winter for that matter).

Solanaceae - the Peppers are Sprouting!!!

We start seeds in seventy two count plug trays,  mostly mixing the seed starter mixes ourselves.

Usually the plants sprout only in a matter of days costing us only pennies apiece for mature plants once grown.

We've found that wooden popsicle sticks and a Sharpie Marker,  readily available through craft stores make perfect biodegradable plant labels.

Wooden Popsicle Sticks make perfect labels for plants

Ultimately, plants are the very best inventory a n individual or business could ever have as they only increase in value over time.  Save and reuse our trays.  Recycle soil and be sure to compost!

Be sure to recycle our trays and permaculture materials

"A Beautiful Harshness, Is Meat Sustainable?" Snippet from our Urban Farm book to be released soon...

Life and death are a part of nature and we see the interactions up close and personal on the Urban Farm.  However this is not the way of most Americans and others in Urban Core areas.  Though we have violence and shooting deaths here in Jacksonville everyday, the death associated with food is conveniently removed from most our every day lives.

Winn-Dixie, Publix and other popular grocery markets allow us to order a pound of Boar’s Head Cajun Turkey, sliced sandwich thin, and we keep the meat in our refrigerator, tightly sealed, waiting for us to be hungry enough to make a lunch meat sub sandwich, all without witnessing the bloody end to a farm animal’s life.

I believe there is an honor about having to kill and dress out your own meat you eat while ignoring the death contributes towards a lack of awareness.

Geese, ducks, turkeys and chickens all require time and lots of feed to grow big enough to be ‘eatin’ size’ yet they, as in a sandwich can be completely devoured in a couple of minutes.  Four or five months to raise and only a day to devour.  Pounds and pounds of feed and forage, gallons and gallons of water for drinking and swimming all invested in a ten pound or so bird eaten at one family meal.

The same amount of grain and forage used to grow the bird to fryer size would have sustained a human for weeks.

Sure we can continue to eat meat every day for every meal until we die for there is nothing stopping us,  here in America.  I’m sure many people will continue to do so and I choose not to crusade against their habits and beliefs.  Yet for me though it is all a different story now.

I choose the step away from the practice of eating meat purchased from the store because I want to eat in a manner where I have a meaningful connection to my food.  

Moreover, in my weak attempt to pursue sustainability I’ve elected to reduce my ecological and carbon footprint.  For now, effective sustainability activism is not participation in a mighty, public crusade but a personal choice for Kevin Songer.  I choose to eat food we quickly grow in the garden; beans, grains, vegetables and fruits.

Consuming a bird in less than thirty minutes when five months of intensive carbon footprint maintenance was required to raise the bird to edible size is not sustainable.

As is usually the case when learning, the Urban Farm efforts have raised more questions about life and death than provided answers.  Certainly I’ve learned and seen those ways I’d never before seen, touched or tasted.  There is little noticeable affection between our farm fowl, even among those of the same genera.

The turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese are all each focused on self preservation.  They want to eat and they will grab food from other beaks quickly and without remorse.  Weaklings are shunned, rammed and pecked.  Strangers brought into the flock are jumped upon and attacked with amazing ferocity.  

But it is a beautiful harshness and there are those moments where the spirits of an Urban Farm critter make a profound connection to ones' soul, usually with amazing eye contact and a fleeting but powerful understanding and acknowledgement between homo sapiens and the animal creature, an understanding that transcends time and place.  

The momentary mystical insight into the true understanding of the ways of life is quickly severed though as the bird snaps itself out of the meaningless trance and shakes his or her head, covering my starry-eyed questioning face with slobber and half-chewed forage.

The goose walks away and I go wash my face off with chlorinated water supplied through a reinforced nylon hose and cast metal spray nozzle made in China.  The goose has a life with no deceit.  Human life is levels more complicated.

Creating Raised Beds From Leaves

Permaculture Raised Bed Cross Section

Here is sandy Jacksonville raised beds are essential for a number of reasons.

First of all we are in hurricane territory.  When Tropical Storm Fay came through several years back we had over twenty inches of rainfall within twenty four hours, almost a continual inch per hour.  Water backed up and flooded our garage, rising to about an inch below the door threshold but covering the garden by several inches.

The only plants to really survive were those in the raised beds not covered by the flood waters.

But flooding is not the only reason to build raised beds, there are many more.  Raised beds are typically made with compost and leaves, or organic matter.  The organic material is important for several reasons.

First of all the leaves provide a source of micro nutrients such as boron (B) , iron (Fe), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn) and molybdenum (Mo).  Composted leaves and kitchen scraps can add the required macro nutrients, the three main being nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K).

Additional horse, cow, rabbit, chicken or other manure can be added for additional macro nutrients.

Chicken and turkey droppings should be allowed several months to cool because it is considered an 'hot' manure.  Some recommend allowing hen droppings to compost for a year before using.  If the chicken manure is mixed with leaves from the coop floor less composting time would be required.

Cow, horse, rabbit, duck and geese manure are considered more 'cool' manures and can be used without the long wait.  In fact, vegetables have long been planted directly in horse manure collected from the streets in nineteenth century France, giving rise to the practice known as French Intensive Gardening.

Yet beyond adding micro nutrients, macro nutrients, organic matter and flood protection, raised permaculture beds offer even more benefits.

Leaf compost allows for mositure retention.  Keeping the root area moist during hot dry periods is important.  Leaf compost prevents vegetable bed soil from drying out as quick as those beds without compost.  I've seen raised beds made of pure sand and manure turn into dried, cracked planting beds during long, hot summers.  Adding leaves cools the beds, provides shade and keeps the soil moisture intact longer.

And then there is nematode protection.  Nematodes devastate vegetables planted directly into our sandy soils by infecting the root area with their presence and damaging the plant's ability to transport water and nutrients up through the vascular system to the leaves.  A nematode infested vegetable plant will appear stunted and produce little if any vegetables.  Fortunately, nematodes do not like highly organic and composted soil.  Building raised beds with organic matter, compost and leaves will help in preventing nematode infestation.

There are many more reasons for building raised permaculture beds when operating an urban core farm.

Rest assured though that your raised beds will out produce non-raised beds every season.

Living Architecture, Critter Proof Coop for Pennies on the Dollar

One of the first tasks at hand we were faced with when starting an Urban Farm was the design and construction of a chicken coop.

With twelve newly hatched chicks growing rapidly each day we knew it would only be a matter of time before the puffy peeps would no longer comfortably fit in the large, blue tupperware storage bin.

I'd never built a coop before and honestly had no idea where to start.  The images we found on the internet were complicated looking, possibly requiring days of intricate cutting, nailing and screwing.

I'd just rather bang-bang get it done quickly.

But the coop had to look good and had to be functional.  Most of all the chicken pen had to be cheap.

Here is how we made our really cool, pimped out fowl parlor.

First we figured four square feet per bird, pretty much the standard for chickens as stated across the omniscient web.  Ten birds would be forty square feet - not a overly large area - but sufficient enough to let the chickens roam around in, chase bugs and roost at night.

Then we decided on the spur of the moment to quadruple the size to one hundred sixty square feet with no good reason except we wanted our hens to be happy hens.  Whether or not larger coops make happier hens remains to be seen.  But I am glad we have a large coop and the hens seem to enjoy chasing each other around the coop aggressively determined to rob whatever morsel of food one or another hen may be carrying in her beak.

Coop frames are the foundation on which the final coop appearance and function develops.  I like arches but don't want to have to bend pipe or purchase pre-bent pipe.  The coop walls also need to be critter proof.  below is a photo of a basic coop frame upon which living walls will be established.

Urban Farm Coop Frame

The frame is inexpensively constructed with grey electrical conduit (Outdoor plastic type) that easily bends to create the arches.  The ends of the conduit are zip-tied to either farm fence posts or chain link posts hammered into the ground.  Finally chicken wire or fencing is added to the frame to keep critters out and fowl in.

The frame can be covered with a variety of native materials, such as bamboo or saw palmetto fronds.  We also grow native flowering vines and food plants around the coop for shade, visual effect and feed for the hens.

One year later our coop begins to blend into the urban farm fruit vines.

Grapes covering the Coop walls

Cost-wise we have less than one hundred dollars into a very large, hen happy chicken coop with all the reuse of scrap materials we incorporated.

Coop Door View Living Architecture

Simplification, Bamboo and the Florida Urban Permaculture Farm

Am trying my best to simplify.  This week is my birthday week and I've been on a healthy diet for the last six months - ever since my last stomach operation.  I am convinced I can reverse all the damage with a steady diet of organically grown greens, fresh air and urban permaculture.

Urban Farm Florida - Bamboo Chopsticks, Rocket Flowers & Cilantro!

So this week I am going to eat only what grows on our Urban Farm lot here in Jacksonville, supplemented with my favorite snack - herring.

I've really put forth the effort to simplify lately, passing along an entire truckload of tools I'd accumulated to my son Adam yet I still have a massive amount of 'stuff'.  I want to simplify down to the bare minimum.  

Recognizing my non-sustainable habits has been a learning experience.  I had always thought nothing of grabbing a clean drinking glass from the kitchen cabinet when thirsty and putting it into the sink.  Yet all those glasses and dishes add up to a cumulative carbon footprint with running the dishwasher, hot water, soap and then the human factor - all the hours of loading and unloading the dishwasher.

So I start my week with a new resolve.  I am eating only from the urban farm - we have lots of veggies growing and then for protein supplement - my herring.

The real test will be at night when the 'sugar' urge kicks in.  I'll be making a bee-line for the sugar snap peas probably.  

Finally, in conjunction with the simplification and eating locally, I am adopting chop-sticks made from bamboo growing here as a permanent replacement for silverware.

I'll post daily to let you know how the week long personal sustainable project is coming! :)

Enjoy the photo of the home-made chopsticks, home-grown rocket flowers and fresh urban farm cilantro!  BTW - delicious!