Vegetarian Homesteaders - care to share? :)

why not just plant a bunch of fruit trees and a huge garden and sell. YOu could have a couple of sheep to graze the area and not ever breed them....

After reading the first post, I glanced through the thread looking for the obvious next post. Nobody else has posted it so I guess it's up to me.

I love vegetarians, especially cows, pigs, and chickens.

Now, I will follow gone-a-milking and *step carefully away from thread, w/o comment*

Gary--

Pigs and chickens, like most of us humans, are omnivores, not vegetarians.

Chickens are insectivores...

__________________
I'm an environmentalist, left wing, Ron Paul loving Prius driver with a farm. If you have a problem with that, kindly go take a leap.

My chickens will eat anything that gets in front of their beak... whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral (we've all seen chickens eating rocks and dirt... true?). You lay down and take a nap with a cut, they might just eat you!

__________________
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

I was a vegetarian for 8 years; but I do eat meat on rare occasion now. I've raised goats for milk and chickens for meat and eggs. We still have one goat as the rest lived out their lives with us and the last one continues to do so. She is about 12 years old now and has been nothing but an expensive pet. She's not even friendly like the others were. So she just eats money, but I have a problem getting rid of animals once I take them in.

I have chickens still too. Many of them are old and some young. I have too many roosters, but don't eat them so they just hang around and eat. The hens lay eggs, but we rarely eat eggs. We are very close to being vegan. We don't qualify for vegan or vegetarian status though because every now and then we eat eggs, dairy, or meat. We eat those things maybe once a month or less.

We do not do it for ethical reasons, but for health reasons. We find eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and much of it in its raw state more than satisfying. It makes homesteading easy because our needs are few. We focus heavily on gardening.

I too recommend "The Good Life" by the Nearings.

I don't regret my experiences with raising animals and it taught my daughters great responsibility, but I find now that I'm older that they are confining and expensive to keep as "pets". Should have just gotten a dog! Never mind, I have 5 of those too. Oh and guineas.

__________________
Robin Hood was not a hero; he was a thief!

And toadavores and miceavores. I have seen mine eat both and they will eat the bits leftover from butchering too. I think seeing a hen run down a small mouse and eat it was about the weirdest thing I have ever seen them do.

I don't have time to read all the comments (or non-comments) but I had a thought about the excess animals like old hens etc. Would you consider donating them to your local food bank or soup kitchen? Yes they would be eaten, but they would help some people who really need it. In our zeal to be kind to animals, sometimes we forget that people need kindness too.

Um, depends. If you just use tiller just to loosen soil, yea, you will deplete soil of what organic matter exists and thus the food for worms. You will have fewer worms not so much from mechanical churning of soil, but from starving the surviving worms.

Till in new organic matter, mixing it into soil, not burying it in a layer and you increase food for worms and you will have more worms. Yea you kill some worms but you are increasing food supply for remaining worms and they will multiply. And more worms equals better soil structure in long term.

Ask any gardener that tills in autumn leaves rather than burning them or tossing them.....

Yep probably better in long term to go with permaculture and no mechanization, but that takes lot time on currently marginal soil and you can starve by time you get production....

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

So are people going to donate their bodies to starving chickens when they die? We sometimes forget chickens need kindness too....

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Sorry, but where are you getting your data from? Dairy cows slaughtered at 3yo? Not in my experience!

__________________
Ignorance is the true enemy.

I've seen the village, and I don't want it raising my children.

www.newcenturyhomestead.com

As for raising rabbits and not eating them, I've currently got 15 rabbits all of which are pets. I don't like rabbit meat so I don't raise them for food. I have sold some as pets (truthfully though I didn't ask) but refuse to give away a good animal just because people want to be cheap. Rabbits do eat a lot of what most of use consider weeds and give you lovely pelletized fertilizer in return. It even works great in house plants.

After having raised most of my meat for the past 7 years I am having to go more into the vegetarian side of raising your own. Not by choice though. Only a temporary situation until I can get a place where I can raise my own meat again.

I used to think I was the only one who hated to dig the soil and cut up all those poor worms! Yes I felt bad about it. The only things I don't feel bad about killing are sowbugs, spiders in my house, mice in my house, slugs and Japanese beetles. When I had my ducks even the slugs and Japanese beetles provided a purpose so I didn't feel bad killing them.

When the S really really HTF, I believe the number of vegetarians will fall dramatically. People who are willing to eat anything will be the survivors.

And I have been pondering this for years: If you only eat vegetarians, are you considered a vegetarian?

I think, by rights, if your diet consisted entirely of vegetarians, you'd be considered a vegetarianian.

__________________
Ignorance is the true enemy.

I've seen the village, and I don't want it raising my children.

www.newcenturyhomestead.com

I know two rangers, that were vegetarians, until they got trapped in a blizzard, and spent 9 days without food... when they finally hiked out, they admitted to trying to kill a caribou.... when they made it back to 'civilization', everyone went to the local pizza joint, and they had all meat pizzas.

Reckon 9 days without grub would qualify as a SHTF event.

__________________
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

In the past, I have kept all chickens until they died. I figured it was repayment to them for all they did for me. And plus, I just liked them. Not sure what I'd think about that in the future, as I've been debating on how I feel about excess animals of other types (bucklings, ram lambs) being sold without question (ie. perhaps to someone who wanted it for dinner)... Those are two separate issues though that I'd have to have different thoughts on, I think... I am quite kind to people already without offering up my animals as a free dinner, however.

*lol* Ummmm... *scratches my head* I wish I knew where you were coming from on this response.

Tracy, it's been 3 months since I made this post. (I have no idea where I got the data from, but I read it in a few different places... Perhaps they all used the same report to refer to?) *lol* I thought the 3-year thing sounded ridiculous too, since I've helped in dairies before. I'm wondering if perhaps they added in all the heifer calves who died at birth or something to lower this statistic.

Oh come on, you haven't really been pondering that. People who make fun of vegetarians the world over think that's a hilarious joke. Not only would you not be considered vegetarian, since you're eating meat, but you'd be considered a cannibal, since you're eating meat that came from a human.

That's like calling yourself a vegetarian because you only eat grass-fed beef. Seriously.

Certainly not, as vegetarians are not vegetables.

Though, it does raise the question: If vegetarians only eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

Sometimes humans are declared to be vegetables by doctors......... funny I've never heard of a doctor declaring a human to be meat tho.

Arg. Just chiming in here, sorry if it's a repeat of other info but I couldn't make it through the rest of the thread. Blood pressure you know.
I've been a vegetarian for about 9 years now and my homestead is a no-kill live happy forever kind of place. The animals are NOT money makers though. I make (some) profit from the garden and home goods. Rabbits I justify simply because their poop is awesome. I have chickens (6) for personal egg production, pest control, poop, and eating of scraps. After they stop laying (only one has managed to survive that long...) they still get fed. I couldn't figure out how to have milk cows/goats w/o dealing the issue of the male babies. So I barter for milk from the neighbors, who keep the calf with the mom until about 2 years old, when they're slaughtered about 2 miles away or sold locally. I'm pretty morally satisfied with these arrangements.

(And I surface till in the dead of winter so I don't hurt the worms. And I like them. And I think they have feelings and I respect their lives.)

This still doesn't really help with the whole issue of how to make a profit off of animals without breeding them or killing them. But I guess that's kind of unsolvable.