Muscovy Ducks – Yard to Table

For the faint of heart, and/or the vegans. Be warned that this post includes descriptions and video of animals being dispatched for food. If you don’t like the thought of facing your food, don’t bother to read any further. I’m not writing this to make friends, or enemies. I’m writing this because some folks want […]

Muscovey Ducks – My Final Verdict

Today’s article was brought to you by the generous folks over at Hides.com. Go check out their great line of “Multifunction Eyewear Necessities”, and tell them FloridaHillbilly sent you! I’ve done my share of learning about Muscovy ducks over the past two years, and have finally come to a point where I’m ready to make […]

Mailbag May 2, 2013 Quail vs Ducks or Chickens

Yesterday, I received a comment from a regular reader, Darren from Green Change. com, and  I thought I should expand on my reasoning. “Just a quick comment to thank you for all your quail articles. I didn’t think quail were worth messing about with (small eggs and little fiddly bodies for meat!), but you’ve managed […]

Coturnix Quail for Homesteaders

I’ve had a bit of interest over the last few weeks regarding quail as a backyard meat source. I thought I’d dust off the topic and put another article together covering the ins and outs of raising Coturnix quail, particularly in an urban setting. It is a rather long article, but still not as detailed […]

Hog Harvesting

First, let me tell you that this is NOT a “How-To”,  it is simply an “I Got to” article. Also, this will include graphic details and pictures. This is about turning a live animal into food, start to finish. We took healthy animals, in an environment we controlled, and ended up with food we could […]

Urbanstead Update March 2013

It’s been a while so I thought I’d update whats going on in my urban backyard “farm”. I like to write these out from time to time to show you what I’ve accomplished, as well as to track where I’ve been. My memory isn’t what it used to be, so this works well as a […]

Revisiting My choice in animals for “Urbansteading”

This is a repost of one of my first articles. I’ve gotten a lot of questions as to why I’ve chosen these, so thought I’d repost it to get it out there again.   Living 5o feet from another family makes certain choices VERY important. Your TV volume, height of your fence, amount of clothing […]

DIY Bird Plucker

My Muscovy ducks have grown out to the appropriate size, so it’s time to start harvesting.  If you’ve seen my post,  Muscovy Ducks – Yard to Table, you saw just how long it took me to pluck one…over 45 minutes! Mind you, it was the first bird I’d plucked in over 20 years, but even […]