Our buff orpington

I recently sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper to determine how much our home-grown chicken eggs are costing us up here in Alaska. Obviously, we are not keeping laying hens for economic reasons, but for other reasons including compost, amusement, and knowing where our food comes from. With all this in mind however, I thought I’d go into detail about the economic breakdown of our chicken operation:

Monthly Costs:

Monthly Value of Eggs

Eggs for 6 young chickens per month: 5/day x 30 = 150 eggs

Price for a dozen eggs: $2/dozen

Total value of eggs: $25 dollars

With all that said, in winter we’re paying an extra $30/month for eggs. In the summer, with the light and heat lamp off, we’re paying an extra $7 dollars a month for eggs. If we sold a dozen eggs a week for $4/dozen, we’re still looking at paying another $14 dollars a month for eggs. Drawn out over a year, factoring not using a heat lamp or 100w bulb for six months of the year, we are paying approx. $200 extra a year for our eggs. If we sold a dozen eggs a week, we’d still be paying $120 extra a year.

Again, keeping chickens is about more than mere economics. We get great compost, infinite amusement, a good way to get rid of kitchen scraps, and delicious eggs. More importantly, we feel a greater connection to our food and to the earth. However, for the potential Alaskan chicken-keeper, these economic considerations might be good information to have.

While I’m not sure what I think about the Occupy Wall Street movement, I was reading an article the other day about how Americans have recently increased their spending by using their savings. This, (among  many other articles) constantly reminds me of an overarching question: Is our global economy too far gone to save? In some ways, it is the subtext of our time. With this in mind, I did some rudimentary math and created the following graphic. Feel free to steal, borrow, and share!

click to view a larger image

This is a fascinating from Foreign Policy magazine article about “shadow economies,” an idea that I discussed in my “How to Save the World” post.

Friday was the last day of moose season, and while I never got the big bull I was hoping for ( I did get a 1/3 of a moose I helped butcher and haul out of the swamp earlier this year), I spent the evening in the beauty of the mountains. The end of moose season is such a bittersweet time. In the ebb and flow of the year, that last crisp day of September is sort of admission that winter will soon be here.

Below are a few pictures:

I posted a quick tutorial on how to make your own sauerkraut. Enjoy!

After about a month of working evenings and spare time, I’ve completed the chicken coop of my dreams. It’s eight by twelve feet of glorious chicken accomodations (and storage space). I wrote a whole page/tutorial about the process that you can find here. 

The (mostly) finished coop and happy home of six laying hens!

We just got back from a fun but exhausting halibut fishing weekend. Our yearly hunting/gathering begins every Memorial Day weekend when my wife’s extended family, and about half of the congregation, travels 5 hours south and spends the weekend camping on the beach and fishing for halibut. We fish from 12ft zodiacs, which can be fairly thrilling when the waves are up. Although all of the fish were small this year, we did well and came home with a good portion of halibut meat. The weather was good, and my oldest son went out on the boat for the first time. He was pretty impressed, though he’s still too young to put up a halibut.

Tonight: beer-battered halibut!

All the halibut we caught this weekend were small, but still good eating!

These are the boats we fish from. We usually put four people in a boat. With eight halibut, there's not a lot of room when we come back!

The sunset at 11:30pm. I love Alaska.

Next up: dipnetting for salmon in a couple of weeks!

Just thought I’d let everyone know my side project, the Alaska Shared Gardens Initiative, has been expanded to include Fairbanks, Matsu,  and the Kenai Peninsula. Happy gardening!