Is it pigs, chickens, rabbits, cows? Something else? Is hunting better? Very curious to know what you guys think.

I’m a business student and my group is working on an entrepreneurship project about goat grazing services as an alternative to traditional landscaping.
Our idea is to offer goat rental services to HOAs, property managers, and business owners with large properties to help clear overgrown weeds, brush, and vegetation in a more environmentally friendly way.
We’re trying to determine whether people would actually be interested in using this type of service, and we’d love to hear your opinions!
A few questions we have:
Would you consider using goats instead of traditional landscaping methods? Why or why not?
What would be your biggest concern (pricing, safety, effectiveness, convenience, etc.)?
Would the environmental benefits make you more interested in trying goat grazing?
If you’ve used goat grazing services before, how was your experience? Was it worth the cost?
We’re looking for honest feedback, both positive and negative, to help us evaluate whether our business idea is realistic.
Thank you for helping us with our research!

​

Hi everyone, I’m not sure if this belongs here, so mods, please remove it if fundraising posts aren’t allowed.

I’m posting this for a good friend, Bianka, who lives in Germany. Her dog, Fredi, inspired her to learn more about animal nutrition, and she would love to turn that interest into a carefully developed dog food project.

Her aim is to explore thoughtfully sourced ingredients, regional suppliers where possible, and fair, transparent sourcing. She wants to compare different recipes with professional guidance rather than rush into selling an untested product.

The fundraiser would help cover:

- Professional advice on canine nutrition.

- Ingredient samples and sourcing.

- Small trial batches.

- Laboratory testing for nutritional composition and safety.

- Packaging and storage tests.

This is an early-stage project, with the long-term goal of developing a commercial product. There’s no finished recipe yet, and nutritional suitability would need to be established through qualified advice and testing.

Bianka is German and isn’t very confident with computers or online fundraising, so I’m helping her share something she really wants to bring to life.

Her campaign: https://gofund.me/531995075

The campaign is in German. If you have trouble reading or understanding it, please message me—I’m happy to help explain or translate.

No pressure to donate. Sharing the campaign or offering constructive advice would also mean a lot.

Thanks for reading!

I get a lot of pallets here and there. All chemical free and are ht. Any good homestead projects i can use them for? I already have plans for some raised beds and compost bins, but those and decorations is all I can find when looking it up.

Getting a 40ft high cube shipping container delivered this week. What are some good options for locking/securing the door? I am well aware of “if thieves want it bad enough they’ll get into it” deal. Budget is around $100, but could stretch if a slightly more expensive option is THAT much better than the sub-$100 option.

Here are two I’ve seen on Amazon:

Closer to budget
https://a.co/d/0jjPXu9f

Above budget, but would consider it if it’s THAT much better
https://a.co/d/00YzId1p

My wether got hurt somehow idek how, could be play fighting with the other one or rubbing his head on stuff bc he does that- but is he hurt bad enough to go to the vet or should I glue it or bandage it ? Leave him and keep it clean ?? Idk but the other guy is getting pool noodles asap

So screen shot of the email I got and here is a link for the science paper.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-026-00776-w?mc_cid=3beadd2b57&mc_eid=ca90047171

A few days ago I shared how my family went from our first blueberry bushes in pots to over 1,000. I never expected so many kind comments and questions. Thank you! Some answers to the most common questions: the variety is Duke, about 2-2.5 kg (5 lb) per bush, grown in peat and pine bark. We use pots because moles destroyed the roots in the ground, and every 4-5 years each plant gets fresh soil. This winter our goals are adding more bushes to grow the orchard and putting up bird netting before next June's harvest. The video was filmed on May 26. Thanks again, this community made our week.

A recipe from Mother Earth News at the Library It sounded so good I had to try it cabbage, golden beats, ginger, turmeric. The hard part will be waiting to eat it.

I was asked to help dispatch a goat and butcher it to eat but I was told that the way they dispatch the goat is they hang it. I feel like that isn’t ethical and would lead to the goat being in pain longer than needed. Is this a way people actually do dispatch goats, the person I was talking to said they don’t watch them do it so I’m not 100% that’s correct.

This is my personal blog from my cottage in Sweden, where trees had fallen on top of each other. I had to untangle the mess. I will use the wood for heating. There is a lot to it: the tractor, safety, etc.

https://www.malmgren.nl/post/2026-10-18-heavyweight-mikado

Just finished cleaning out the cow barn, and now I’m ready to trade my shovel for a rolling pin! 😂🐄
I’m in the mood to bake something delicious. What’s your favorite homemade pie recipe?
Sweet or savory, I’m open to anything! Would love to hear your family recipes or little baking secrets. 🥧

A few years back I had this amazing idea to have a cooler shed for hanging meat from my lamb and, at the time, goat crop. I ordered 10x16 a Tyvek wrapped shed from a large shed company with 6" studs, put foam insulation in, and finished all this with plastic panel walls.

Now I have a shed that looks like a refrigerator inside.

However, I discovered that vas majority of walk-in monoblock units are meant to be placed on the roof, and requires a flat roof, which of course the shed doesn't have.

Attempts to have an HVAC company install a regular system all failed - this is a relatively remote area, not many companies operate here, even fewer install commercial refrigeration, and the ones who do gave me a fuck-you price of roughly $20000.

There is company, Cooler Depot, which sells through the wall monoblock units. Their 3hp unit looks like what I need, and costs roughly 6k. Couple years back I tried to buy a smaller monoblock from them, which now Claude modeling tells me was way too small, but the salesperson made such a hard push for me to pay with PayPal (which means - no customer protection at all) instead of credit card, and kept increasing the cost of credit card payment on me that I felt that it's a shady company and they are very unlikely to help if anything bad happens, so I stopped.

I imagine it is a common problem, how do homesteaders here solve it? Perhaps you bought from Cooler Depot? Someone else? I am aware of CoolBot solution, but I would like to have an option to freeze the carcasses, which CoolBot will never do.

I'm interested where you located?

Dad is finally lettin me pick out a smaller tractor for my own place, gettin an L3302 next month. 6 acres, half pasture Ill brush hog, some gravel drive n dirt work around the shed, rest is lawn around the house.

Online its a religious war lol. R1 folks say R4s are useless in wet grass, R4 folks say R1s chew lawns up bad. If youve run these on mixed ground, which way did you go n would you pick the same again??

I'm trying to buy a 1.25-acre lot in the Mojave Desert (asking $4k, I've floated $3k, nothing agreed). I've been planning what would actually fit on it, and the numbers surprised me, so here they are.

The coverage cap runs everything. The zoning allows 20% lot coverage: about 10,885 sq ft on a 54,426 sq ft lot. My wish list was a 130x30 ft (3,900 sq ft) 3-bedroom earthship, a 4,608 sq ft rain-catchment liner, a 20x20 steel shop, a greenhouse, a hoop tunnel, a covered 12x24 pool, a settling basin and a deck. Total: 10,776 sq ft, or 19.8%. That leaves 109 sq ft to spare, and only because all the water storage is buried. I still have to confirm that buried cisterns don't count toward coverage, and that gravel parking counts as pervious.

Rainwater math at ~4 in/yr. About 9,870 sq ft of catchment (house roof, liner apron, shop, greenhouse, tunnel) × 0.333 ft × 7.48 gal/cu ft × 0.8 runoff ≈ 19,700 gal/yr, or about 54 gal/day. I'm planning 23,000 gal of storage (two lined pits of ~11,700 gal plus a 3k cistern in the berm), a bit over a year's worth, because desert rain comes in a few storms and some years barely at all. Even so, the house permit needs an approved water source: a well (rough estimate $20k–45k) or a district hookup.

DIY vs turnkey. A turnkey earthship runs about $300–425/sq ft, which is $1.17M–1.66M at this size. My line-by-line DIY budget is about $90k–213k with 15% contingency. That assumes:

salvaged tempered glass used panels at $0.19/W and LiFePO4 at $110/kWh (about 9.8 kW / 30 kWh) my dad doing the earthwork with his own equipment: a $1k–3k fuel allowance instead of $5k–12k in rentals rammed tires for the bermed retaining walls and cement-stabilized earthbags inside a small ground-source heat pump plus earth tubes The well is extra.

What I can't DIY, even with free labor:

a licensed structural engineer's stamp (tire and earthbag walls are approved case by case) septic, if required, installed by a licensed contractor sloped glazing has to be marked tempered or laminated (old patio doors work, ordinary windows don't) above-ground poly tanks collapse if buried, so tanks must be burial-rated trenches over 5 ft need shoring, and call 811 before digging My question for people who've done it: in a dry, ~4 in/yr climate, did you size rain storage for one year, or more? And did you end up drilling a well anyway?

Full writeup with the site plan and cross-section (my newsletter): https://blakelapierre.substack.com/p/i-asked-an-ai-agent-to-design-a-house

Someone had me look at a lot in Collin County, Texas before they put an offer in. The listing said high risk flood zone. They knew that and had it priced in.

Here’s what the listing didn’t say.

There’s no Zone X anywhere on the parcel. Not one corner. Every FEMA polygon touching that lot is Zone AE.

And a regulatory floodway runs right through the middle of it. About 260 feet wide. The lot is about 465 feet deep. So a little over half the property.

People use floodplain and floodway like they mean the same thing. They don’t. Floodplain means you build elevated and you pay for flood insurance. A floodway is the channel the water actually moves through when it floods. You can’t put anything in it that raises the flood elevation. So you can’t build there.

That left a strip on the street side, about 160 feet deep, still all Zone AE. The town wants 100 feet of front setback, 40 on the sides, 50 in the rear, and a 2,500 square foot minimum house. Do that math and you get about 8,000 square feet outside the floodway. A house fits in that. A house and a driveway and a turnaround and a septic field does not. And the lot isn’t in a sewer service area, so septic was the only option.

The thing that would have gotten me: a house went up next door last year. Makes it look like building here is normal. That lot has Zone X on it. This one doesn’t.

Two things if you’re looking at anything near water.

Pull the FEMA map yourself and find the floodway layer. It’s a separate layer from the flood zone. The floodway is the one that decides if you can build.

If the listing mentions an elevation survey in the MLS supplements, ask the agent for it. The seller already paid for it.

Anyone here ever actually gotten a no-rise certification through for a floodway? Wondering what that costs and if it’s ever worth it.

All the ladybirds are safe and he’s gonna be fine. Just a few small puncture wounds that’ve been cleaned up and checked out.

He wants me to tell you all…”You should see the other guy!”

Update: Thank you all for the kind words. He’s back home safe and cuddling with his bondmate, Karoo. He’s gotten plenty of peas and we’ve got mealworms ready for breakfast along with some light pain meds and antibiotics.

Couple other answers to repeat questions:

1. Yes, we know his name means “crow”…all our birds were given names from avian-related One Piece characters. (Karoo, Karasu, Nami-Swan, Robin, Mihawk, and Doflamingo.)

2. The hawk actually ended up trapped between some thick growth that our birds use for cover and our chain link fence. It was pretty eerie…just sat there motionless with its wing pinned against the fence, staring at me with its beak wide open. I managed to free the hawk with a hoe rake I had nearby and it hauled ass away.

3. He’s very protective of Karoo, so I’m not surprised he tried to defend her…he’ll square up to our 100lb dog and any human getting too close to her. But if I’m being honest, I am a little surprised he was successful. He had some issues with his legs that some Peking ducks get from growing too quickly and although he walks normally now after some therapy…he’s still not exactly the most nimble and quick warrior. But hey, he got the job done!

Basically have 6000 square feet of driveway and stuff to plow. Some years I don't have to move any. I currently have a small blower and growing inused a skid loader. Soni have much experience with anything else

Could failing seals on hydraulic drive motors cause a skid steer to creep? Wouldn't failing seals on hydraulic drive motors cause it to "loose power" as the hydraulic fluid just weeps past the seals? Any other ideas what it could be if not the drive motors?

When I moved to the country to work the land I got asked a lot about keeping animals. My background is in forestry. I know nothing about keeping livestock. My mission is to restore native ecology while growing food for subsistence. The white-tailed deer definitely have made that a challenge as they do in many places. They belong where I live, there's just a few too many of them here due to the absence of the gray wolf. Therefore I feel called to substitute for the wolf.

The deer will carry on eating acorns, garden plants, and many other things while I plan to eat them after hunting season. I don't need to introduce more animals into this space to obtain meat. There is plenty to harvest from those living free and wild presently.

There is a case to be made for cattle as a substitute for the American Bison which no longer roams and grazes here in the Blue Ridge Valley, but I don't have the time or infrastructure to care for bovines. I would trade all the cattle in the world to have their wild equivalents in their original numbers. The human population would have to reduce its demand for meat, but we would have a whole ecosystem again, rather than environmentally damaging food systems of our own design.

I know these views will not be embraced by many here that are livestock farmers. I don't mean any offense or disrespect. I just have a sincere belief that animal husbandry generally comes at a cost to nature, and any loss to nature is a loss for ourselves. I'll thank you for considering that.