Steps To Veggie

Hi Everyone,

Like I said in the beginning of this blog, one of my goals in BTB is to become vegetarian. It takes a pretty big effort to change from being a meat eater to being vegetarian, so I decided to break the process into a couple of parts. Since it is hard to not eat meat in a meat eating family, I decided that my first step would be to eat veggie when I could make my own food choices, such as at school or when I eat out. This takes away the problem of forcing my family to eat veggie with me. I will try this for two weeks and see how it works out. Wish me luck!

-Chicken Boy

Blu Home

    Hey everyone, so a while ago, I was looking at these really cool pre built modular homes called Blu Homes. They are built with an eco friendly state of mind and are delivered directly to your location and assembled on site. Not to mention, they also have a very modern look. Some eco friendly functions they have are listed here http://www.bluhomes.com/green/. These homes are so cool! I want to have one. Check the site out.

www.bluhomes.com

-Chicken Boy

Raise Bed Garden

    Today the seeds I planted directly in the raised bed garden sprouted! Here are the photos. (Sunflower, lettuce, pumpkin)

   

First Sprout !!!

    I woke up in the morning and found a little green shoot sticking out of the soil. It was my first sprout! finally after four days of waiting, success! I hope it keeps on growing and that the other seeds follow. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

-Chicken Boy

Tomato Sprout

Happy Fourth Of July !!!

Eco Policy #1

This will be the first eco friendly policy for my house. As you know, I have a compost bin in the backyard. The rule will be to throw all organic waste from the kitchen and yard into the pile.

Fun :)

- Chicken Boy

Quick Tour of My Backyard

    Hey everyone, here's a quick tour of my backyard.

Say hi to my doggy:) He's being a little crankbutt today and decided not to smile for me.







Here's my peach tree. It's pretty small, but at least there's some awesome fruit!

Then there's my female cherry tree. It's Giant! but of course there hasn't been a single fruit so far. Maybe I'll try some of that compost as fertilizer when it's ready.

Here's my male cherry tree.

Here's my apple tree. It makes up for the quantity of apples it produces, with quality. They're the best apples I've ever tasted.

 Still Ripening! CAN'T WAIT.

Here is my loquat tree (枇杷树 pi2pa2shu4). It is an exotic asian fruit tree producing apricot like fruits.  They are also prized for their ornamental leaves. Got the tree from my friend. Thank You !:)

 Then comes my apricot tree. Still small so no fruit yet!

 Then comes the favorite part of the yard, the chicken coop.

Let me introduce you to the girl's ( hehe sorry haven't named all of them yet) Miss gravy is feeling extremely showy today so she decided to stand on the roosting pole while I took the picture.

 Then comes my compost pile. I put table scraps and lawn clippings in there. Then it decomposes and turns into a great fertilizer for my plants.

 My vegetable seeds I just sowed. Some
directly in the raised bed, some in cups.
They should start to sprout this week.

 Hope everything works out fine :)

- Chicken Boy

First Post

    Hi, this is my first blog post. This blog, Back To Basics will track my journey to self sufficiency (hopefully eventually) in a suburban environment. We start this trek with my mom's favorite phrase, "Back To Basics" aka BTB. It started out when my mom would scold me for believing all those things that the media feeds us teens these days. To get straight A's, I needed the most fashionable backpack and coolest notebook. To have friends, I needed the most expensive clothing and the Iphone 4G. All these things were met by one phrase "Back To Basics". It says that some determination, faith in God, and some good old fashion elbow grease could fix up anything. After thinking it through, I decided that BTB really made sense. We, the human race have survived for so long without all these materialistic things. We must have done something right before. Why interrupt this and change our ways, risking the possibility of failure? So I've taken BTB a step further. My goal is to get as close to the definition of basic as possible. As Merriam Webster puts it: basic- of, relating to, or forming the base or essence. I see this as going to the root of how humans have lived since the beginning; growing their own food and living a life that effects the earth as little as possible. In order to achieve this, I will need to go down and dirty working hard in my backyard and home. 


What I Get to Start With:
- An average suburban home with a backyard and front yard
- Four Chickens in a backyard coop
- One empty raised bed garden
- And some fruit trees bearing minimal fruit: one apple tree, two cherry trees, a peach tree, an   apricot tree, and a loquat tree（枇杷)
- Newly started compost pile


My Goals:
- Convince parents to let me become vegan
- Live off the grid (distant future)
- Produce all of my own food ( also distant future)
- Be as eco friendly as possible


I will try to achieve these goals by growing my own garden and seeing what other livestock I can add to my backyard. In addition, I will be adding a new eco friendly policy to house. :) Woooooo done with my first post.


Oh btw my name on this blog will be Chicken Boy.


-Chicken Boy.