SIrish Ethiopian Friendship Association

Backyard farming is the art and science of producing edible food stuffs from your own backyard. The term applies to urban and suburban food production, typically by folks living on a standard sized city lot.

The definition of backyard farming is fairly loose as it can look very different from location to location

The method the farmers use who  we have helped in Awassa is called “Chicken and Vegetable”. This simple ‘Lazy Man’ method uses the chickens to create compost and fertilizer.

Season by season the poultry area and the vegetable area are switched, vegetable area is usually larger.

The start of the process is known as “Chicken-Powered Composting”. Organic waste of many sorts is piled, as it becomes biologically active crickets, worms, microbes the birds scratch and feed, which accelerates and enriches the compost.

Chicken offal can usefully be added. The next season compost is distributed or the chicken-compost space is taken over by the veggies.