Food Independence on a Shoestring: Part 8 and some chickens

To go on with the topic of gardening, we introduce the subject of chickens.   This is like introducing the topic of sheep by talking about wolves, but predator/prey relationships have more to do with health and fertility than we often think.On our new homestead, where we have from the very first begun converting sunlight into food with our beautiful dairy animal, and begun the process of harvesting sunlight in the form of human-food vegetable species with some tomatoes and greens, we're about to look at some companion species animals to further our sunlight harvest, and we need to know what they're good at.That chickens lay eggs is a minor point.  We love eggs as well as the next person, but