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Hi Christine, firstly the sunken greenhouse route because we’re on a hill, very exposed, with high winds and a poly tunnel wouldn’t last long. Sunken because the ground temperature is slightly higher and more stable two or three feet down and this allows us to grow more exotic fruit and veg, once I can decide what!
Our chickens are all rescues, from ex battery to rejects but I have pure bred bantams at home which is elsewhere. Noise isn’t a problem here but for you, don’t get a cockerel! My bantams produce small eggs, about half the size of a medium chicken egg. If you want all round laying then hybrids are usually better. Ex batts are very friendly and if handled from the start are amenable to being carried around. If you grow lots of brassicas they’ll love the leaves, and the cabbage white caterpillars! Bigger chickens love to scratch around so you would need to protect your beds – ours regularly turn up potatoes! We only protect young growth from them as it isn’t commercial so we don’t care if they’ve taken chunks out of leaves! The photo is one of my bantams – about the size of a wood pigeon, but tamer!
Charles – humidity concern is because the land is greensand over clay so we’ve intercepted the subsurface drainage (we didn’t know we were on clay as neighbours aren’t so appears that it’s just a lens and we hadn’t expected to reach a partial water table so high) . Although we’ve put in French drains on the up slopes some water is still seeping through.
Most greenhouses here only get half sun here though, at azimuth it won’t be hitting the back so that’s a heat loss zone which we’ve eliminated. Light loss is important but I think that we’ll have enough reflection from the white panels.
The attached drawing was the basis for our greenhouse. Our glass had to be far steeper because of the much lower sun path here in UK but this was designed for Bolivia.
Melons, hadn’t thought of them, thank you! We had planned sweet potatoes outside against a sun trap wall but I’ll see if there’s sufficient space, and depth inside. I’ll look for Malabar spinach. We have some of your books which are important for our research.
You’ll be diversifying into seeds next!