Adam

Pro Wrestling and Flyers fan

[Saagar Enjeti @esaagar]

Dan Crenshaw who lost his primary bid, defended his ability to buy defense stocks as a Congressman, and never had a private sector job has advice for families struggling with grocery bills

[Kevin → Plant Daddy @KevinEspiritu]

Every time egg prices spike, someone posts "just get backyard chickens" like it's a financial hack...except it's not. Your backyard eggs WILL cost you more than store-bought, probably for years (or forever). But chickens might still be one of the best things you ever add to your garden, and the eggs are the least interesting reason why...

Let's do the math first so we can stop pretending this is about saving money:

A basic coop and run for 4 to 6 hens runs $300 to $800 if you build it yourself, easily $1,000+ for a prefab. Mine was $12k but I'm stupid and MAXXED my coop. Chicks cost $3 to $5 each, but they don't lay for 5 to 6 months while you're still getting them through the chick -> pullet -> hen stage

Feed runs about $15 to $20 per 50-pound bag, and a small flock will go through one every month or so. Add bedding, feeders, waterers, a heat lamp for chicks, and the inevitable "I need a better coop" upgrade (you WILL fall prey to this), and your first year is somewhere between $700 and $1,500 before you see a single egg

A laying hen produces roughly 250 to 300 eggs per year in her first two years, then production drops. So your first-year cost per egg, even being generous, lands somewhere around $3 to $5 per egg. Store-bought eggs, even at the crazy prices we saw during the bird flu spike, topped out around $0.50 to $0.75 per egg, MAYBE $1.00

You will never, ever "save money" on eggs with backyard chickens, at least not in the way people mean when they say it

So why do I think more gardeners should have them?

Because chickens are one of the best tools a gardener can have, and almost nobody frames it that way

Start with pest control. A single chicken can eat 150+ bugs a day. Slugs, snails, beetle larvae, aphids, grasshoppers, ticks, earwigs, even small mice (as a flock, at least)

We spend so much energy in the gardening world talking about organic pest solutions, neem oil, diatomaceous earth, companion planting. A small flock of chickens patrolling your yard will outperform much of it. I've watched hens clear a slug-infested bed in an afternoon, scratching and hunting their way through every inch of it

You do need to manage them though. Chickens in a vegetable garden without supervision will eat your seedlings and scratch up your mulch. The move is controlled access: let them into beds AFTER harvest, or run them in a "chicken tractor" (a movable pen) across sections you want cleared. They eat the bugs, scratch up the top layer of soil, and deposit fertilizer as they go

Speaking of fertilizer...chicken manure is one of the highest-nitrogen organic fertilizers available. Fresh chicken manure runs roughly 1.1% nitrogen, 0.8% phosphorus, and 0.5% potassium. For comparison, cow manure is about 0.5% nitrogen, roughly half the concentration. One laying hen produces about 130 pounds of manure per year. That's a LOT of free fertilizer, BUT...

The catch: fresh chicken manure is too "hot" to apply directly. The nitrogen content is high enough to burn plant roots, and raw poultry manure can carry pathogens. You need to compost it first, usually for 3 to 6 months, mixing it with carbon-rich material like straw or wood chips

But here's what makes it all click for a garden: coop bedding (straw and wood shavings mixed with manure) IS your compost. The chicken coop becomes a compost system. Every time you clean the coop, you're building the next season's soil amendment. You stop buying bagged compost and bagged fertilizer. The chickens make it for you

We run a deep-litter method in our coops at the @epicgardening test garden. You layer carbon material on the coop floor, the chickens add nitrogen through their manure, they turn it by scratching, and the whole thing slowly composts in place. Every few months you shovel it out and it's nearly finished compost, ready for a final cure in a pile before going into beds. It's one of my favorite looped systems in the backyard

But to me, the biggest benefit is psychological: chickens give you a reason to go outside every single morning

Checking on the flock, filling water, collecting eggs, making sure nothing got into the run overnight. Takes about 5min. But those 5min pull you into your garden, and suddenly you're noticing your tomatoes need staking, there are aphids on your cabbage, etc. Chickens create a daily rhythm that makes you a better gardener, not because they do something magical, but because they make you show up

So no, backyard chickens won't save you money on eggs.

But they'll eat your pests, make your fertilizer, build your compost, improve your soil, get you outside every morning, and quietly turn you into a more attentive, more connected gardener...AND you'll get some of the most nutritious eggs you've ever tasted...

That's worth a lot more than $4 a dozen :)

[Joe McGrath @joe__touring]

As I’ve gotten older I understand why 99% of my friends stayed in Pennsylvania

PA smokes every other state in terms of walkable urbanism. It’s dotted with beautiful, cozy walkable towns like Doylestown, New Hope, Lititz, Lancaster, Germantown, Jim Thorpe.

One of the only states where you can afford a home on an acre or 2 and be within range of several major cities, beaches, mountains.

The people yearn for a Main Street town, especially in a country choking on decades of car-centric urban development and suburbia purgatory.

Combine all this with a reasonable cost of living, northeast corridor location, heavy tree cover, 4 seasons, etc there’s a lot to love about PA. I’m not surprised real estate has continued to appreciate while FL/TX/Sun Belt markets have contracted.

Not sure if I will ever move back but I hold my home state close to my heart, shout out Bucks County <3

[sherlock💡 @itskwasi]

“People who got the Covid vaccine are quiet now”

Yeah because we realized that arguing with people who don’t understand science is a waste of time &amp; energy lol. The vaccine &amp; other safety measures worked. What would WE be arguing about?

[Mike (not a) Rothschild @rothschildmd]

The overwhelming right wing sentiment is that COVID was an engineered bioweapon that was also harmless. Trump overreacted to it by shutting down the country, then engineered a drive to create a vaccine that was the real bioweapon that killed millions, and it's Joe Biden's fault.

[Jim Cornette @TheJimCornette]

What the fuck is the matter with these people? "Infection is the best protection"? Tell that to victims of the Black Plague. Is there no end to how far Republicans will go to try to discredit educated people cause they're jealous of those whose IQ is greater than their shoe size?

[Adam @arreitz6386]

@Raiderfrank65 He’ll probably sue them.

[Adam @arreitz6386]

@DanKnightly Not a chance.

[Jamie Bonkiewicz @JamieBonkiewicz]

Mitch McConnell has taken more medical leave than most mothers in America get for maternity leave.

[Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 @FmrRepMTG]

Sacrifice?? What the fuck are you talking about??

They did not willingly sacrifice themselves.

They were killed because of the war you, Trump, and the admin, are waging on behalf of a FOREIGN COUNTRY, Israel.

You mean their deaths fuel your bloodlust for a senseless war.

[Krystal Ball @krystalball]

@RubinReport @RoKhanna @StephenM What would you call this then?

[Adam @arreitz6386]

@DanKnightly Glad you’re ok, Dan.

[Adam @arreitz6386]

@Phlyers24 No.

[Adam @arreitz6386]

@esaagar Pissy Saagar is the best Saagar.

[Adam @arreitz6386]

@DarkSideOfRing @SamoaJoe @VICETV @TheJimCornette No joke - this is one of the few matches I’ve seen where I genuinely feared for the wrestlers’ lives. No idea if that’s a good or bad thing, guess it depends who you ask 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Jamie Bonkiewicz @JamieBonkiewicz]

MAGA 2021: “Don’t tell me to wear a mask.” “Don’t force a vaccine.” “Don’t tell me to stay home.”

MAGA 2026: “Just follow orders.” “Have your papers ready.” “Comply. Don’t die.”

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Tim Dillon: “We can’t handle people chanting death to America? I take more shit than that in comments. This is crazy. Can you imagine your kid dies in Iran and you’re telling someone about it: yeah, it was a tough loss, but they were chanting death to America. We had to show them you can’t do that. I know my kid’s dead, but you know, no more chanting”

[Renzo™ @fwrenzo1]

I miss when "The News" was just a guy in a suit telling you what happened, instead of a 24 hour panic machine designed to make you hate your neighbor so you don't notice your rent went up 30%.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

A reminder: During COVID-19, the janitors, nurses, cleaning crews, grocery and food workers saved us with their hard, often invisible labor NOT the CEOs and billionaires.

[FireFighterDev @fire_starter457]

“Socialism is the Republican word for anything that helps the people.”

~Harry Truman