ABOUT GUINEA HEN GARDEN

Welcome to Guinea Hen Garden, our 2-acre intensive farm producing herbs, eggs, and honey for the southeast Pennsylvania region. With a chicken house for up to 80 chickens, a winter (unheated) greenhouse, beehives, summer herb and vegetable gardens, an orchard and a sheep pasture, we are developing an integrated small farm to promote health in all aspects of the operation. By working together, we all get healthy.

For example, the bees help pollinate herbs, flowers, trees, and vegetables. The herbs help promote disease-resistance in the bees. This kind of synergy goes on at every level. The sheep crop the grass and their droppings fertilize the soil. The soil produces better grass that nourishes the chickens and they in turn produce healthier eggs.

The winter greenhouse provides us with hardy vegetables all winter and keeps a supply of fresh herbs on hand throughout the winter and into the spring.

The chicken manure improves the soil in the gardens, and we feed all the extra herbs and vegetables to the chickens year-around.
The plants and animals provide us with healthy good eating and the work we do to care for them gives us the physical work-out we need.

And what about the guinea hens?

They’re the key: they roam around the place, eat ticks and defend us from the scourge of Lyme Disease which is what motivated us in the first place. Our family had serious bouts of Lyme Disease; what we learned in the healing process is that really good health is the best defense against Lyme Disease. Needless to say, this applies to all disease. So if we’re going to get out there and work in the garden, we need the guineas.