Chickens · Compost · Soil · Greenhouse · Harvest

Turn your backyard into a food-generating system.

Backyard Food Factory connects raising chickens with gardening: producing protein and vegetables while managing waste and improving your soil. It's the art (and science) of self-reliance, and it works in a backyard, on a patio, or on a balcony.

See how the flywheel works About the book
  • Raising chickens
  • Composting waste
  • Improving soil
  • Greenhouse gardening
  • Protein & vegetables
Backyard Food Factory logo showing the loop from chicken to egg to greenhouse to compost
The system

One loop. Five stages. Every output feeds the next.

A factory turns inputs into outputs. A backyard food factory does the same thing, except the outputs loop back around and become the inputs. That's the flywheel: the longer it runs, the less you buy and the more you harvest.

The Backyard Food Factory flywheel: Raising Chickens leads to Composting Waste, to Improving Soil, to Greenhouse Gardening, to Protein and Vegetables, and back to Raising Chickens
  1. 1
    Raising chickensEggs and meat for the table, plus a steady supply of nitrogen-rich manure and used bedding.
  2. 2
    Composting wasteCoop litter, kitchen scraps, leaves, and yard waste break down into finished compost instead of leaving in a bin.
  3. 3
    Improving soilCompost feeds soil life, builds structure, and holds water, so your beds get better every year instead of wearing out.
  4. 4
    Greenhouse gardeningLiving soil plus a protected growing space means earlier starts, later harvests, and more food per square foot.
  5. 5
    Protein and vegetablesEggs from the coop, vegetables from the beds. Trimmings, bolted greens, and scraps go back to the flock, and the loop starts again.

Read the full flywheel breakdown

Why "factory"?

A factory is designed. A backyard usually isn't.

Most yards run in a straight line: fertility arrives in a bag, waste leaves in a bin, and the ground gets a little more tired every season. A food factory is laid out so that nothing leaves.

🔄

Every output is an input

Manure becomes compost. Compost becomes soil. Soil becomes food. Scraps become feed. The "waste" from one stage is the raw material for the next.

📏

Small space, big output

Vertical growing, succession planting, season extension, and raised beds pull far more food out of the same footprint than a lawn and a couple of tomato plants.

🗺

Layout does half the work

Where the coop sits relative to the compost, and where the compost sits relative to the beds, decides how much hauling you do. Put the stages next to each other.

🌱

Works with what you have

A full yard is great. A patio with a few containers and a worm bin runs the same loop at a smaller scale. The principle doesn't change, only the size.

Live from the yard

Watch the factory run

Erik streams from the coop, the compost bays, and the greenhouse on the Backyard Food Factory YouTube channel. When a stream is on, it plays right here.

Checking the channel…
Coming soon Cover of Backyard Food Factory: The Art (and Science) of Growing and Producing Your Own Food at Home, by Erik Brassell
The book

Backyard Food Factory: The Art (and Science) of Self-Reliance

A practical guide to transforming your backyard (or balcony, or patio) into a productive food-generating system. It isn't about planting a few tomatoes. It's the whole system, from soil biology to the pantry shelf.

  1. 1
    The Science of GrowingSoil testing, nutrient cycles, integrated pest management, propagation and seed saving, hydroponics.
  2. 2
    The Art of GardeningDesign and layout, choosing plants for your climate, planting, pruning, and harvesting.
  3. 3
    Food Preservation and ProcessingCanning, freezing, drying, and fermenting, and the science behind doing each one safely.
  4. 4
    The Self-Reliance AspectFood security, fresh organic produce, lower environmental impact, and community through sharing and bartering.
  5. 5
    Factory Design and OptimizationSpace optimization, vertical gardening, season extension, and closed-loop systems.
See what's inside
Guides

Start with one stage. The rest follows.

Practical, seasonal, and written from the yard. Each guide ties back to a stage of the flywheel.

Stage 3 · Improving soil
Perennials

Plan an Edible Landscape

Replace lawn and ornamentals with perennials that produce every year: asparagus, berries, herbs, fruit and nut trees. Plant once, harvest for decades.

Read the guide →
Layout

A working layout

This is the plan view of a real backyard food factory. Notice that every arrow is short: the coop is next to the compost, the compost is next to the beds and greenhouse, and the kitchen is a few steps from all of it.

A working Backyard Food Factory layout Plan view: coop and run on the left with the compost bays right beside them, a pond and raised beds in the middle, a greenhouse on the right, fruit trees along the top, and the kitchen along the bottom. Arrows show manure to compost, browns to compost, compost to beds and greenhouse, harvest to the kitchen, and scraps back to the coop. PIGEON LOFT SHED SHED FRUIT TREES (edible landscape) RUN COOP deep litter · nest boxes HYDROPONIC POND LEAF PILE (browns) FILL COOKING DONE COMPOST BAYS BEDS BEDS BEDS GREENHOUSE KITCHEN & PANTRY eggs · vegetables · preserves manure compost compost harvest harvest scraps + greens back to the flock
  • Coop and runDeep litter floor, external-access nest boxes, droppings boards under the roosts. Manure and used bedding go straight to the compost bays.
  • Three compost baysOne filling, one cooking, one finished. Coop litter, kitchen scraps, leaves, and yard waste all land here.
  • Greenhouse and raised bedsFinished compost is top-dressed onto the beds. The greenhouse extends the season on both ends.
  • Hydroponic pondA water garden for floating greens and extra growing space, with nutrient-rich water changes going to the beds.
  • Kitchen and pantryEggs, vegetables, and preserves come in. Scraps, trimmings, and spent plants go back out to the flock.
Erik's original notebook sketch of the Backyard Food Factory flywheel

Where it started: the flywheel, sketched in a notebook.

About

Written by a chick'n farmer, not a marketing department.

Backyard Food Factory is Erik Brassell's notebook, opened up. Erik keeps chickens, composts everything the yard and kitchen produce, and grows food in a backyard greenhouse. Somewhere along the way the pieces started feeding each other, and the flywheel on this page is the result.

The site, and the book, exist to show the system as a whole: what goes in, what comes out, and the science behind why each stage works. Less theory, more "here's what happened in my yard."

"Chickens → composting → fertile soil → gardening. Protein and vegetables while managing waste and improving the soil."

More about Erik and the project