17 Crops You Plant Once to Feed Your Flock for a Whole Year

Grow your own chicken feed and stop hauling bags home — these are 17 crops you plant ONCE that feed your flock free for a whole year. Plants that feed chickens, no feed store required. These are perennial and self-seeding chicken forage crops the Amish leaned on long before there was a feed store to drive to: field peas, amaranth, sunflowers, chicory, alfalfa, white clover, perennial kale, stinging nettle, comfrey, currants, elderberry, sea buckthorn, autumn olive (the one several states have made illegal to plant), Siberian pea shrub, sunchokes, hazelnut, and the king of them all — the mulberry. In this video I count down all 17, from the field peas at number seventeen up to the one tree that out-feeds every other crop on this list combined. Each one you plant a single time: it either lives for years or drops its own seed and comes back on its own. No tilling, no replanting, no weekly trip to the store. Grain, greens, and protein — what a hen needs to live and lay — straight off the land. I'll show you which crop is the legal twin of the banned one, which single plant to put in first if you only plant one thing, and how to feed a flock in January with nothing in a bag. Now the honest part, because you earned it: none of this is instant. The trees and shrubs take two to three years to really start carrying, that first season is real work, and on the hardest winter days you'll still carry out a little feed. The land grows everything but calcium — a laying hen still needs crushed oyster shell or her own baked, crushed eggshells for a strong shell, and that costs a few dollars a year. I won't pretend a plant does more than it does. But put even five of these seventeen in the ground and watch what happens to the bag you drag home every week. My name is Levi. My wife Sarah and I work a small Amish farm — the same ground my grandfather worked before me, the man who planted the two mulberries I've never once regretted. These old ways need somewhere to live after I'm gone, and that's the only payment I'll ever ask: if this helped, subscribe and stay close. Drop a comment and tell me which of the seventeen you're planting first — and what a bag of feed costs you right now where you live. I read every single one. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 The 17 plant-once crops 1:39 No. 17 - Field Peas 2:13 No. 16 - Amaranth 2:44 No. 15 - Sunflowers 3:07 No. 14 - Chicory 3:35 No. 13 - Alfalfa 4:08 No. 12 - White Clover 4:52 No. 11 - Perennial Kale 5:12 No. 10 - Stinging Nettle 5:34 No. 9 - Comfrey 5:56 No. 8 - Currants & Gooseberries 6:25 No. 7 - Elderberry 6:44 No. 6 - Sea Buckthorn 7:27 No. 5 - Autumn Olive (the BANNED one) 8:15 No. 4 - Siberian Pea Shrub 8:37 No. 3 - Sunchokes 9:02 No. 2 - Hazelnut 9:32 No. 1 - The Mulberry (the king) 10:11 The honest reckoning 10:54 Start with three + what's next ▶ WATCH NEXT — These 17 are the WHAT to plant. If you want the HOW — how to stack them in layers so the chickens harvest every one themselves on half an acre — I laid that whole system out in my food forest video. Watch that one next; it ties every crop on this list together. 🪱 COMING SOON — the bug bin: a single barrel that grows a pound of live protein a day out of nothing but kitchen scraps. Subscribe so you don't miss it. 🔔 Subscribe to The Amish Harvest for plain-spoken, self-sufficient homesteading — feeding your flock and your family off the land you already have. Old ways. Real harvests. And remember — the people who fed this country with their own two hands knew things about the soil we are only just beginning to remember. #ChickenFeed #BackyardChickens #Homesteading #SelfSufficiency #Permaculture #FreeChickenFeed #ChickenForageGarden #PlantsThatFeedChickens #GrowYourOwnChickenFeed #PerennialChickenFeed #TheAmishHarvest #SelfSufficientChickens #PermacultureChickens #Mulberry #AmishHomesteading