[WallShadow]

Imagine what the lucky fellow with an extensive herb garden would be able to barter for! Everybody knows that rat kabob always can use a little more garlic!

Graebarde, I like your concepts, except possibly for the worms--I'd use the worms to make more worms, then share out the excess to allies for them to have vermicompost populations. Worms as food stock is viable, but I see them as a minor component, at least until you have the breeding mass rolling.

Earthworms are your friends! So are bees and preying mantises! Anybody know anything about raising bees or mantises?

Another plus for free-ranging chickens (and ducks, and geese, and turkeys...) is vermin control--they eat quite a few bugs each day, converting those hard little roach carapaces into eggs and muscle mass. My mother-in-law lives in South Jersey, where they had a program that gave residents mating pairs of guinea hens, who eat a sizeable proportion of their own body weight in ticks each day. This put a big hole in the local tick population, reducing the chance of lyme disease greatly.