The Chicken Revolution Rap

Residents in Salem, a town just an hour up the I-5 corridor from here, are fighting for their right to keep backyard chickens. Here in my town, the city council just discussed increasing the flock size on urban lots from the three that the law currently allows (as most chicken owners know, there's virtually no way to keep only three chickens - what if one dies, you can't just get one baby chicken and introduce it, they're flock animals for pete's sake!). This rap video pokes some fun at the more outlandish concerns that people have about urban chickens (leading to meth labs in the neighborhood? really people!).



Strangely, folks are so concerned about harmless chickens. Yet did you know that dogs bit nearly 2% of the U.S. population - more than 4.7 million people annually? That over 800,000 of those bites are serious enough to require medical attention? That 1,000 people A DAY are treated in Emergency rooms for dog bites? And about 25 - 35 a year are FATAL? That most of the victims are children, half of whom are bitten in the face? That dog bite losses exceed $1 billion per year with over $300 million paid by homeowner's insurance?

So after reading all of that, how on earth residents can be opposed to chickens amazes me! Quieter than a dog, less destructive than a cat, and safer to humans and other animals than either! Now don't get me wrong, I'm a dog owner and a cat owner and I would hate to give up either. But in a city like Salem where you can keep up to a 100 pound pig as a pet, what is wrong with a couple of chickens?

Urban Gardening in People Magazine

Yes, it's officially hit the big mainstream, People magazine has an article on urban gardens, showcasing folks who have turned their lawns into veggie gardens and of course including Michelle Obama's new garden on the Whitehouse lawn. It's very exciting to see this trend not just in the latest issue of Permaculture Magazine but somewhere that it has the potential to be seen by (and influence) millions more mainstream Americans that might not otherwise be thinking about urban gardening.

And of course, I might just be mentioning this because our raised beds and my two cute kiddos are in the article! On newstands everywhere, today... the Blue Skies Urban Farm (no kidding, April Fool's Day is long past). Even one of our chickens, in People magazine, rubbing feathers with the celebs.

It's That Time Again

The new little chickies are out mingling for a couple of hours a day in the big chickens' pen, but in order to let them have this bit of freedom one of us has to hang out down there with them to make sure they don't, well, fly the coop. So it's about time to get out the scissors and clip their wings. I have such mixed feelings about doing this, especially after the way some of our last chickens were killed by a dog. I know that if their wings hadn't been clipped, they could've flown up into the trees (I know this for sure because I saw two dogs chasing wild turkeys on our property and even the big ol' Tom turkey managed to hoist his body up into a tree in time to not be eaten).

I also hate taking away the freedom of flight that must be a wonderful part of being a bird. Maybe I think about this kind of thing way too much, but it makes me sad to remove their ability to lift above the earth just when they're discovering it for the first time. And I know that once I remove that from them, they won't even remember they have it. Our older chickens have molted and grown back their flight feathers, but they never fly anymore. I don't think know that they can.

On the other hand, we live in an urban environment, and it's a blessing at all to have the chickens. I don't want to aggravate the neighbors with chickens flying in to decimate their vegetable gardens, and I know that we're lucky to be able to keep them here at all since many other cities don't allow people to have chickens. So I'll go out with the scissors and feel a bit sad as I remove their flight feathers, and then probably feel relieved that I don't have to babysit the chickens and they can at least roam freely within their large pen.

Not Much Cuter Than New Chicks

We got our new layer chicks this week, and there's not too many things cuter on this earth than holding a new little baby puffball in your hands. We all got to pick out a couple, so we have Aracaunas, Black Sexlinks, a Blue Andalusian and a Brown Leghorn. Should be an interesting mix of chickens! The peepers are out in the garage for now with a heat light, and I need to get our old chicken tractor back from a friend to use when they get bigger, until they're ready to join the older ladies in the coop.

I'm glad that the chicks arrived at our Feed-n-Seed store, because it's been a dark week otherwise. We had to put our beloved 14 year old dog Sabre to sleep this week. Even as old and gimpy as he was at the end, he always got up in the morning and evening to check the chickens with me. He was a shepherd through and through, and his working dog ethic never failed. Even after our other chickens were attacked by the neighbor's dog, they were never afraid of Sabre. He was a gentle and sweet soul, and we will really miss him. I've been having a pretty hard week of it, and posted some on my other blog about all of that. My husband gave me Sabre in the first year after we met, so he's been with us for our entire married life, and the kids have known him through their whole lives too. He went everywhere and did everything with us, so there's a pretty big hole in our lives right now. I know it will get easier with time.

In other good news, stay tuned for some possibly exciting news about our solar panels!

Phew! Raking Leaves is Hard Work

Just kidding, I did not rake that entire pile of leaves! Our city has a leaf pickup program, which means all you have to do is rake your leaves into the street and the city comes around and collects them. My only complaint about the program is that it creates a serious hazard for cyclists (the leaves being almost as slippery as an oil slick once they get wet.)

The cool part is that if you want you can have them come and dump whole trucks of leaves on your property. We've gotten about six truckloads delivered so far, and I think we will have plenty of leaves for mulching this year! I'm hoping that maybe if we spread them over the areas we've been trying to pull the oh-so-invasive ivy out of that maybe it will help keep it from sprouting back up in the spring.

I didn't get around to planting a cover crop early enough this fall, so we're going to mulch the garden beds pretty heavily too. I've also used the leaves successfully in my perennial beds out front to keep the spring weeds at bay. And the leaves that are leftover have rendered our regular leaf-dumping area into some of the most fertile crumbly soil on our whole property (which tends toward clay to start with). This summer, we're planning on putting in a deer fence and turning that into the corn patch.

I Didn't Mean to Write About Gravedigging Today

I was going to write an eloquent post about how starting to become an urban farmer has brought me out into nature in all its states. I went out to close up the chicken coop in a raging windstorm the other night. Today has me mulching in the chilly fall sunshine. On days when I otherwise would be bundled up inside, I am now compelled to be out tending to garden and animals. It's nice in a way, I think it brings a greater connection to nature that isn't dependent on sunny skies and mild temperatures. It brings me face to face with the way the world really is, which is not climate controlled.

Instead though, I'm going to write about another side benefit (if I can bring myself to think of it that way) of the urban farming lifestyle: being dragged into close contact with nature's lifecycles. We had a mysterious chicken death yesterday. I went down to check on the ladies, and there was Speeder, face down in the middle of the chicken coop floor, looking for all intents and purposes as if she'd just decided to take a late afternoon snooze.

There was no blood around the deceased, no evidence of flying feathers, no wounds, no other indications of sickness (do chickens vomit? I don't know, but I checked for that too). She weighed a healthy chickenly amount, her combs (or "cluckers" as the kids call them) were all nice and pink and not scaly, her feathers are glossy and golden (this photo was taken last week, and you can clearly see that she is a chicken in the prime of her life.) In short, she looks reasonably healthy, except for the fact that she's dead. At only two years old, she's a bit young for a chicken heart attack (do chickens have heart attacks? Maybe I shouldn't have fed them those buttered toast scraps), but my only other conclusions are possible spider bite, or maybe she happened to peck at something like the mushrooms and toadstools that are cropping up everywhere after all this rain.

Regardless, this afternoon saw me solemnly digging a grave, standing beside it with my children and saying a few words about Speeder's life, as well as chicken heaven (somehow, "dog heaven" sounds much more dignified than "chicken heaven".) Then I played Taps on the recorder (ah, the things you do as a parent) and shoveled on the dirt.

This wasn't a pleasant duty, but in a way it also brought me closer to real life. I've read about rigor mortis, but never actually felt it before (the time my mom put my hamster in the freezer so we could bury her in the new house we're moving to doesn't really count.) I've been able to turn my head from death in that peculiar way that we in the Western World are able to do. Like our climate-controlled houses, our reality-controlled lives let us slip past the harsh and often messy realities of birth, death, sickness, old age, dying. Instead, working with earth, plants, animals, getting our hands messy in the dirt of the world, we come face to face with bad weather, bugs and grubs, stricken plants, and yes, dead chickens. As I say goodbye to Speeder and tamp down the earth, in an odd way it feels like a blessing.