Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Urban Chicks

This NY Times food news brought an article about urban backyard poultry

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/dining/19yard.html?ex=1347940800&en=f845e9a338a72fb7&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

It ALMOST made we want to get a few chickens - which I am sure are not allowed in the condominium where I live. But memories quickly staunched the flow of longings for my own supply of animal protein and manure. My job as a grade school child was the chickens. (My brother's was the pigs - which I liked a whole lot better as creatures.) My father had Five Acres and Independence ambitions, and frequently quoted from St. Paul (though I'm not sure he knew that was the source) that "Those who don't work, don't eat." Eggs still warm from the girls are lovely, but not lovely enough to overcome memories of the daily round of care and the periodic mucking out of the hen house. Slaughtering I could probably do - but the plucking!

Perhaps I need to find someone to partner with who has some hens but isn't much interested in vegetable gardening. We could have our own little sustainability system.

1 comment:

John Leech said...

A friend of ours who lived off Broadway in Tucson kept chickens - so her kids could have the experience - until her cousin, on the city council, came to tell her they had to go: city ordinance.

Maybe reading The Chicken Book by Page Smith and Charles Daniel to them at bedtime will do....