Saturday, June 16, 2007

upcoming workshop about backyard chickens

I was visiting my brother and his family last weekend up in Seattle, and he mentioned that they'd seen an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about pet chickens just the week before. Turns out more and more of us are becoming chicken farmers than ever before.

Now, in today's San Jose Mercury News Garden section I see that one of the local organic gardening stores, Common Ground in Palo Alto, is hosting a couple backyard chickens workshops next Saturday, June 23, led by Jody Main:
Chickens are a wonderful addition to an organic garden. They complete the circle. We give them our food scraps and garden greens . . . they give us eggs and fertilizer . . . we plant crops. Perfect! Chickens are wonderful pets that fully participate and contribute to the whole. Learn everything you need to know to raise happy hens, including: hen house and yard set-up, nesting boxes, water, feed, local suppliers, caring for your hens and favorite crops to grow for your chickens. Here you will see how easy it is to raise chickens and how great a role they play in creating a healthy organic vegetable garden. Garden snack included! Meet at Common Ground, then car pool to Jody's garden and hen house.
Couldn't agree more with the description of the workshop. Tempted to go myself, if only to see what her hen house looks like. (I wonder if she's got an Eglu or two, too?) The whole completing-the-circle aspect of raising chickens is right on, and as a small-time vegetable gardener, having chooks gives me the sense that I'm all that more sustainable than before. Instead of buying chicken manure in bulk at the beginning of the season, I'm now adding it in small amounts to our compost pile every other day.

If you're living in the Bay Area and still sitting on the fence about getting your own chooks,
by all means treat your self to one of the workshops. Given the fact they've had to add an additional workshop, we could have a lot more cluckers here on the Peninsula soon.

Let me know if you plan to attend!

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