Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Happy New Year from the Urban Chickens

Happy New Year, everyone!

As I think back to January 2007, the thought of having yard-fresh eggs every day from our own chickens never would have entered my mind. And here we are, a year later, and we've been farming chickens in our back yard for seven months now.

With these seven months of experience under our belts, I can say in no uncertain terms that raising a small flock of chickens is so much easier to do than it might seem at first blush. My biggest concerns at the start (time each day to tend to them, the noise and the smell) have all proven to be molehills and not mountains. And the benefits to having our own source of eggs (and entertainment) are only beginning to sink in.

I'm glad I chose to blog about our adventures, as I've met some incredible folks through the comments (and I got on CBC radio, too!). While I'm new at this whole chicken-raising gig, there are thousands of others who see this as old hat and nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. I appreciate their tolerating my coming into this with eyes wide open and more enthusiasm than experience. I've gotten more advice, sympathy, encouragement and compassion from folks I've never met than I ever could have imagined.

Thank you for following along and chiming as we've started this adventure. As the newness of owning chickens is starting to subside, I'll be supplementing my own tales from the backyard with posts to update folks on the status of movements across the country to change zoning laws to allow a chicken in every backyard.

On behalf of Sophia and ZsuZsu, thanks to all of you for dropping by our little piece of the Web in 2007.

May you be flooded in eggs, too.

1 comment:

Linda said...

Happy new year, Thomas! I'm glad you're blogging about your chickens and keeping us informed on what it going on around the country with raising chickens in urban settings.

I got my chickens shortly after you. Like you, I was a bit anxious that it would prove difficult. Taking care of the chickens has been easy compared to the struggles I've had to go through in the past few months around just keeping them legally!

I knew keeping chickens in the city wasn't typical, but I also didn't foresee that I'd have to spend so much time "fighting city hall" to ensure that it remains legal to keep chickens in Chicago. I never imagined that I'd become known as "the chicken lady," as I was recently called by the most recent reporter I've talked with (the fifth one since Thanksgiving!). Oh well, at least I'm not "that CRAZY chicken lady." :-)

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails