Two years ago we were living in a small suburban town when we decided we needed to prepare for the failing economy by taking our family in a new direction towards self sufficiency. We decided to start with buying rabbits. Meat rabbits. This story isn't about them, I'll save that for another time. This story is about what we got into next. Chickens.
The town we were living in was small, very small. Directly behind our house was a large family cattle ranch and just a couple of blocks away was the central part of town. We had one, lone flashing red four way stop light and on one corner was an old house with a young family that kept goats tied up in the front yard. After having success with the rabbits we decided to try chickens. A few months earlier, we were planning to build a large storage building in the back yard and we called the city to get permits and find out what the restrictions and setbacks were. The lady on the phone was totally bumfuzzled because in all here years working there, no one had ever called to ask about these things. She told us there were none. So when we decided to buy chickens we went the don't ask don't tell route and set up twelve pullets (female chicks) in the building. Eventually they moved to a coop and while we were careful not to mention the chickens to any neighbors, one of them eventually started crowing. We tried hard to hide and muffle it by keeping them cooped up till later in the morning, but it turns out roosters don't crow only in the wee hours of the morning. Most cities around here, including the big one (160K population) that allow city chickens don't allow roosters because of the noise and we assumed the same for our small town. We still didn't want to ask because we were in the process of building out in the country and it would only be a few months till we were able to move into the house and take our chickens with us. We didn't want to risk them telling us they were not allowed in the city because we had no place to take them and our land was an hour away, one way. We did what we had to do with the rooster and got rid of him. He was beautiful and sweet and in the few weeks we kept him after he began to crow, none of our neighbors said a word to us about it. We were all used to hearing cows lowing at all hours of the day and night and we liked it. We did, however have one very pesky neighbor with a personality disorder whose husband didn't mind going out into the yard in nothing but his underwear and yell at children while he was drunk. He was actually pretty nice otherwise but his wife was crazy I tell you. CRAZY!
Fast forward to one week before our moving date...
We had been without our rooster for two or three months by the time we received a letter from the city stating that they had been informed that we were keeping chickens and we must remove them immediately because chickens aren't allowed in the city. So, late that night after hubs had worked all day on the house we loaded up the hens onto our trailer and took them out to the land in freezing cold temperatures. Hubs had taken time off of work to get the house ready for us to move into and would be out at the land everyday so he could care for them. We didn't have a chicken coop to put them in however. Fortunately, my hubs is a gear head and happened to have an old van sitting in the woods (he had taken the motor out for one of his projects and hadn't taken it to be crushed yet...also fortunately.) It turns out that the big old van was the perfect temporary chicken coop and the hens loved it. At night they would all pile on top of each other in the drivers seat like they were fixing to drive off somewhere. (Even now, in the heat of summer, they pile on top of each other in the coop to sleep at night.) We don't know who told on us and truthfully, I don't want to know. I'm just thankful to be out of the neighborhood and tucked away in our own little oasis where chickens and goats and cows and horses and whatever else we want is definitely allowed.
There is supposed to be a revival of the city chicken going on, even in some of the biggest cities across the nation, it's too bad there are so many other backward towns that won't allow it. I imagine, however, that a time is coming when more and more people will be raising chickens in their backyards whether or not it's allowed. Hard times are coming.
Fast forward to today...
We have fifteen hens and one huge, frisky rooster and all is forgiven.
No comments:
Post a Comment