The wife’s been trying to talk me into getting a few chickens for a couple of years. We already have a garden in the backyard and she insists that other homes in our neighborhood have much more developed backyard gardens complete with rainwater catchment systems, bee hives and chicken coops. As part of her sales pitch, she bought tickets to the first annual Greenville Urban Farm Tour.
What we saw on the tour was pretty impressive. All but three of the homes we visited are within a mile of our house. I was expecting a lot of pretentious preening from the self-styled “urban homesteaders” about organic, local, in-season, slow food, sustainability, etc. You know how I feel about all that. We got some prosthelytizing, but no more than you would expect at any other cult event.
As hard as it is for me to admit this, the wife was right. We technically own a quadruple-sized lot. Since our house is so small, that means we have a lot of area to ourselves. Most of the places we visited not only had smaller back yards than ours, but they were also situated closer to their neighbors’ houses than we are. That doesn’t necessarily mean I want to raise and care for chickens (although fresh eggs would be great for my diet), but it does mean that we might have to expand our operation a little bit.
After the tour, we tried to catch the end of the annual Derby Duck Race downtown.
Click on the first image to enlarge. It may take a moment to load, then use your right arrow key to advance:
