Sunday, June 19, 2011

Clandestine Chickens and Neighbors

Yesterday, while toiling away in the garden, our neighbor came over to check out what were planting and growing. Our corner of suburbia is pretty densely built up, so this is normal. In fact, looking from our back yard, we can see down across three adjacent backyard gardens. We have great fun trying to check out what the neighbors are planting and doing in their gardens without seeming nosy. Anyways, so our neighbor comes over, and after talking about our successes and failures growing different things in our gardens, he offers to cut us some of his amazing rhubarb stalks. We gladly took him up on his offer and gave him a dozen of our eggs (which we have an abundance of, now that the girls are in full production) in return. Our neighbor is an older, retired guy, who used to have chickens when he was a boy, and is convinced in his opinion that Rhode Island reds are the best, and that we should get some. Unfortunately we are presently limited to what we can keep in our basement, but we still appreciate the recommendation. He also mentioned that he had his son over recently, who was very surprised to see our micro-flock through the basement window. Luckily we have a neighbor who is pro-basement chickens, so its not a big deal.

Thinking about it, in this day and age, it really is a great and wonderful thing to know and talk to your neighbors, and to be able to exchange good, homegrown food, like fresh rhubarb and eggs. It would be so great if this happened all the time. Our neighborhoods and communities would be much friendlier, healthier, safer, and well-connected places to live if there were more of this type of activity.


3 comments:

  1. Your neighbor sounds like a "keeper". Appreciate him. I have neighbors that want nothing to do with seeing chickens in my yard, so my 2 girls are in the basement. I recently added an additional run area for them and I was a little concerned that someone might spot them through a basement window. (They'd have to go directly to my window with purpose to do this, but I'm still concerned.) What do you think? Curtain on that window or not? I like leaving a little sun poke in, but...... (Linda in NY) llang43@aol.com

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  2. Great blog! I'm going to chair this with my friends who are raising chickens in my Midwestern city!

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  3. Heartland Frugalista- Thanks so much for sharing with your friends. We are always excited to get the word out!

    LLand43- I have recently covered our windows with frosted contact paper. It was really easy and only took me an hour to cover all the windows. I got the paper at Ace. Some of the other big box hardware stores sell privacy film but it is more expensive.

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