And now we are going to talk chicken.
I speak only for myself here, since the good folks on C-VILLE’s news team have already covered this topic in the evenhanded manner appropriate to their profession. This, my friends, is a blog, and so I say with impunity that people who complain about chickens in their neighborhoods are either elitists, hopelessly out of touch with their own status as creatures who eat food, behind on the trends, or all of the above.
Cute children with hens.
Luckily, I don’t think we have too many of those here in town. It’s more likely that you’ll see a chicken fight in a county subdivision like Ednam or Glenmore, if some resident there gets a notion to keep birds and upsets their tidy-minded neighbors. (Of course, if any Ednamites or Glenmorians are already harboring chickens, just chime in—I’d love to hear about it.) My impatience is more generally aimed at standards of community living that have plenty of room for pesticides on lawns and giant energy-sucking guest suites, but no room for families providing some of their own food.
Anyway, the local chicken scene seems to be picking up steam, what with CLUCK getting on Facebook and photographer Billy Hunt publishing "chicken portraiture" on his blog. It’s very Charlottesville: folks not only getting into a D.I.Y., green sort of activity, but going online to talk about it and enlisting local artists to document it. I love it.
Anyone else getting into chickens? At my house, we keep talking about it but haven’t built a coop yet. Anyone had help from their neighbors, gotten grief from their neighbors, or sicced their chickens on their neighbors?
