Britton and I wrote a guest column for the Greeley Tribune about the backyard hens, and they published it yesterday!
Here is the print version
Backyard Hens Guest Column Published
1 Reply
Category Archives: Rants and Raves
Molting and debating chickens in Greeley
UPDATE: 2013: For the current chicken rules of Greeley, see this post.
Molting and debating chickens in Greeley. This title is a shout out to Wheel of Fortune’s “before and after” category. 🙂 We have two of our chickens currently molting which means fewer eggs. For some reason, as we are learning, chickens molt in the dead of winter…when it got below freezing again, just like last year. Luckily, two of them are still laying though. We have also been busy debating the chickens’ very existence in our backyard with the Greeley City Council. Last night we had a work session that covered the ‘chicken committee’s’ recommendations. As you may know, from previous posts, I thought they were micromanaging the issue, but we felt like it was something of a compromise.
Henrietta Molting
Last night, the Community Development section of Greeley government put together a powerpoint that highlighted our recommendations. The problem I had with it is that it put the cart before the horse. In my work, I have learned that if you are to ever make a policy change, you must show the WHY before the HOW. I felt like last night the city staff didn’t address the “why” fully. And of course, the why to me is: food safety, food security, responsible pet ownership, property rights, environmental and economic sustainability and healthy food, few of which were addressed in the presentation. Instead the presentation talked about all the nitty-gritty of set-backs, coops, number of chickens, etc -the “how”. Now we will need to back track in order to educate the community about chickens.
It’s interesting to me to see how many people are ignorant about chickens. Britton said it best last night at the council meeting when he said that he had the same hesitations as most of the council members because he’s been a city boy (albeit not a huge city) and lived in Greeley his whole life without much exposure to chickens. All of these worries washed away within the first month of having our first chickens. However, when you put the “how in front of the why” people look at it differently.
For instance now with the idea of a permit planted firmly in their heads, they (one council woman in particular) see $$ dollar signs and want to charge for people to raise chickens. To me, this just defeats the whole purpose! We should be encouraging people to become more self-sufficient, to decentralize our food. Has anyone seen Food, Inc? Come on. There were also some comments about the set-back and some discussion of on-site slaughtering/processing. I don’t think I could kill our particular chickens (when they have names they say it’s nearly impossible) anyway, so that is not of such a concern to us.
I had a friend on Facebook (become a fan of Greeley Backyard Hens on FB and get updates about this issue) ask me why we would care about this issue if we are moving the Puerto Rico anyway? Well, I did not ask for this fight to come to me, but I will fight it for others (with your help!). This is something we believe strongly in. It is not only our right to have chickens, pets, or raise our own food, but our civil responsibility to be actively engaged in the process. Those who don’t stand up and speak up must be content with the decisions made by others… When the new mayor, Tom Norton, asked why people who want chickens don’t just move, it felt like a slap in the face. In the end Britton and I said, you know, maybe our ideas are just too different for Greeley. Maybe that is part of the reason we DO want to move. Greeley may have wide streets, but very narrow minds.
We just seem to have an uphill battle in this and that concerns me. When people are unfamiliar with something, their first instinct is to be afraid of it. Change is scary to people. What we should really be scared about it leaving it as it is: leaving our food, our very existence, to some outside entity be it the government or the huge multi-national corporations that currently run the food system. Raising chickens is our small way of saying we care, and I think that we as individuals should have the right to do that.
How can you help? Write letters to the City of Greeley (1000 10th Street, Greeley, CO 80631) showing your support, become a fan of Backyard Hens on Facebook, come in person and give testimony. Contact us! There is a lot you can personally do to help. Also, you can get educated about our food system. Here’s the trailer for Food, Inc. I strongly recommend it.
Speaking of Movies…An Avatar Adventure
A friend of mine asked if we wanted to see the Avatar at an IMAX theater in 3D. Being a tech geek of sorts I was all in on this one. I went online and reserved a few tickets Thursday because being opening weekend we knew it might be tough to get in.
We had an adventure in the morning with car problems that started the day off in a crazy way. Cassie’s car has been having coolant issues, so she decided to take mine because she thought it might break down. If you leave a car outside here (as mine was) you have to scrape the frost off the windows before you can drive. It is so cold that when you drive the windows frost up again. Cassie had to pull over a few times due to the fact she couldn’t see and was swerving all over the place. She had only gotten a few blocks away so I had to get out of bed, into my robe and sandals and then pull her car out of the garage that hadn’t been ‘frosted’ to do an early morning rescue and swapped cars. She ended up being late, but safe and luckily her car didn’t break down as well on the way there…have I mentioned winters in Colorado are so much fun?
Car antenna being attacked by cold
I put a downspout on the rental house and ended the day driving to Denver with Cassie. We left our house at around 5pm. We encountered traffic jams and we took a wrong turn that almost took us to DIA. It was a good thing my friend had saved 2 seats for us. “Top row middle” was the IM I received on my cell phone. We ended up being about 10-15 min late.
Top row middle means that if you want to sit down you’d have to scooch past about 25 people. We decided to just hop over the chairs instead. We put our 3D glasses on and….wait…there was…No magic? WTF? Cassie hadn’t ever seen a new 3D movie and was thinking it wasn’t too cool. In fact it was blurry. I asked my friend Clifton to see his glasses…Oh..WOW. Apparently we got the wrong glasses.
I had to jump over the seats again and go to the lobby. Told them we had the wrong glasses. The guy sez “Let me see your ticket stub”. Of course when I got in the door man didn’t give me back my stub. I told him that “I don’t have it.”. Of course he rolled his eyes and replied “Well then how am I supposed to know which 3D glasses you’re supposed to have?”. Well….that was a good point and it makes you wonder how many types of 3D glasses do they have?! Turns out they have 2 types and since the ones I was holding weren’t the right ones that left…the other pair.
He reluctantly gave me the other pair of glasses. I went back to the theatre and hopped over the seats yet again. Finally…I got where I wanted to be.
The movie was pretty cool. It was a lot of ‘cartoon’ looking scenes blended with ‘real life’ scenes. They used the science fiction to mask the real life issues we face. Things like environmental destruction, how we use force to destroy and get what we want at any cost, and our lack of caring for indigenous people, plants or animals. I was surprised to see the film makers paint the military as an evil force. You usually don’t see that side of things in American films. Instead we usually get Transformers types of films that are meant to recruit people for the armed services and to buy new Camaros by showing ‘kick ass’ scenes. This was the anti-transformers.
One thing Cassie of course noticed was the couple of smoking scenes in the movie. I thought it was kind of odd as well. Why would a scientist/biologist (the character played by Sigourney Weaver) be smoking in space? In a cabin where they have to pipe in oxygen to stay alive no less. For one thing, most scientists and people in other highly esteemed professions (like doctors) don’t smoke. You would be hard pressed to find 3% of the highly educated, wealthy group smoking. For another, this is supposed to be set in the future. Do you think many people will be smoking in the future? Hopefully not. And the risk of fire or blowing up your spaceship would be way too high. Makes you wonder if the tobacco industry was involved in financing this movie…hmm
Technologically it was far beyond what Transformers achieved and Avatar has a decent storyline too. When we got done watching the movie we snapped a picture with some of the people waiting to see the next showing.
Cassie with the ‘correct’ 3D glasses and a guy dresses as one of the ‘blue monkey cats’
Afterward, we went over to Dave and Busters and had a snack and talked about the movie, the day and how our lives are always such an adventure/
Today I went to jail
While technically that it is true (I did go to jail), it’s not what you might think. As part of our Leadership Weld County group, today’s outing consisted of learning about our public safety organizations such as the jail, Sheriff’s Office and Police Department. So, I did go to jail, but only for a visit. I thought the jail presentation was the most fascinating. They did a demonstration of how to extract a misbehaving jail inmate.
We also got to watch someone get tased! Wow. Just wow. I hope I never get tased. I asked what would be the criteria to tase someone. They said that it depends on the amount of danger that could occur to the police or sheriff. Only if the behavior of a person is at the same level of danger as a taser can they use it. If it is misused that could be reason enough to lose their job. I was happy to hear that! Similarly for using guns (we got to go into a SWAT vehicle and see their guns! scary), they should only be used if life is threatened since it is considered “lethal force” whereas the pepper spray and tasers are considered “less-than-lethal”.
At the jail I found it strange when we were in the area to watch the jail inmates. They could see us somewhat through the darkened glass and were making funny faces at us and making signs. I felt weird because it reminded me of being at the zoo, only instead of animals they were people. I also thought about how it would feel to be on the other side of the glass as a prisoner. The sheriff deputies talked about how so many of these people live in poverty and so being in jail is somewhere actually a little better for them to go. They have 3 meals a day, they are relatively safe, they have health care, and a warm bed. It may seem like a lot to us to give up our freedom, but to many of them, it’s actually better than how they usually live, especially for those with mental illness and/or substance abuse issues on top of poverty. They said that 80% of the inmates in there were return visits! If that’s not a case for prevention and rehabilitation in jails and prisons, I don’t know what would be!
We also got to visit the fire station and I got chosen to sit in the fire truck! I felt like a happy little 3 year old boy :-). We also saw the paramedics. Both the fire department folks and paramedics talked about how they are becoming many people’s first line of care in treating even fairly minor health issues because they don’t have health insurance. Yet another facet of the health care debate that I don’t think many people who have health insurance consider. When the paramedics and firemen and women are out answering these calls, they can’t help you in a true emergency. It was also interesting to discuss the amount that Medicare and Medicaid pay out for these rides and whether or not the cost of paramedic rides should be covered in the same way that fire and police services are (pre-paid with our taxes).
In my line of work at the health department I mainly work with women, so it was interesting to see the jobs that are mainly done by men. Overall, quite a fascinating day and a totally different world than my daily reality.
Sitting in the fire truck