The Cry of the Urban Chicken Farmer!

In the Wall Street Journal, Some City Folk Are Mad as Wet Hens When Chickens Come Home to Roost.


More chickens. This time in the Wall Street Journal.

Urban chicken farmers, unite!
This is your moment!
Free yourself from the tyrrany of mass produced chickens and eggs!
Loose the chains of the mega supermarkets!

Raise your own chickens!

On a related note, the documentary movie Food, Inc. is now out in theaters. Go watch it!

Happy Breakfast

Breakfast often makes me happy, but this is the first time I've experienced the breakfast itself being happy.

From the keen eye of my youngest son:

For the Birds!

I have brought up the subject in my household, of "urban chicken farming" in the past. I think it would be pretty cool to have a bunch of chickens. The fresh eggs, insect control, free fertilizer and hours of tortuous chores, I mean entertainment, for the boys. Who wouldn't want some chickens? My grandparents raised chickens in their back yard for years and they lived in the city. I even have the perfect place for them in the backyard that's already cordoned off so the dogs can't get them.

It seems I'm not alone in this idea. In the Dallas Morning News this morning, Folks in Dallas, elsewhere hatching plans for backyard chicken farms. I probably have a romanticized view of what it means to be an urban chicken farmer. My image is something like this:

There is NO WAY Sue is going to let me have chickens. Something about how I can't take care of the stuff we already have. She'll point to the garage, or the back yard, or how the kids don't like to clean their rooms, or anything other objection she can raise, related or not. So for now urban chicken farming is just a suprious idea floating around in my head. It probably will never amount to much more than that.

Family Vacation (Blackmail) Videos

These videos need no comment:

LILLY'S LEEK DANCE

SISTER DANCE 1

SISTER DANCE 2

Up and Down; and Upchuck

In an effort to maintain some level of physical effort and not be total slugs, Sue and I formed a compact. We declared that unless we had to carry something of significant weight, we were to walk up and down the stairs to get from the condo to the beach. I agreed to the plan before I knew where the condo was situated. As it happens we’ve been staying in condo number 616.
The sixth floor.

Day One at the beach was not so bad; the energy supported by a certain exuberance that comes naturally when doing something exciting and new allowed me to leap up and down the stairs with a seemingly boundless energy. By the end of the first day I was drained, a little dehydrated, a little bit of sunburn (Did you know that even though one might sit in the shade, it is still possible to receive a sunburn from the mere reflection of the sun off the white sand beaches?), and a little too much beer.

I met the second day with a little less bounce in my step. Every time my foot made contact with the surface below it, I felt the sting of yesterday’s sunburn. Every time I inhaled, I felt the dryness of slight dehydration. With every step, my calf muscles burned from the previous day’s activity. Shortly after lunch, I had to make a trip back up the stairs to the condo. About half way up I vomited just a bit in my mouth. I cursed the stairs. At that moment I resolved that I would only take one more trip up for the rest of the day. We stayed on the beach until dinner time.

It’s Day Three of our beach vacation.

I hate the stairs.

The Alternate Reality of a Beach Vacation

I have discovered yet another evidence that beach vacations do indeed cause a ripple in the space time continuum. Sometimes those ripples are so severe, we a thrust onto another, alternative, reality. Chaos theory predicts that it is possible to shift between realities, this trip to the beach is proving the validity of the theory.

This morning, just before noon, I was sitting on the beach reading a book. All the kids and all of the adults went back up to the condo, leaving me alone to enjoy the sounds of the crashing waves, the call of the sea birds, the laughter of other people's children and the solitude to read my book. Everything I ever imagined a beach vacation could be was being manifest before my eyes. Tears were welling up in my eyes as I considered the glory of the moment.

I gathered my emotions and continued reading.

Perhaps I had five minutes of this idyllic circumstance when Sue came down to join me. She said she felt badly that I had been left alone. Surprisingly, she had little to say to me. She just spread out a blanket and lay down. It didn't take long for her to get restless. She rose from her position and looked at me like she was about to ask me for something.

She looked at me and asked, "Are you hungry?"
"A little," I replied.
"Everyone went upstairs to get lunch."
"Uh-huh," I said with trepidation.
"Would you like me to bring you some lunch?"

It was at this point that all my programmed responses failed me. There has been very little in my experience that would have prepared me for that question. I expected, "Would you like to go up and get lunch with me?" or "Let's go upstairs and get some lunch." But instead I was asked, "Would you like me to bring you some lunch?"

I'm sure I must have had that stunned look of a deer caught in the beam of headlights of an oncoming car because Sue then asked me the same question again.

As the shock wore off, I spoke with perfect honesty, "I don't know how to respond. Of course I would like to have you bring me lunch, but I somehow feel I have to say 'no'."

She laughed and asked, "What are you afraid of?"
"I don't know, but 'yes' just didn't feel right."

Sue left me with my book and went upstairs to fetch my lunch. To be perfectly honest, I did not expect her to return, but about ten minutes later she came down with a lovingly prepared chicken salad sandwich, some carrot sticks and a side of chips.

Vacations can play tricks on your mind, on the behavioral patterns of loved ones, and I believe, in this case, on the very fabric of space and time.

Backing Up On My Beach Vacation

I think there is a law written somewhere that whenever you are with family, eating is involved. There really doesn't need to be a holiday or wedding or funeral for this law to be invoked. All that needs to happen is that you have to get together with a part of your family that you do not share a roof with.

Last night we arrived at the grandparents' house. Pops wasn't there. He was on his way back from picking up some crawfish. So we ate crawfish; me, Sue, the boys, my brother and his family and my folks. Thirty-five pounds of crawfish with some corn and potatoes, and I think we had seven mudbugs left over. Six adults and 4 kids, of which only one could really eat on his own, I think the other kids went hungry. As the Apostle Paul says, "If you don't work, you don't eat."

Woke up this morning way too early, thirsty and bloated from all the salt in the crawfish the night before. But that's not all. When you eat too much salty food, and don't include any green vegetables in your diet, your body functions differently. Despite three cups of coffee that could melt your fingernails, there was no "movement." I am all about "movement." Under normal situations I am like clockwork. A couple of cups of coffee, wait thrity minutes, grab the newspaper and head to the reading room.

Five more hours of driving to get to the condo, and still nothing. The fullness I feel is more than I've experienced in a while. I drove most of the way to the condo with my pants unbuttoned. The seatbelt had to be loosened a little too often. I was squirming the whole time. As we got close, with the gulf breeze as an excuse, I rolled the windows down. My family doesn't know it, but they owe me a huge apology for complaining about the rolled down windows.

That experience passed, so to speak, and we arrived at the condo. We were greeted by my sister-in-law, who was busy preparing for our arrival.

As an aside, my wife is a genius. We rented a three bedroom condo. She told her brothers and sisters and this one cousin that we would pay for the condo under the condition that they were responsible for cooking.

Tonight’s meal was the responsibility of my sister-in-law that lives nearby. Tonight’s menu: lasagna.

Imagine bloated, constipated, and I am going to pile on pasta, cheeses and meat.

If you need me I’ll be on my throne. Waiting, hoping, praying.