Texas Town Outlaws Common Sense

Lancaster Texas city officials have decided to enforce codes outlawing backyard chickens and Marye Audet a food writer, author and owner of nineteen heritage breed Barred Rocks has been pulled into their poultry dragnet. She ain’t happy about it.

“My dad and my father- in- law were WWII vets. I am a veteran. My husband is a disabled veteran. My oldest son is in Iraq currently, for his second tour of duty. And this afternoon, as I shut the door, in tears, I wondered…This is what we served for?”

To add to the indignities, Audet is not some tight quarters urban chicken enthusiast. She and her family live on 2 1/2 acres. Read more about her dilemma in her article City of Lancaster bans sustainable living…more or less.

How will we know when our country has climbed out of its current morass? A city will cite someone for not having chickens.

Denver and Los Angeles Experience Crowds Staring at Chicken Coops

Denver Urban Homesteaders looking at a chicken coop

Judging from the phone calls and emails coming into the Homegrown Evolution compound, America has discovered that it just might be a good idea to grow some vegetables and keep some chickens. There’s lots of motivating factors, no doubt. A bad economy and dissatisfaction with factory farming to start. But we also suspect that folks have discovered that it’s just plain fun to do all the old home arts with the handy networking tool known as the internet.

Above, the Denver Urban Homesteading meetup group. If you’re in the Denver area (where Mrs. Homegrown Evolution spent her formative years) get to know these fine folks at: http://www.meetup.com/Greater-Denver-Urban-Homesteaders/

LA Urban Homesteaders looking at a chicken coop. Photo by Elon Schoenholz

In a strikingly similar photo, our urban livestock workshop that we hosted yesterday featuring us talking about chickens, Leonardo Chalupawicz (from the Backwards Beekeepers) on bees and Joan Stevens introducing rabbits. We had to turn away quite a few folks, so watch this blog for news of more workshops soon.