Urban Chickens

Inspired by a recession and rising food costs or by food safety and animal welfare concerns, people who have never raised livestock of any kind are setting up small chicken coops and buying a few baby chicks....a growing number of cities across the country are changing their rules to allow some controlled poultry raising.-From the article Personal Poultry

Yesterday, the day my in-laws left, and the day before our 14 hour car trip to Pittsburgh (a trip we are taking because moving again was not punishment enough), my sister Eileen and her spouse, Kevin, came from New York City to Minneapolis for his family’s yearly reunion. We drove to the next suburb over to pick them up at his brother’s house, took them to lunch and brought them back to our dwelling place which currently resembles a FEMA disaster zone that has subsequently been caught off-guard and hit by incoming battle droids. We spent a couple pleasant hours avoiding the boxes before I had to drop Eileen and Kevin off again. On the way back to Edina, I asked Kevin how he liked being out in the suburbs.

“The suburbs?” he questioned. “I thought this was the country!” he teased.

I proceeded to tell him all the reasons why this was in fact suburbia and NOT the country and just as I was finishing my lengthy argument, we watched two gargantuan wild turkeys float down next to the highway.

“Um, yeah…..it is country,” I surrendered before explaining that those were NOT big hawks as he had originally thought but actually some darn good poultry, Thanksgiving dinner for a family of 50 to be exact…I'm not so sure he is ready to go out and buy a few baby chicks but then, what do you expect, he’s city folk…