chickens
Our parking places are caddy-corner from what I like to call the hippie house. It's got a huge technicolor mural of St. Francis, who apparently was king of all the animals or something. They leave random free stuff outside all the time, like strange books and weathered stuffed animals.
Anyway, I noticed a few months back, looking from my fire escape, that they have a small chicken coop with two chickens in it. As weird and creepy as the denizens of this house are, I think it's pretty cool to keep a food source that never goes dry. I wonder how many eggs they lay in one year and I wonder how many meals it makes. All you have to do is house them and give them any produce you don't eat. I kind of want to do this when I finally get a house.
Casey, on the other hand, grew up with chickens on Hawai'i and hated them- specifically, the mean rooster. But my plan doesn't involve a rooster! I don't want baby chickens, I just want delicious unfertilized omelettes and frittatas.
Thinking about how many meals a chicken would provide in one year [aside from eating the bird, which would be against my code] makes me think of how much produce I consume in a year, and how many acres of farmland that takes. Heh, probably a fraction of what it takes to produce a steak, but I'm not trying to preach. Anyway, the size of it all is still staggering.
Especially when I think of the time and effort [and apparent luck] required to raise the sweet pepper plant I've got on my windowsill right now. It's got seven little peppers ripening on it right now, and that's pretty exciting to me, even though it'll probably only make enough to supplement one night's dinner for the two of us.
I think it's good to be aware of things like this.
By the way, hey LiveJournal land. I stayed away because of this tendency I have to ramble on like a stoner when all I really wanted to do was record one thought, in this case that having chickens around for the eggs might be a cool idea. But I gotta be me, I guess!
Anyway, I noticed a few months back, looking from my fire escape, that they have a small chicken coop with two chickens in it. As weird and creepy as the denizens of this house are, I think it's pretty cool to keep a food source that never goes dry. I wonder how many eggs they lay in one year and I wonder how many meals it makes. All you have to do is house them and give them any produce you don't eat. I kind of want to do this when I finally get a house.
Casey, on the other hand, grew up with chickens on Hawai'i and hated them- specifically, the mean rooster. But my plan doesn't involve a rooster! I don't want baby chickens, I just want delicious unfertilized omelettes and frittatas.
Thinking about how many meals a chicken would provide in one year [aside from eating the bird, which would be against my code] makes me think of how much produce I consume in a year, and how many acres of farmland that takes. Heh, probably a fraction of what it takes to produce a steak, but I'm not trying to preach. Anyway, the size of it all is still staggering.
Especially when I think of the time and effort [and apparent luck] required to raise the sweet pepper plant I've got on my windowsill right now. It's got seven little peppers ripening on it right now, and that's pretty exciting to me, even though it'll probably only make enough to supplement one night's dinner for the two of us.
I think it's good to be aware of things like this.
By the way, hey LiveJournal land. I stayed away because of this tendency I have to ramble on like a stoner when all I really wanted to do was record one thought, in this case that having chickens around for the eggs might be a cool idea. But I gotta be me, I guess!