This is not a farm.

I also blog over here: www.chelseagreen.com

Recent post…even though I already shared the video.

We’re busily promoting and selling our new book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery, so I wanted to do a little research on the prevalence of the household flock. Imagine my surprise when I found this Slate article from two years ago, debunking the “bogus trend” of burgeoning backyard chicken ownership.

“In all of God’s sweet aviary there exists no bird more diabolical and ruthless than the egg-laying chicken. Despite the darkness of this clucking beast’s heart, our nation’s press has gone on a rampage insisting that more and more citizens everywhere in the United States are choosing to board and feed these creatures in their urban and suburban backyards so they can harvest the eggs. It’s a trend, the press claims. But we know better, don’t we? To begin with, keeping chickens is a filthy, time-consuming, and expensive way to keep the pantry filled with eggs.”

Say what?!

Apart from the fact that the writer clearly has a personal problem with our feathered friends, he was a bit premature in denouncing this so called bogus trend. If my own participation is any indication, two years ago I had owned zero chickens, but today I can proudly say I have raised (okay, and slaughtered) almost 200. That’s a huge percentage increase in my own completely unscientific opinion.

When my partner and I had to move across the country, we split our last flock into two groups, thereby starting two separate households off on their own hen-raising adventures. So if you count the first household I helped initiate into the poultry world (by bringing home a pair of wee chicks from a trip to the feed store…without asking permission first, teehee), and my own, that’s four households that started raising birds in the past two years. And although my own household is currently (sadly) hen-less, the folks we gave our birds to benefit daily from their clucky hijinks and fresh eggs each day.

On that note, I wanted to share with you the first in a series of videos from the incredibly wise and gentle Harvey Ussery. This one talks about broody hens — hens with a natural, strong mothering instinct — and some ideas of how to deal with them. Enjoy!

((It’s over here))

Also, check out Harvey’s own website here:  http://themodernhomestead.us/

1.

It’s long been time to get up from the computer, stretch, and move my eyes. Julian has come over, staring up at me insistently, trying to communicate whatever she always tries to communicate with that look. Do you need to do your business? I always ask. If she responds by leaping around in a circle and making a small, pathetic, musical arf, I know she has to go. This time she just backs off a few steps, keeps the brown eyes glued to me for a moment, then stretches, downward-dog, and sighs.

2.

We walk out onto the porch. I lock the door as she starts heading down the stairs. Wait, I insist, muttering to myself that she’ll pull me down the stairs, crazy animal. The sun is hot, on my bare arms, hot on my face as I leave the partial shade of the porch and make my way down the stairs, the leash taut as she accelerates toward the grass below.

It has been cooler lately, but today the summer heat has returned, as if nothing ever changed, and it’s still mid-July. At least at mid-day, that’s how it feels.

3.

We walk down the avenue toward the nearest cross street, Towne Ave. The sun insists it is summer, I squint, still adjusting to the distant sky full of light from the too-close, dim screen. The grass has recently been cut, so short in places I can see the soil. Too short, I think, and wonder if it will recover.

We make our way to a place I’ve become curious about. It’s an immense, abandoned parking lot, all fenced in, the fence covered with green shade-cloth for some reason. We approach the fence by walking downslope a few feet, but up at the level of the sidewalk, I can still see over the shade-cloth, the trees planted at intervals throughout the lot. Undisciplined by landscaping crews they have let their leaves, cones, and even whole branches fall out upon the lonely pavement, covering the painted lines that used to direct cars how to space themselves. The deciduous ones have turned. Fall color, I think. I guess that’s what California has for fall color, a few stray parking-lot trees turning orange. One is red though. Not bad, I think, putting on a Vermonter’s attitude for a moment, although I’m really from Florida, where the trees are just as calm as these.

Lizards fat as mice scamper horizontally across the shade cloth. They move so quickly their miniscule, taloned toes running make a sound like a zipper closing, or opening. They rush to avoid the dog, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I kick gently at her as she examines a scrap of candy wrapper. No, don’t eat that.

4.

We return.

We approach the apartment complex again.

I’ve never lived in one of these, an institution built merely for living in. Not for longer than a visit to a foreign city, when I’ve lived in a hotel for a week. This is like that, a hotel, in some ways. There’s even a pool, and a tiny workout room.

Golden Rain trees along the driveway have dropped all these small seed pods, that look like they might be paper lanterns an inch and a half long. When I step on a fresh one it pops.

We approach the breezeway that leads back to our stairs, our home.

5.

The air that caresses our skin here, this warm California air, still feels like a stranger’s touch. It is still unexpected each time, who are you? It still feels new, and carries the hint of excitement new things carry.

I breathe in a little extra of it, this warm California air, and try to note its qualities, and try to remember those of the Vermont air I’ve left behind.

But at this point I have had a number of homes. Can I remember, I wonder, the air of my first home? And if I return now, having been away from that beloved place for so long, won’t it feel somehow strange again. Strange but familiar. Loved, and carrying memories of love, memories of insight, memories of just this kind of feeling, of noticing the quality of the air in mid-October, and wondering where it’s headed.

Repetition. Repeated exposure to that new air makes it familiar, or familiar again. Familiar air brushes your skin and you forget that it has done so. Except for moments that you fall in love, inexplicably, once more with the place you call home, the place your heart resonates to, as home.

Soon this dry, warm, eucalyptus-scented air too, will pass beyond our conscious awareness and simply feel like the place we live. I wonder if it will ever transcend that utilitarian familiarity. I wonder if it will ever feel like home.

I go back and forth.

I love the company I work for, but it’s small, and it’s a publisher approaching the digital watershed with as much optimism as possible, but still facing average declining sales. So it can’t pay a whole lot, and because I’m a consultant for them at the moment I don’t qualify for any benefits. Also, it’s a tight ship where we all have to work HARD to keep things rolling along. So yeah, it’s a mixed bag.

But today the president announced an awesome donation to the Occupy Wall Street movement:

“We are donating 1500 copies of our books to the OWS protesters in NYC for use in their education centers and to hand out to the 99%!”

Read more here.

And thus, I’m feeling ever more lucky to be able to make ends meet while doing something I like. I help promote the books we publish online, which are themselves the work of authors who are activists first, and who often we’ve approached, asking them to write down what they do and know so we can make it part of a more permanent body of collective knowledge. And yes, we profit from this activity, but along the way we support not only the staff of the company, but the authors themselves, and their work, plus we support through donations a lot of similar information-spreading causes out there. Folks like this. And this. And this.

Thank you, ethical small-business owners of the world. You make those of us lucky enough to work for you well…lucky. Blessed.

More than that, you make a case—through your actions, not your words—for a capitalism focused on more than just centralization of wealth in your own hands. A capitalism effervescent in its power to support creativity, innovation, and altruism—some of humanity’s greatest birth rights.

You are the 99%, and so am I.