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You might remember from our Stone Soup video that our little eco-village has started to cull our chicken flock to make room for new birds. For the last 2 months we’ve been learning what it takes to be mother hens and raise two dozen newly hatched chics. Jay and I grew up in urban areas where there were no chickens but in the grocery store, so this was a learning experience for us both. These babies need tons of food, water and warmth because they grow exponentially in their first months of life. The benefits of having chickens in your backyard are many- they eat veggie food scraps and weeds, they poop instant fertilizer, they lay eggs and, if you’re into it, they’ll eventually make a great organic, free range, home raised meal.

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[tags]chickens, chics, raising chickens, san mateo eco-village, food security, ryanishungry[/tags]

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This squabble on NewWest.net caught our eye because we raise chickens in a semi-urban area and feel nothing but joy about it. It’s interesting to see this issue come into the lime light as resources start to become scarce. Jay made a response video on Momentshowing to all the chicken naysayers. C’mon people, we need to be more resourceful with our food and our land! No Safeway or Food Lion is going to do that for us. The great benefits of raising chickens include having fresh eggs, producing compost (chickens eat and poop food scraps and scratch through yard waste to make potent soil) and if you’re into it- totally chemical free and humane meat.

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A Word of Warning: This is a graphic video. If you do not eat meat and think killing animals to do so is bad, you should not watch this video.

We live at The San Mateo Eco-Village, where we know our neighbors, garden together and learn how to live more sustainably. Part of living sustainably is eating local foods. Harvesting food from the garden and raising hens for eggs is about as local as you can get. When our neighbors Amy and Malaki arrived at the Eco-Village, they noticed a lack of eggs coming from the hens. Both have an agricultural background from years of working on a farm in Kenya. What do they do in Kenya when a bird gets too old to lay? They eat it. The whole damn thing! So we, as a community, decided to do just that. Most of us had never experienced living with chickens, let alone killing them for dinner. Growing up in the United States allows us to be vastly ignorant of where our food comes from- meat and vegetables alike. We thought this would be a good education for us city kids.

The interesting part to me was the difference in methods between Brian, co-founder of The Eco-Village and Bay Area Native, and Malaki who grew up on a farm in Kenya. Also I thought it would be way more physically dramatic- you’ve heard the saying “running around like a chicken with its head cut-off”. Well, it’s true. Even after the chicken has died, the body still moves around and spasms. Though it was not the most pleasant experience to watch an animal die at human hands, I do know that these birds had a peaceful life full of good food and loving owners. That’s saying a heck of a lot more than all the meat that is factory farmed and trucked to our grocery stores.

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[tags]local food, sustainable, chickens, hens, permaculture, garden, san mateo ecovillage, ecovillage, co-housing, san mateo, ryanishungry[/tags]

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