Since my family moved back to Willmar eight years ago, I've been exposed to the wonderful life of maintaining a hobby farm. Sure, at the time it was quite bittersweet, I was in my teen years, so of course I was at times a little resentful having to do a decent amount of the chores with the sole payback of being able to eat a healthy proportion of eggs and poultry. Unlike most kids, however, I oftenly enjoyed the time I had with the animals as well as watching them grow to become tasty tasty meat. Alas, I am now twenty-two, my parents no longer live in the boonies and I seemed to have rooted myself, along with my wife, in middle of town. No more farm fresh eggs or poultry for this guy.

 

   A year ago, just to make sure, I double-checked our city's laws on keeping livestock, poultry and other farm animals within the city. I was a little suprised to see that our town isn't necessarily against raising chickens in town, per-say, for as long as they find favor in you. Meaning you must apply for a permit (cha-ching) and pass their inspection (cha-ching)[1]. I haven't applied for this yet. 100% of me wants to, though I feel my fate is totally at the hands of whoever issues the permit and whoever is going to be inspecting my property. I'm quite positive, based on the fact that I haven't seen anyone else raise poultry in town, that I will be denied. I could be wrong, however.

 

   So what respawns my interest in raising chicken in town today? This has been an on going idea of mine since a pro-Urban Chicken group started in Duluth back in November. They share similar views on the subject with  me: Chickens are cleaner than most other pets, they aren't loud, they are natural, they are far less suseptable to salmonella and other diseases carried by birds and they prove to aid a self-sufficient lifestyle (as well as fits some interpretations of "Going Green"). Cities such as Seattle and New York allow Urban Chickens, so why can't a city the size of Willmar do so as well?

 

[1] Municode Willmar, Mn Sec. 4-1. Keeping of livestock, fowl or swine.

   Ahhhh, It's hit me, I can't wait for spring! Don't get me wrong, winter is great and I enjoy the snow and the cold quite a bit (alright, this negative zero stuff could go away.) Sledding is a blast, the trees are beautiful when frosted over, I even gave ice skating a try, it was wonderful and I'm planning on doing a bit more of it this year. I'm also wanting to give snowboarding another shot. As charming as winter is, however, it does not halt my desire to maintain my garden. I'm going to safely say that having a garden is my favourite part of our warm weather seasons. What the hey, you give it care and it turns around and gives you food! Excellent!

 

   We are going to build onto our operation this year, I believe. As of right now, we have a couple pots and one raised garden bed. We were able to produce incredible amounts of food from this single 4x8 box. Pounds each of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce. This year, I would like to make at least two more garden beds and perhaps a sort of raised herb shelf thing which will hold pots of herbs. It should be pretty fancy. We made just a little bit of basil pesto this year and would like to see that turn into jars.

 

   Also, I would really like to try and preserve a lot more food this year. Last year I canned about fourteen jars of pickles, and despite having a bounty of pears, I failed to do anything with them due to landscaping, road trip and other things. This year, I would like to can more pickles, relish, tomatoes, peppers, salsa and jams for starters, freeze a good amount of spinach and try my hand at drying a few things while I'm at it. I'd like to see Jacinda and I stocked up for winter.

 

   As of right now, I believe we will support the basics in our garden, tomatoes, green peppers, lettuce, spinach and cucumbers along with basil, oregano, chamomile and other herbs. If you have any suggestions as to what we should plant, no matter how much fun, practical, difficult or tasty it is, I would love to hear from you!

   Here is another great example of Organic/Go Green activists gone wrong. The Eglu made by Omlet USA. My friend Carl showed me this bizarre housing for chickens a couple weeks ago. I thought I'd share my take on it.

 

   First of all, I'm just going to throw this out there, the Eglu is a grand total of $665.00, shipped with love, straight from Omlet USA. Don't get me wrong, click around demo on their website about it, it's a real slick chicken house. It's easy to clean and retrieve eggs... But I absolutely cannot get over the steep price. Convieniently, you can also buy chickens, which if you do, they suggest you buy their 50lb bag of Organic feed. My jaw dropped when I saw the additional price tag on these. I added three chickens, since that should tide a small family over for the week and have a few left over for neighbors. I come to find that they are charging $10.00 per chicken!!!!! Holy Mackerel!!! If you must know, the 50lb bag of feed was a whopping $50, not to mention the additional 50lb shipping charge. Grand total for chicken operation: a staggering $811.00.

 

   If you don't find that steep for roughly 18-21 eggs a week, then I'd like for you to sit through a short math lesson. The night before, I bought 18 eggs for 2.08. Rounded up, that is $0.12 an egg. Definitely more than I'd like to spend on store eggs, but that's besides the point. Lets say I totally love eggs (and I do) and end up buying 18 eggs a week for a year, with no egg price fluctuation, for 52 weeks, I am going to spend $108.16 on eggs in a year.

 

   $108.16 is my number. Now lets do the math on Eglu. Up front, you are spending 811.00 on the whole kit and caboodle, chickens and all. It'll take roughly 4-5 months for a chicken to start laying eggs (if they were purchased as chicks.) and will have about a year of prime egg laying in them before they get the axe. So while waiting for them to become of age, you will probably end up buying $40 worth of eggs from the store. Also, you will need another bag or two of feed for the year (we'll say you wised up and started buying 50lb bags from a farm store for $12 each). 811.00 (eglu) + $40.00 (eggs) + $24.00 (chicken feed) equals a whopping $875 for a Chicken operation. This equals roughly $.93 an egg or $11.16 a dozen. This is a modest guesstimate.

 

   Don't get me wrong, I do understand the fun, enjoyment and satisfaction of running your own egg operation. I have raised chickens before and I am going to give it a shot again this spring. However, there are much more cost effective ways of doing so, and it requires a little handy-work and time compared to the Eglu. I am betting I will be able to house 3-4 chickens for about $50. From there, I will be paying $1.25 for the same chickens eglu offers and I will be buying feed for $12.00 a bag.

 

   I believe this is what happens to the customers of Omlet USA. They are the same people that fall for the organic trap as well as the Go Green trap. It's something you buy to prevent eating the fertilized sludge in the grocery store and something you buy to reduce the use of containers and reduce consumption of oh so precious petroleum. The eglu is a status symbol to let people know that you are more conscientious about mother earth than anyone else. It's flashy, sterile, green, organic, attractive and eye catching so that people will notice it. If raising chickens was truly the primary objective, these people would allow themselves to realise they can run the same egg operation for as little as $100 total. Unfortunately, the cheaper route will not be noticed nearly as much and it wouldn't be cute enough to house their farm animals.

  

   That's my beef... or egg.

   Ahhhh, Summer! I can't believe it's June already. We are half done with 2008! I sometimes feel I take for granted the first half of the year and hope it rushes by for the sake of warm weather. I could almost consider it selfish as God gave me so much time and yet I wish half of the year away in order to have some warm summer months. Let's make them worth it, mmkay?

 

   I mentioned in the previous blog that  I had been working on a few raised garden beds. Lo' and behold, we have completed them, dirt, plants and all, ready for the rain and shine! This year our crop so far consists of Tomatoes (four varieties), Bell Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Broccoli, Spinach, a variety of Lettuce, Radishes Basil and plenty of assorted herbs!

 

   We have already had a few casualties so far. A few of our tomato plants, grown from the seed, fried the first day we planted them and got progressively worse throughout the first week. We picked out the dead / near dead and planted some store-boughts in their place. We managed to save four out of the eight, however. I guess we were supposed to "warm them up" to the outdoors as they were used to the cushy indoor life. The same thing happened to our Egg Plants... It's a definite, "Life and Learn" experience. I've never had luck starting plants indoors, so if we got four of them to stick around, that's a great accomplishment for me.

 

   I'm also thinking we may have another crop of pears this year. I thought the tree was biannual, but I've seen numerous tiny pears behind the flowers already. Time will tell.

 

 

   I am hoping to have periodic updates throughout the season of how things are progressing, if not for my own knowlege and understanding of my garden, so I will be more prepared next year!