VideoAre you hiding chickens at home?

In many cities in the US and Canada, backyard chickens are illegal. The Perennial Plate takes a close up look at some of the outlaws hiding them.

The post Video: Underground Chickens appeared first on EcoSalon.

On competitive swimming, chickens and honeybees.

Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, 29, was the most decorated female athlete at both the 2004 Athens and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In Beijing, she became the first U.S. woman to medal six times during a single Games, giving her a lifetime total of 11. She hopes to add to that number this summer at the 30th Olympiad in London.

Besides swimming, Coughlin’s passions include food, gardening, and the five chickens she keeps in her backyard in Lafayette, California.

Avital Andrews from Sierra magazine interviewed Natalie to find out more about her gold-medal habits.

SIERRA: What do you mean when you call yourself an “urban farmer”?

Natalie: I grow a lot of my own food and have replaced a lot of our landscaping with edibles. We have 10 citrus trees, seven seasonal vegetable beds, and five chickens for eggs. We’re considering honeybees next. For a while we were thinking about goats but realized that would have been ridiculous and too much to handle between our two dogs and five chickens and my travel schedule.

SIERRA: When will you decide about the bees?

Natalie: I’ll probably wait until after the Olympics and then dive into that project. Right now we have several mason bee houses, to give them a refuge and encourage them to come pollinate all our fruits and vegetables. I definitely notice a difference this summer, versus the previous summer — a lot more of our flowers are turning into fruit.

SIERRA: How did you pick up gardening as a hobby?  

Natalie: When I was a kid, I had a 90-year-old neighbor — she could stick anything in the ground and it would grow and flourish. We’d always play in her garden. I still have the colander that she used to make potpourri from her roses. A lot of people in my life have had backyard gardens so when I was looking to buy a home, that was one of the requirements. I think it was just a desire to learn more about the seasons and about where food comes from.

The post Natalie Coughlin: An Olympic Swimmer and Urban Farmer appeared first on EcoSalon.

Urban homesteading is more doable than you think.

At the risk of stirring up controversy for using The-Term-Formerly-Known-As –Urban Homesteading, I’d like to talk about the practice of achieving more self-sufficient, sustainable living in cities from a strictly aesthetic point of view. Who says keeping chickens has to be hard? Take a look at the Kippen House above, a modular, multifunctional and modern chicken coop designed by Seattle-based architect Traci Fontyn.

Kippen means “chickens” in Dutch, and the Kippen House is a combination of the designer’s Dutch heritage, her love of Scandinavian design and “curious interests with urban agriculture in the form of an urban garden chicken coop.”

The Vertical Homesteader

The amazing thing about gardening trellises is that you can repurpose them out of anything (from old ladders to headboards), and they provide much needed support for the urban or vertical homesteader with a taste for cucumbers, tomatoes, and other climbing produce.

This one is made by UK artist Clare Harris who constructs trellises, bath mats, waste paper baskets, and table mats out of natural and locally coppiced materials. The trellis seen here is made from hazel poles and willow withies.

The Knife-Wielding Homesteader

UK retailer Hen & Hammock claims that every gardener needs a good pocketknife, as well as a trug and some string. I’m going to trust them on that. Clicking through their site is a lot like paging through a J. Crew catalog: not only is every object a total lustable, the entire lifestyle is, too.

The Bee-Keeping Homesteader

The well-documented peril of bees is that they’ve been dying off at a staggeringly high rate for years. Our life cycle is connected to bees in many ways, both seen and unseen. The direct impact on homesteaders meanwhile, is they need bees to pollinate their crops. Enter the Bee Station, an innovative little refueling and nesting station you can stick right in your garden.

Does all this talk of urban gardening have you hankering to show us your gorgeous stems and desirable pots? Then give us a peek into your homestead. Send pictures to editor@ecosalon.com.

The post Making Homesteading Approachable appeared first on EcoSalon.

It seems more and more people are doing just that, and even in urban areas. Let’s take a look at some growing trends.

Fruit/veggie/herb gardens

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People are really digging into the idea of growing their own produce. Why settle for a boring lawn or shrubbery when you can walk a few steps to your backyard into an edible forest of fresh onions, chard, spinach, lettuce and squash? As one recent article in the Denver Post put it, “soil is the new oil,” and last year seed sales seriously sprouted, according to USA Today. Because let’s face it – with the growing uncertainty of our times with tech, financial, and housing bubbles crashing left and right, oil prices rising and the value of the dollar falling, self-sufficiency is sounding better and better.

And yet, why only rely on your own garden? In an interesting interview with Carol Deppe about her new book The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, Carol mentions humans’ need to be both self-reliant and interdependent. By sharing ideas and tools, we all become more self-reliant and better survivors. It is in just this way that urban citizens are joining together to trade excess fruit and vegetables from each other’s yards. Numerous trading hubs are popping up in the Bay Area, for one. Check out VeggieTrader, a “classifieds” website for easy produce trading!

Thinking about starting your own garden? For inspiration, consider these 10 Easiest Vegetables to Grow at Home or perhaps start small with an herb garden.

Worms

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As people become more experienced in the ways of gardening, it’s natural to take it to the next level. In fact, rumor has it that “vericomposting,” aka. worm composting to create your own rich compost or “black gold” is becoming a popular new trend. Earthworms are our friends. They break down the soil, helping it breath and stay loose so plants’ roots can better grow.

I was dually impressed by a friend’s earthworm “collection” when I was visiting out in Colorado. Healthy soil translates into healthy plants – no doubt – as said friend proved with an incredible tomato and squash garden. My favorite was hearing Will Allen, an urban farming genius from Milwaukee, speak at a PopTech conference in Maine. His slide show included images of worm composting that were mind-blowing. Yes, even worms can knock your socks off. Or maybe it was the resulting “black gold” that I really wanted to sink my hands into.

Bees

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Beekeeping has been gaining popularity, most surprisingly in urban areas. In March of this year, New York lifted a ban on beekeeping and the city of Toronto boasts an impressive urban rooftop beehive haven atop the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. The hotel then provides its very own fresh honey harvested from its roof to satisfy restaurant diners. Genius!

Urbanites, such as Cameo Wood in the Bay Area, have turned keeping hives into a profit, selling fresh local honey to the community at Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper. Occasionally, beekeeping can cause conflict in city neighborhoods, as when a small urban farm in San Francisco had their beehives attacked.

Many beekeepers are simply gardeners who want bees to pollinate their flowers and vegetables. Worried about bee population declines, they’ve decided to take nature into their own hands. For more buzz on backyard beekeeping for beginners read on here.

Chickens

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There has been a lot of backyard chicken talk over the years. It seems in certain circles, chickens are all the rage. Sadly, my neighbors recently decided to end their urban chicken care-taking, so I no longer sip my morning coffee to the sound of the birds murmuring and ruffling their feathers. While most homeowners would consider the maintenance required for keeping chickens more work than its worth, those who have them beg to differ. For example, chickens can be fed just about any old scrap from the kitchen table, and in fact, the more variety in their diet, the more nutritious the eggs they lay.

Nobody seems to have exact numbers, but Backyard Poultry, a Wisconsin based magazine, boasts upward of 80,000 current subscribers (up from 15,000 four years prior) and numerous chicken websites are gaining surprising traffic, such as backyardchickens.com and urbanchickens.org.

Let’s face it, nobody refutes the superiority of a fresh egg to the alternative, and considering that recently Wright County Egg, an Iowa company, had to recall 380 million eggs in August for salmonella issues, keeping your own chickens just might be worth looking into.

Given the level of interest, I’m surprised that we haven’t seen any urban Chicken Coop Co-ops sprouting up. Seems like a perfect way to share in the labor and the egg-bounty. Any community organizers out there up for the challenge?

Aquaculture

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Why stop at chickens? Considering the sad state of our oceans and declining and poisoned fish populations, it makes sense to take a shot at farming your own fish. Sound fishy? Not to Will Allen (if I might reference the genius one last time) who has barrels of tilapia and perch at his Growing Power green houses, making aquaponics look easy. But could you do it at home? Apparently, fish farming in the backyard is a indeed a growing trend, although, I have yet to hear of anyone I know delving this deep. Let us know if you have encountered any local, urban (or suburban) fishmongers!

Be it a few herbs on the back deck, chickens or a full-fledged aquaponic system, may you too find the optimal self-sufficient gardening option for your very own backyard.

Images: Sbocaj, Salvadonica, Chianti, Tuscany, PopTech, fishermansdaughter, Svadilfari, grifray

The post 5 Urban Farming Ideas for Your Own Backyard appeared first on EcoSalon.

The New York Times reports that federal regulators rejected the idea of mandating egg farmers to vaccinate their hens against salmonella, ruling that there was insufficient evidence to support such a stance (hat tip to The Daily Beast for the link). The vaccination would have only cost a penny per dozen eggs and was introduced in Britain a decade ago, with resounding success.

Given the serious consequences of salmonella and the low cost of vaccination, this seems like a sensible precaution. However, it’s far from the root cause of the problem.

To me the most shocking thing about this outbreak is that we’re talking about a recall of more than half a billion eggs from just two producers in Iowa. Half a billion eggs; two producers. Doesn’t that seem wrong?

The egg producers in question have been linked to a string of past abuses, ranging from environmental to worker rights, according to a Democracy Now story I heard on PBS Radio this week. (Unfortunately, there’s no link online yet). It seems to me that salmonella is the natural outcome of factory farming – producing eggs in a relentlessly profit-driven industrial environment. A vaccine would reduce salmonella, and that would be a darn good thing, but it wouldn’t fix all the other problems associated with battery egg farming, from chicken welfare to water contamination to worker safety. Europe has already banned battery egg farms and California is now doing the same. But perhaps Iowa is the state that really needs to act?

Small-scale free-range or organic egg farming is far less likely to foster the environment for outbreaks like this. And if an outbreak does occur, the resulting recall would involve thousands of eggs, not half a billion.

To me, the moral of the story is clear: Cheap food makes you ill.

Photo credit: Boiled egg photo by Craig Hatfield on Flickr, licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons.

The post Bad Eggs: Why the Salmonella Outbreak Was Preventable appeared first on EcoSalon.

A friend of mine in Berkeley kept chickens in her backyard. I was devastated when she moved to Seattle before I could have a look. But then, cluck was with me, because I moved into a new place in San Francisco, and my downstairs neighbors had chickens!

Urban chickens were in our midst. The myth became our truth. And thus, my chicken lessons began. The baby chicks were originally born in our apartment laundry room, so the grown chickens liked to return to their first roost. This meant shooing away chickens off our third story deck as they tried to sneak into our place. Clucking surreal! Who knew chickens would even walk up and down stairs?

The luster began to fade when I found myself stepping in chicken poop every time I went to water my deck garden. Really? I wasn’t even enjoying the benefits of fresh eggs! OK, my neighbors have set me up once or twice. Wait a minute – could I somehow benefit from this poop? Fresh poop for fertilizer?

We recently had family in town visiting, and on our way to nearby Glen Canyon Park, we heard an animal sound. Could it be? It was.

Up on a neighbor’s front porch. Urban goats.

If you’re thinking about raising your own urban chickens, find out more from this chicken expert interview.

Image: Emily Mills

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