Meet our chickens

 

SAPHIRA

(Saphira is on the left)

Saphira and Thorn are Road Island Red hens.  These hens are good layers at around 275 eggs per year.  They are strong layers even in the winter and are not bothered by cold.  Saphira is the less aggressive of these two hens.  She is somewhat curious and enjoys eating bugs. 

 

THORN

 

(Thorn is in front)

Thorn is our most aggressive hen.  She is clearly the top of our pecking order.  Even so she is friendly and will eat out of your hand if you bring her treats.  Like all our chickens she loves watermelon, and will let others have some too. 

TUCK

 

 

Tuck is the only of our chickens that we raised from a chick. 

We named her Tuck because she looked a bit like Friar Tuck as a baby.  Tuck is a Turken hen, Tuck will lay light brown eggs and they are good at regulating their own temperature.  She is curious but unwilling to fly and tends to prefer to be on the ground, not on a perch. 

CINNABUN

 

Cinnabun is by far our friendliest chicken.  She is a Red Star hen, who can be expected to lay an egg a day.  She also will follow you anywhere you go.  If you go into the chicken run it is difficult to leave without her following you.  She loves to eat out of your hand and will follow us all around the yard if we let her. 

 

 

Meet our dogs

 

Our dogs protect our home from rodents (and spiders).  One large risk of chickens is that rodents will try to enter their coop and either hurt them or take the eggs.  In order to avoid that we have placed our dog run right by the coop and chicken run, so that the smell will deter rodents from even coming near the house.  The chickens have come to find the dogs interesting and come right up to the fence to check them out whenever the dogs are in the run. 

OREO                                                                                                                   

Oreo is a certified service animal who provides emotional support to people in the hospital Alzheimer’s ward.  His tail also wags at all times and he will push his head under your hand until you pet him.  He loves playing tug of war or chasing anyone and caring for Keebler.

KEEBLER

Keebler is our best rodent hunter.  She can catch anything in no time at all.  When one of our chickens ran out of the pen Keebler pounced and caught her immediately (the chicken is fine, but not a fan of Keebler).  She has been dubbed Keebler defender of the house.  Sometimes we bring her up to my parent’s house to clear the voles out of their yard.  She also likes to hide under blankets, curl up in your lap or play with squeaky toys. 

I should admit that the dogs are really pets and not part of our farm, but we love them and they deserve a mention. 

Why Urban Farming?

My husband likes to point out that its hard to call it a farm when we have just under 1/2 an Acre. It produces a quarter ton of food a year so he'll just have to live with the description. We started our farm for 4 reasons. 


The first reason we grow our own food is for the health benefits. The American food supply is limited and not well regulated. In order to claim eggs are cage free the farmer has to let the chicken out once in a while. This does not allow the chickens to eat bugs or grass which is necessary to produce truly healthier eggs. Similarly organic vegetables and fruits do not have strict requirements, and they are being lowered all the time. We determined the best method of avoiding unhealthy foods is to grow our own, and eat home cooked meals. 


The second reason is economic. By growing our food we can get high quality food at reasonable prices. We are planning to grow enough fruit and vegetables to truly supplement our grocery planning. Last year we took 2 potatoes, cut them up into seed potatoes and grew 40 lbs of potatoes.


If you aren't worried about your health, and your wallet is doing fine, you could still get behind reason number 3...TASTE! Vegetables we grow here are so much more flavorful than the poor imitations you can buy at the local grocery store. I remember telling my husband how much I hated tomatoes when we got together. As a joke he bought me a hanging tomato plant to take care of. When I ate the first one I fell in love. It was so sweet and tangy, not liquidy and bland like its store bought cousins.


Lastly and possibly most importantly urban farming helps the environment. Each item on our table takes large quantities of gasoline to get there.  Unsustainable practices are usually used to produce it.  This means that each meal we eat has become another loss for mother earth.  One unsustainable practice is using systemic pesticides on our crops.  Honey bees are dying out in North America. Europe has banned the (systemic) pesticides we currently use and their bee population has rebounded, however we are unwilling to do the same. Bees are responsible for pollinating most of the world’s vegetables, fruits and grains. Without them we will have to find alternative methods, taking nature even further out of our food production.  Having a bee hive won’t stop this, but it does let us take responsibility for a few bees, and do our part to turn this around. A single bee hive will improve the yield of every plant in a 6 mile radius by 60%. Our single hive won’t save the bees, but they will remain alive and help our neighborhood to grow what they can. 


Now we are not willing to totally eliminate non local food (I love citrus, pineapples and many other foods that simply don’t grow in Utah) but we are trying to act responsibly. We do this by growing what we can and buying locally to improve our carbon footprint while eating well, being healthy and saving money.