The Right to Grow and Raise Your Own Food

[olefarmersdaughter]

Barnyard smell=the smell of money. That's we've always been taught.
I also live pretty close to the stockyards/packing houses so even if I had any noticeable odor from my few chickens, it ain't nothing like the smell of Lacawanna Leather burning the fur off the hides.....but ya just learn to live with it.

 

[chickortreat]

There is a reason why people tell you to,"buy a farm", Animals smell. Especially in small enclosed areas. Farms have lots of land and your neighbors are likely to be far away or have animals themselves.
There is a time and a place for everything and IMO the city is no place to own chickens.
There are beautiful farmer's markets all over this city with fresh eggs to purchase. Please, let's all of us city dwellers go there for fresh eggs and not subject city neighbors to the barnyard smell.

That depends on your definition of "city dweller". If everyone felt this way.....no chickens, no small garden, total dependency on someone else to raise your produce/meat/eggs for you.....where does that leave the average American citizen? If one cannot have the freedom to own a few chickens, gee, just how free is he/she?

Yes, a "farm" generally means several acres of land. But almost anyone can have a small amount of agricultural independence, assuming they don't live in a particularly Nazi neighborhood and have their neighbors trained well.

 

[olefarmersdaughter]

I am lucky to be a farm raised 'city dweller'. I am lucky to be living in the midwest where even if you were raised in the city, you wouldn't have to drive very far to be 'country'. I wonder how larger urban areas deal with extended power outages, grocery stores, restaurants, etc not being open. At least I could go to my garden in the summer and pantry filled with homegrown and canned fruits and veggies and meats in the other seasons. And I always have access to fresh eggs. I'm saying that all it takes is a major snow storm, tornado, or other weather related event to make you realize that you don't want to depend on someone else to feed your family. Because when that does happen, (and it has here a couple of times), I may not necessarily want to share with my neighbors who may be complaining about the smell of my chickens or my unsightly garden......just sayin'.....

 

[Jenny1]

I really hope nobody got offended by my previous comment. I know it is ludicrous to put a cow on a balcony! I just wonder where the line SHOULD be drawn
.
Here, there is a limit to the number of chickens I can own.(I have been told the HOA allows it but I never actually checked , and the city allows it with permission of neighbors. I "forgot" to ask them.

)The limit is 3 or 5 or something. I think that is really fair- keeps me with enough eggs for my family, but not so many that it will cause a stink. Nobody in city limits should have a rooster in my humble opinion.

Also, I think having a garden is great- as long as it doesnt bother the neighbors too much. (Picture tearing out front yard grass to put in a garden in a cookie cutter neighborhood).

I love the idea of growing your own food, but we just have to be thoughtful about it. I read a post on here the other day. The person was sad because the neighbor was tired of chickens eating her garden! I have to admit, if I had just planted a nice garden and someones chickens were free ranging and ate all my plants, pooed on my yard, and sqwacked to high heaven I would ask the neighbor to please build a run too!

ps- I think the same goes for owning dogs! There should be a limit to how many, how loud, how stinky. Because it really isnt fair to ask others to put up with a barking dog day and night. (and I would call and complain if they were violating a noise ordinance.) When you live near other people you should still have the right to some amount of quiet! And they should pick up poo. Its gross, attracts flies and spreads disease. And it isnt fair to the dog either.

 

[Civil Eggs]

I love the argument from nay-sayers that 'if you want to raise chickens and grow your own food, then just buy a farm". In what universe can the average person afford to buy a farm? I don't know about anyone else, but even to buy a few acres anywhere close to my job. it will cost between $10,000 and $20,000 and acre AND the counties around here all require a minimum purchase of 10 acres to build a house. Sure there are one acre housing developments but they would never let you raise anything on them, and those a going for about $50,000. Unless of course I want to drive an hour to work each day, I'll have to be happy with a few backyard chickens and a small garden.

I could have written this. I live in a city surrounded by agriculture. I cannot legally raise my own food and I cannot afford to feed my family -- including two with special dietary needs -- much more than edible, processed non-foods. My hens would be immaculately clean and much quieter than the neighbors' dogs.

 

[wingless]

I really hope nobody got offended by my previous comment. I know it is ludicrous to put a cow on a balcony! I just wonder where the line SHOULD be drawn

Jenny1, I don't think anyone was offended by your comment! I completely agree that the trend to keep chickens in residential areas will lead to other folks pushing the boundary even further, and it fair to ask where the line is.

My opinion is that there should be regulatory limits, but I don't think they should be defined in terms of numbers or kinds of animals. Instead, I think they should be written in terms of what the actual problem is. Odors and noise, for example, should definitely be regulated, because those kinds of irritants can really affect quality of life.

But the regulations should not assume that people can't come up with resourceful ways to keep food-producing animals in ways that work for them and that don't result in unneighborly levels of odor or noise. Just as we here have discovered that keeping chickens is actually very easy in a backyard setting, other folks might be able to figure out the same thing for different animals. We should let people be creative and resourceful, and only impede them when they create real problems for their neighbors, like odor and noise. Or, you know, cow droppings from the balcony above.

 

[Civil Eggs]

My opinion is that there should be regulatory limits, but I don't think they should be defined in terms of numbers or kinds of animals. Instead, I think they should be written in terms of what the actual problem is. Odors and noise, for example, should definitely be regulated, because those kinds of irritants can really affect quality of life.

Amen!

 

[chickortreat]

There is a pole yard (pole treating plant) about 7 miles from me, "as the crow flies". It's been there for years, but in the last 2 or 3 years, they've changed the preservative they use to treat the poles. The new one smells awful. I mean near sickening. And there are houses just across the highway from the plant. At times, if the wind is right, I can smell it here. I was raised on a broiler farm. Eighteen thousand chickens under one roof. And I've never smelled a chicken house (or hog parlor, for that matter) that smelled as offensive as this plant. Funny thing is, no one is shutting them down, or forcing them to sweeten up their recipe. So, I wouldn't take kindly to anyone telling me my chickens' smell was "bothering" them.

 

[MichAttorney]

" I have always supposed that the gift of life was accompanied with the right to seek and produce food, by which life can be preserved and enjoyed, in all ways not encroaching upon the equal rights of others. I have supposed that the right to take all measures for the support of life, which are innocent in themselves, is an element of that freedom which every American citizen claims as his birthright." Powell v. Pennsylvania, 127 U.S. 678, 690 (1888) (Field, dissenting)

"It seems clear that without food, and its corollary, physical survival, all of the other rights embodied in the Constitution lose their meaning." West v. Bowen, 879 F.2d 1122 (3rd Cir. 1989) (Opinion of Mansmann, concurring in part, dissenting in part, at n.15)

 

[DaikaijuTorira]

"For the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life at the mere will of another seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself." Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886)

That was within the Powell v. Pennsylvania case... thank you for the new quote I'm adding to my favorites. I never would have thought reading through old court cases could be so interesting....