New Growth: Kids and the art of Chicken Wrangling

Growth is a double edged sword. Unchecked, growth can be cancerous and destructive. It is this type of ceaseless expansion that has put our society into the precarious environmental and financial positions in which we currently find ourselves. On the other hand, growth can be regenerative and life-giving. Following a forest fire or a bitter winter, the first green shoots to emerge from the earth bear witness to the earth's ability to restore life in the wake of disaster.

My goal for this blog is pretty simple and open-ended: I want to document and share with family and friends my efforts to incorporate an ever increasing degree of self sufficiency, voluntary simplicity, and environmentally-conscious design into my life as a would be urban homesteader.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Kids and the art of Chicken Wrangling

One of the many fringe benefits that come with owning small livestock is the opportunity for your kids to interact with animals. They (the kids) learn responsibility by feeding and taking care of them, they learn where food actually comes from, and they get a chance to connect with a living, breathing part of nature (as opposed to staring at yet another blinking screen).

Each of our kids has their own chicken, and they love to hold and pet them when they get the chance. The chickens, however, are not always as enthused. To that effect, each of the kids has developed their own unique style of chicken wrangling.