As someone who grew up raising chickens, I hope that she has an abnormally large back yard so that her chicken hutch can be a good distance from her house. Chicken shit is entirely in its own category of stink. Also, the notion of roosters crowing in the morning? False. They crow at all times. #urbanfarms
@morninggloria: Naw, chickens - being mostly grain and bug eaters - aren't that bad. Spend some time near a pig sty or a dog kennel and chicken shit smells like perfume from France.
The teeny feathers that make the air seem thick and the sheer volume of guano chickens can put out is impressive, though. In a bad way.
And true that about roosters crowing about nothing in particular all the damn time. #urbanfarms
@KLondike5: Maybe it's something in my body's chemistry that just cannot stand the smell of chicken shit. It makes me wretch.
We also had sheep, rabbits, dogs, and cats, and we'd milk my grandparents' cows every night, and my cousins who lived in Iowa had pigs, and none of their shit made me want to vomit quite as much as chicken poo did. #urbanfarms
@morninggloria: I think you're on to something. You reminded me that I once had a conversation with a big bunch of people who were all former Midwestern farm kids and the subject of animal poo came up. There were a couple of people who insisted that chicken poop was the most vile and the rest of us were all "what? that stuff?"
Maybe it's like how cilantro tastes fine to some people and to others it's like leafy green poison. #urbanfarms
@squeakel: If you are raising the chickens for meat, you may want some roosters around. They're bigger and butchering a rooster doesn't eliminate a potential egg source. #urbanfarms
@morninggloria: Yep. My family did that. We got chicks in the spring, slaughtered the roosters when they reached the 'poussin' age, ate those, then had eggs all summer. Then, because we didn't keep chickens over the winter, we slaughtered the hens in the autumn.
Maybe you can buy a box of chicks that are all females, but I bet they aren't easy to find. #urbanfarms
@morninggloria: I know! I'm sitting here in a suit, surrounded by financial analysis stuff, thinking about going to the feed store and getting a box of peepers. It's cognitive dissonance like whoa. #urbanfarms
I know more about cattle farming than I ever thought I needed to know due to The Pioneer Woman. I love that site. They also just went through all the rounding up and shipping off to sell.
@sassyredhead: Not to snark, because I also love PW, but she and her husband and his family are actually really wealthy, and own one of the largest ranching operations in the country. They sell their cattle every year as part of their operation. The family in the above picture are selling what may actually be dairy cows in order to pay off debt.
@Crazie Janie: I was just saying that I know more about it from her site. And yeah, I can tell from the pictures they they are not hurting financially.
I was in the middle of Berlin the other day and there were TWO HUNDRED giant, bright green John Deere tractors parading through the streets at slow speed as part of the protest. Quite a sight.
Support your local farmers! Small farmers have a tough go of it these days, and the things you'd think they'd be suited to (like organic farming) are tough because in the U.S. it costs money to get a product USDA certified as organic. And seeds can be trademarked and companies can sue farmers for replanting from their past crops instead of buying new seeds - who knew? I'm working on a story about local food production, and am fascinated by this stuff.
Does anyone know, are German farmers subsidized the way American farmers are? I took an agricultural economics class and I got the impression that we subsidize pretty heavily compared to other countries. But, my teacher was a complete asshat who thought America was the only country in the world, so we didn't discuss anything but the US, even though we were supposed look at other nations.
@AmericanSplendor: America doesn't even subsidize like it used to. My family used to be in farming, and actually got paid for not growing some crops. Those days, and those subsidies, are long gone. Kentucky in particular (my home state) is reeling because with less tobacco use (an overall good thing) a lot of farmers are losing their livelihoods and trying to find other ways to survive. There are some experiments with small-scale organic farming, but it costs money to get a product USDA certified as organic, so it screws a lot of small farmers. The state is trying really hard to support agritourism (ranches where people can play farmer, farms that serve as classrooms for teaching kids about food sources, and small enterprise like farmers markets selling heirloom varieties, that kind of stuff).
Genuine question for the international type jezzies out there - how much of these types of problems are due to the EU being formed. I hear about problems with workers traveling from country to country getting jobs throughout and that causes racism and immigrant related problems, but what about farming? is there a lot of import from other countries that would keep the prices below what the German farmers can support?
@AmericanSplendor: Some info here:"The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a system of European Union agricultural subsidies and programs. It represents 48% of the EU's budget, €49.8 billion in 2006 (up from €48.5 billion in 2005).[1]
The CAP combines a direct subsidy payment for crops and land which may be cultivated with price support mechanisms, including guaranteed minimum prices, import tariffs and quotas on certain goods from outside the EU. Reforms of the system are currently underway reducing import controls and transferring subsidy to land stewardship rather than specific crop production (phased from 2004 to 2012). Detailed implementation of the scheme varies in different member countries of the EU.
Until 1992 the agriculture expenditure of the European Union represented nearly 49% of the EU's budget. By 2013, the share of traditional CAP spending will have almost halved (32%), following a decrease in real terms in the current financing period. In contrast, the amounts for the EU's Regional Policy represented 17% of the EU budget in 1988. They will more than double to reach almost 36% in 201"
11/17/09
11/17/09
The teeny feathers that make the air seem thick and the sheer volume of guano chickens can put out is impressive, though. In a bad way.
And true that about roosters crowing about nothing in particular all the damn time. #urbanfarms
11/17/09
We also had sheep, rabbits, dogs, and cats, and we'd milk my grandparents' cows every night, and my cousins who lived in Iowa had pigs, and none of their shit made me want to vomit quite as much as chicken poo did. #urbanfarms
11/17/09
Maybe it's like how cilantro tastes fine to some people and to others it's like leafy green poison. #urbanfarms
11/17/09
You don't need a rooster unless you want fertile eggs, though. #urbanfarms
11/17/09
11/17/09
Maybe you can buy a box of chicks that are all females, but I bet they aren't easy to find. #urbanfarms
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And Madame Eiffel Tower is 120 years old, what a cougar!
10/02/09
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@CurtCole: I think she falls in the grape category of the color wheel.
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@CurtCole: Pomegranate!
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how much of these types of problems are due to the EU being formed. I hear about problems with workers traveling from country to country getting jobs throughout and that causes racism and immigrant related problems, but what about farming? is there a lot of import from other countries that would keep the prices below what the German farmers can support?
05/27/09
The CAP combines a direct subsidy payment for crops and land which may be cultivated with price support mechanisms, including guaranteed minimum prices, import tariffs and quotas on certain goods from outside the EU. Reforms of the system are currently underway reducing import controls and transferring subsidy to land stewardship rather than specific crop production (phased from 2004 to 2012). Detailed implementation of the scheme varies in different member countries of the EU.
Until 1992 the agriculture expenditure of the European Union represented nearly 49% of the EU's budget. By 2013, the share of traditional CAP spending will have almost halved (32%), following a decrease in real terms in the current financing period. In contrast, the amounts for the EU's Regional Policy represented 17% of the EU budget in 1988. They will more than double to reach almost 36% in 201"
[en.wikipedia.org]
Info on reform here: [ec.europa.eu]