Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Large animal policies

[John Beutler (jabeutler]

I also don't like viewing food production activities as hobbies. And it 
isn't dabbling, we take it pretty seriously.  The production of our 
community garden and chickens is a substantial part of our diet, even if 
it's outside of the cash economy for the most part.  Unlike Pioneer Valley, 
our chickens are my individual project, with a coop approved by the design 
review team, funded and built by me, 
http://www.libertyvillage.com/Look/look_around10.htm and with a limit on 
numbers of chickens, as well as a probationary period for the rooster 
(which he passed).  However the main complaint these days, after 3 years, 
is that there aren't enough eggs to go round.  People really like the 
eggs.  We haven't done broilers, though one neighbor has expressed interest 
in doing so.  Food scraps are recycled directly to the birds, they forage 
in the garden in winter, and their manure goes into compost.

We have a total of 23 acres, 8 with houses, so use of the remainder 
requires some squeezing, since several acres is forested wetlands.  One 
resident wanted to have a dairy cow, but this became an unfortunately 
contentious issue, with concerns over smell, poop, etc.  The most strongly 
opposed person had been raised on a dairy farm and didn't want any more of 
that stuff.  Admittedly it would have been a tight squeeze.  The cow 
proponent ended up leaving with her family and now has a cow, pigs and 
chickens on a mini-farm in the next county.  I think we all would say that 
the issue was not handled particularly well, especially considering that 
we're in a pretty rural area, with dairy and horse farms in all directions. 
My dream would be to acquire a few more adjacent acres to permit more 
animal husbandry.

Hobbies to me are activities that are not productive - model trains for 
instance, which I like (my father was a big model RR person) but don't do 
myself, or radio controlled airplane models, scuba diving, 
etc.  Woodworking is productive.  Flower gardening is productive.  This 
doesn't mean that hobbies are bad, they're just not productive.

Our society devalues anything that doesn't return cash.  But we've heard 
from Craig on that.....JAB

[tail trimmed]

> On Feb 1, 2008 2:55 PM, J Boerst <julieb [at] whitehawkecovillage.com> wrote:
>
> > One concern about larger-scale agriculture (in terms of land use--1 acre+)
> > engaged in by individuals, not the community as a whole, is that it uses a
> > significant piece of land for what would essentially amount to an 
> individual
> > household's hobbies.  I know at Dancing Rabbit in Missouri they do have a
> > lease system, and I'm wondering if anyone else has something similar.
> >  People dabbling in growing veggies would probably use less land than 
> people
> > dabbling in raising dairy cows, so it does become more of an issue when
> > animal agriculture is on the table, as does the expense of fencing, barns,
> > etc.
> >
>
> --
> Craig Ragland
> Coho/US Exec. Dir.
> www.cohousing.org
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/

John Beutler
Liberty Village, MD
jabeutler [at] comcast.net
http://www.libertyvillage.com/