Disappointingly, the Salem City Council rejected ordinances that would have allowed chickens within city limits. I wonder if the opponents of the plan have ever actually visited any normal backyard chicken coops. Their arguments seem to be based heavily on fear-mongering.

Wine Country Thanksgiving –More than 140 wineries and tasting rooms in the Willamette Valley will be open during Thanksgiving Weekend (most open 11am-5pm, November 27-29, but hours may vary, so call ahead). Meet winemakers, experience special tastings and enjoy specialty food and live entertainment. Click here for a complete list of participating wineries and tasting rooms.

I made sweet roasted rosemary acorn squash this week, and it was fabulous.  You should try it immediately. Go ahead, I’ll wait here…

Heavenly Harvest Farm in Corvallis is having their Harvest Festival through Saturday.

The College of Agricultural Sciences at OSU is once again hosting the Food for Thought lecture series, beginning Tuesday, November 3rd at 7pm. These free public lectures are held in the LaSells Stewart Center’s Construction & Engineering Hall on the OSU campus.  Lectures include time for audience discussion and refreshments are provided.

Check out this special issue of Oregon’s Agricultural Progress: Food in Oregon.

That’s all for this week — I’m going to try to make this a regular feature of the blog, so please stay tuned!

(photo credit: “Cristom Vineyards” by pete4ducks)

We take care of the whole transaction online. I can place the order through their website and pay via Paypal, and then I send my friend an e-mail with her total, and she reimburses me via Paypal as well. Very convenient and quick! No rummaging around for checks, which I really like.

So far my husband and I have tried the 2% milk, chocolate milk, Monterey Jack cheese,  and regular salted butter — all are fantastic. He commented that he never knew milk had an actual flavor, and that it tastes good!

I’m thrilled to knock another product off our grocery list. I no longer have to go to a grocery store to buy:

• eggs
• beef (unless we want a specific cut we didn’t get with our 1/4 cow, but it hasn’t come up yet)
• milk
• half-and-half or heavy cream
• yogurt
• sour cream
• certain cheeses
• butter

Very soon, I’ll be able to add pork to that list. Some friends and I are going to split a pig from Wood Family Farm in Turner, OR. We’ll each take a third… I’m curious to see what kinds of cuts we receive and how much.

The next thing I need to figure out is where to start getting chicken. After raising our own and seeing their little personalities, I just don’t think I can keep buying chicken from the grocery store. I don’t want “innovative chicken products” (via Ray’s Food Place), I just want some chicken that was allowed to live a little, you know?

Finally, I’ve been unsuccessful in tracking down any available turkey from local farms for Thanksgiving. From what I am reading online, most places sold out already and have waiting lists.  I’ve made a couple of calls, but am not having any luck getting a response. I think Ray’s sells turkey from a somewhat local farm, though, so I’m going to check that out again this year. Then again, maybe we will break with tradition this year and do something other than turkey.

Think I can cut out grocery shopping altogether by this time next year? (She asks hopefully…)

(photo credit: nickwheeleroz on Flickr)

Talking about being newbie chicken-raisers  is enjoyable, but there’s a lot to it that can’t be communicated in the limited space of a newspaper article. If you are interested in raising hens, I would not hesitate to encourage you to look into it, but really look into it and plan ahead. For instance, with regards to building a coop — we did not plan far enough in advance and ended up buying all our materials, rather than obtaining recycled items, which would have been my preference. We were just taken off guard by how suddenly they needed to be out of the house, even though we’d read about it. Personally, I’d suggest having the coop done or nearly done before you even bring home the chicks, then you can spend time modifying or refining while they’re inside.

Another thing you really need to know is if your city allows chickens and what the restrictions are. Just save yourself the potential for grief later on. While Albany and the surrounding cities allow backyard hens, Salem currently does not.

One lesson we learned when one of our hens broke her foot… we were not first-aid ready. Read up on what products are safe to use on chickens and make a kit to keep near the coop.

For as much time as I spend at Coastal Farm & Ranch looking lost and out of my element, I am not offered much help while there. They’ll answer questions, sort of, if I find someone to ask, but I don’t usually end up feeling confident. For example, when we brought the chicks home, we were trying to understand the bedding options. They used pellets in their tubs, but looked confused when I asked to buy some. Our chicks were eating the pine shavings, but the folks at the store didn’t seem to know what I should do about it. I love the store, don’t get me wrong, I just think they cater more to people who already know what they’re doing. So, I turned to books: Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens for some info from the experts, and The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City for some real-world reassurance that non-farmer folks can do this in their backyards.

I also turned to the internet. I was inspired by fellow Oregon blogger Sarah and the tales she told of her chickens. I also regularly visit Backyard Chickens and Urban Chickens.

Bottom line, when you’re ready to take the plunge… read, read, read. And talk to people already raising a backyard flock, if you possibly can.

Photo: collectmoments on Flickr

Yesterday I read this article from AFP entitled “Americans turn to backyard chickens for food security“. It was a good article, talking about how the sale of chicks is up in Idaho and Washington states, as well as Oregon. It touched on the misconception that raising chickens for the eggs is going to be a less expensive option than store-bought eggs.

And then the article just crashed and burned at the end:

All contention aside, experts say there is little nutritional difference between homegrown and commercial eggs. Colors in the shell are different, with the bulk of commercial hens producing white-shelled eggs and backyard varieties everything from brown to light green, and pigments in the feed of backyard flocks tend to deepen the yellow of their yolks.

WHAT? What contention? What experts? Who? Why? How?

Granted, this wasn’t the focus of the article. The focus was food security. (To which I say… erm… okay. It’s a start, I guess.) But then why include this line at all if you are not going to elaborate?

Mother Earth News conducted an egg testing project in 2007. The methodology is not perfect, but at least the nutritional information about the free-range eggs come from an accredited laboratory in Portland. They compared eggs from 14 free-range flocks to the stated values in the USDA Nutrient Database and came to the conclusion that free-range eggs can contain, on average, more omega-3s, more beta carotene, more vitamin A, and less cholesterol and fat than the commercially raised eggs. (Click here for the full chart — opens as a PDF.) In 2008, they looked at vitamin D and concluded that free-range eggs also contain 4 to 6 times more vitamin D than commercial eggs.

Should they – or someone – do a better test? Yes. Sure. Let’s have it. Mother Earth News isn’t the first to find similar information, but I have yet to find somthing written by independent “experts” that claims otherwise and shows results from actual tests.

In the future, AFP, cite your sources, okay?