Trying to pick a new CSA

[conuly]

Something in Lower Manhattan or on Staten Island, or at least with weekend hours. Ugh this process is a pain, and none of the ones that fit that criteria seem to offer eggs.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

It's cool that at least you've got CSAs though, there in the city - that's certainly a cheerful sign of the progressive times.

So, what if you got a couple of bantam hens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantam_(poultry)), and kept them in a chicken tractor (https://www.google.com/search?q=chicken+tractor), which you and the girlies could build yourselves out of mostly scrap? It doesn't sound like you've got raccoons or weasels there, so you wouldn't need to build a chicken-fortress worthy of Mordor, such as I needed raising chickens out in the varmint-ridden Wild.

You'd have to heat the coop in winter, or else bring your banties indoors, which is very do-able - they'll happily winter in a rabbit-cage. Bantam hens are friendly and adorable; mine would hop up on my wrist to be petted. Their eggs are small, but not as small as one might expect, and they lay plenty of them.

I've always thought that eventually I'd like to build four raised beds, and build a really good chicken-tractor that exactly fits over them; then use my bantams (I love bantams) as little bug-eating, weed-seed-eating composting machines on each of them in turn every year. I dunno though; where I live, there are lots of home farms selling fresh eggs and vegetables, so raising my own is probably not worth it. It might be for you, though; a pair of bantam hens would produce all the eggs you need. Of course that doesn't solve your egg problem now - sorry!

[conuly]

We have lots of raccoons, actually, and opossums. And more importantly, we're stretched thin on the "how many animals can we take care of?" front.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Eh, raccoons are the bane of chicken-keeping; they can literally pick a coop apart with their nasssty little fingers. I wouldn't have thought Brooklyn would have a lot of them - your neighborhood must have more green-space than the part I used to visit long ago (LOL, the original Warlock Shop.)

I hear ya about 'too many animals' - I only have one, but he's been an expensive, high-maintenance critter in recent years. Every Spring, I think about getting chickens, and every Spring I talk myself right out of it again, because I just don't need that. Anyway, the Dungeness Valley is full of people who do have chickens, so organic free-range eggs are plentiful and fairly cheap - certainly cheaper than raising my own.

[conuly]

We're on Staten Island :)