Chickens and Farmers

If any of you Bountiful-dwellers haven't been to the farmers' market this year, GO! I just got back, and I loved it. I remember the first time I went to the Bountiful Farmers' Market with my grandma. It was in a parking lot, there were only a handful of vendors and they all sold produce. Each year it seems to get bigger and bigger. Now it's held at the U of U Bountiful extension (or Stoker Elementary for you native Bountiful folks), and it is awesome. There were so many people there even though it was really hot (though that might have just been me), and there were a lot of vendors. They sold eggs, beef, strawberries, melons, corn, gourds, greens, onions, beets, honey, popcorn, bread, cheese, preserves, a lot of beautiful crafts and jewelry, Scentsy, essential oils, homemade goat soap, plants and lots of yummy food (funnel cakes, tamales, and so much more). I brought home a bag full of yummy things! I love buying things from local growers. Their food is higher quality than the grocery store, can be cheaper than the grocery store and is often much healthier than the grocery store. If you want pesticide-free food, or free range chicken eggs, or really fresh (rather than artificially ripened) produce, this is the place to find it.

Speaking of free range chicken eggs, last weekend Heather and I dragged our husbands to Salt Lake's Tour de Coops to tour a bunch of urban backyard chicken coops. There were lots of coops that we liked, but these two pictures are of our very favorite. We loved this backyard. It wasn't large, it was shady and verdant, and it had a seriously good looking chicken coop. It was the kind of backyard we would both LOVE to have. Some of you might think we're a little nuts for wanting to keep chickens when we get a house, especially when eggs are so cheap at the grocery store. One big reason to me is that they taste so much better than the ones at the store. Last summer I bought a carton of free range eggs from the farmers' market at the U. On the label, it said that the eggs were from "galavanting chickens." When I was watching Lanna that night, I asked her if she wanted a galavanting chicken egg. She loved it and said it tasted really good. When I told her that Heather and I were going to look at chickens, she said we should get galavanting chickens. She thinks galavanting chickens are a particular breed of chicken that make really good eggs, when really they're just happy, normal chickens.

As you can see from the pictures, chickens are fairly easy to care for. They don't take up a lot of room, they don't make a lot of noise (excluding roosters, of course), and are a great way to teach kids about responsibility, self sufficiency and where their food comes from. One common misconception is that you need a rooster and a hen to get eggs. This isn't true. You do need a hen and a rooster to get a chick, but the eggs that you eat for breakfast are unfertilized eggs. The hens lay them all by themselves without any roosters. Backyard chickens have been growing in popularity, and several nearby cities passed ordinances allowing chickens (though generally NOT roosters). Here's a great article from the U's Daily Chronicle (a.k.a. The Chrony) on urban chickens. I can't wait to have my own backyard so I can have my very own mini flock of galavanting chickens.