The end of urban homesteading
Fruit trees, a vegetable garden, and chickens were my consolation prizes for getting priced out of New York in 2007. Yes, we had to leave our hometown when our first kid was born, but at least in Portland, Oregon, I could keep chickens in our small urban yard, and grow food. It never really felt like an even trade, but the fresh eggs, the baskets full of plums and figs, and the ability to grow kale and arugula year-round somewhat eased the sting of losing home. At the height of my efforts, we grew almost all of our own vegetables in beds that filled the backyard, front yard, and parking strip, and had enough eggs to share with neighbors. The eggs were gorgeous and delicious, with rich orange yolks.
(I can’t figure out how to add a caption or alt text to a video, but it’s the flock in their run, having fun spreading fresh straw around.)
We started off with four birds, and that number fluctuated over the years, the flock shrinking when a chicken died, growing when I took in three birds who needed to be rehomed after a divorce or when we got new chicks. The most we ever had at once was eight chickens. At the beginning of December, we were down to five, most recently losing the last survivor of that first group of four—a gold-laced Wyandotte named Tiger—to old age.
We named them all. They were pets. Any farmer could have told us that was a bad idea, but better to have loved and lost, etc etc. and I loved those birds.
(Me with Chipmunk, quite possibly the world’s most beautiful chicken)
My favorite was Rue, chicken of my heart. (She was named after the herb, by way of Hamlet.)
One morning last summer, when I went out back to feed the chickens I found them all milling around the enclosed run except for Rue. She was standing inside the coop, looking stunned. I picked her up and put her down in the run and she just sort of stood there. The next time I checked on her, she was holding her neck curled to the side with her head tucked against her chest, and she was turning in circles. My husband and I debated putting her down, but decided to hold off. The other birds all looked fine, and it seemed clear that Rue had had a stroke. She got a bit better over the next few days, and was able to eat and drink. In a week her neck had straightened up again and she was leaving the run to scratch for bugs in the backyard with the rest of the flock.
Chickens’ brains run on sunlight, and more or less shut down in the dark. At dusk, my birds instinctively went back into their coop to sleep, and I would come out to lock up the run to keep predators out. After Rue’s stroke, I would go out to lock up the run and find her sitting alone by the back door, as if waiting for me. I would carry her to the coop and tuck her in, then lock everyone up safely inside. It took about a week of that for her to relearn how to return to the coop as the sun went down. A few more weeks passed and she was completely recovered. A miracle chicken.
In this most recent lineup, there were also Chipmunk and Chonky, Easter Eggers who laid olive-green and pale blue eggs, and who had feather beards that got sooty when the air filled with ash during fire season. There was Squiggles (yes, my kids got to name most of them) the Barnevelder, who laid enormous dark brown eggs. There was Rosemary Chicken, aka Romi, a Barred Rock who was an absolute sweetheart, if not the brightest bulb...
You will have noticed by now my use of the past tense.
In mid-December, raccoons broke into the run overnight and killed all five chickens. The run was raccoon-proofed, but something must have gapped or broken in the fencing and I missed it. The little assholes killed my girls, and only ate their heads. It was gruesome and also maddening. What a waste. Sure, in a forest all kinds of other animals and insects would have stepped up to finish the meat, but still...
We lost one chicken to a raccoon years ago. It was my fault, because I forgot to close the run up that night. The raccoon got in around midnight, we heard the birds making a big fuss, and we ran out and chased it off. It had already killed a Barred Rock named Cricket—of course, my favorite at the time—but we got there before it could get to the others. That was summer. The windows were open.
This time... Winter, windows closed. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I opened the run in the morning to feed them, and saw their headless bodies. They were all huddled up in the farthest corner of the run from the coop, except for Romi, whose body was still inside the coop, more devoured than the others. My guess is a raccoon got in as they slept, and snagged the closest bird. Rosemary was one of the oldest, and tended to sleep on the floor of the coop in a nest box instead of up on the roosting bar. The others ran as far as they could, but were trapped, waiting to be killed by either that one raccoon or by reinforcements. When I found them, Rue’s body was lying in front of the others. She was the top of the pecking order and always acted as protector of the rest. It looked like she was trying to do that to the end.
It was horrific to open the run, a bucket of feed in hand, expecting them to crowd around my feet as usual and seeing...well... It was awful.
It’s the way of nature, blah blah blah. Nature fucking sucks. I’m done with keeping chickens. I’ve had enough.
I had already let go of my vegetable garden in 2020 so the kids could have a trampoline during lockdown. The trampoline broke a while back, so now we have an empty chicken coop and a broken trampoline in our little backyard. I’m sure our neighbors are loving the view. The plan is to just scrap it all and start over in the spring, sans livestock. I don’t know if I’ll plant vegetables again. I think maybe I’m done with all of that.
I still have a plum tree and a fig tree and an apple tree. I still have a raspberry patch and a small perennial herb garden. The chickens were the biggest part of the “urban homesteading” thing I threw myself into in 2007 to try to feel happy about living in Portland by embracing the things I couldn’t have in Brooklyn, and the last bit I’m letting go of.
The gardening and preserving, the baking and yogurt-making and chicken-keeping were fun, and they did save us some money at a time when money was particularly tight, but it was a fuckton of work, and ultimately that time was better spent by my doing paid work that brings in a lot more money than my runny homemade yogurt ever saved us. (And the chickens? Their feed is nowhere near less expensive than just buying eggs.) Home economics aside, all of that work didn’t achieve the main goal of making me love living in Portland.
I still don’t feel entirely at home here, but after all these years that isn’t going to change. I got involved in my kids’ preschool and then in their schools. I connected with other parents. I got heavily involved in local politics and activism. I got heavily involved in the literary community. I have tried so hard to find my place here.
It’s not home, but it’s where I live. I’m okay with that. Filled with rage toward all raccoons, sometimes lonely, often homesick for New York, but okay.