This week the theme of life seems to be “doing it all.” On Monday I freaked out and had a total clean-all-the-things! moment. A couple of my friends and several fellow bloggers are heading towards, in the midst of, or just coming out of overwhelm meltdowns. And throughout, I’ve been thinking about backyard chickens.
Now don’t get me wrong, I would really like backyard chickens. While DH was deployed, I sent him photos of crazy chickens so that he would fall in love and jump on board with the backyard chicken project. It totally worked, although he now he wants chickens with crazy hair, and they are not always the best laying hens. Our HOA doesn’t allow chickens. But they don’t allow more than two dogs either, and tons of people are breaking that rule, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. It turns out that all I have to do is write a letter requesting a waiver, back it up with good arguments (like the fact that Olympia and Seattle allow chickens), and check with the neighbors on each side. We have a community storm pond on one side and a vacant rental house on the other. HOA issue resolved.
So really, there is nothing stopping me from getting chickens at this point except for sloth. But it’s not actually sloth. It’s overwhelm.
Animals Come First
Animals come first because I’m animal crazy. They also come first because they are alive, vulnerable, and completely dependent on me. That means that if I get chickens, they will promptly insert themselves on the priority list above writing blog posts, the eBook and various other projects I’m working on, and cleaning my kitchen floor. (To be honest, the kitchen floor should really be bumped up the list. Way up. Ew.) It also means that any time I want to go somewhere for any significant period of time, I will have to bat my eyes at DH even more so that he’ll forgive me for leaving him with the menagerie. (Not really. He loves the crew, but that doesn’t make me feel any less guilty about it.)
I don’t have a lot of non-negotiables in my life right now, and most of them are animals. And as much as I would like some productive additions to my current group of lazy freeloaders, I’m beginning to accept that this not the right time, and raising my own backyard chickens is completely unnecessary.
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Community and Specialization
Once upon a time, a guy named Adam Smith wrote a book called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in which he outlines the benefits of specialization. Basically specialization states that if you do what you’re good at and I do what I’m good at and then we trade, we’ll both be better off for it. Specialization says you do not have to do it all. The book goes on to say a ton of other things, but they’re mostly irrelevant to my backyard chickens.
In the dark green community (and to a certain extent in the other shades of green), there’s a lot of attention paid to self-sufficiency. From raising your own meat and egg chickens to growing and preserving all your own vegetables to making your own body care products and building your house with your bare hands, there’s a lot of buzz about DIY-ness. But it’s just… so much and can be so extreme, that it makes me wonder how much of it is really necessary.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not criticizing self-sufficiency. There are some tremendous advantages to DIY-ness. The tomatoes I grew in my backyard are the best I’ve tasted all season, not to mention the cheapest. But I don’t think that doing everything yourself is always feasible, or even desirable. Why? Because this year, my strawberries sucked, but I still wanted to eat strawberries. Because I don’t have the space or the time or the zoning to keep a goat, no matter how much I want to. And because with so many things, other people are just better at it than I would be. And that’s okay with me!
As long as I can find people in my community who share my values and priorities, and who are doing it like I would be doing it or better, I can choose to support them rather than to try to do it all myself. So for now, I’m giving up on the backyard chicken idea, because there are people out there doing it better than I could right now. And, for me at least, I don’t necessarily think I need to do it all as much as I need to connect with and support a community of like-minded people. And $3/dozen is a pretty low price to pay for that (plus eggs).
Remeber Jess,
Many hands make light work.Don’t know who said it but it makes sense to me.
It’s so true! Not to mention the added benefits of building community rather than trying to be an island.
Love, love, love this post. My mentality has always been not to accept help because “I can do it myself.” However, sometimes I know that it’s not going to go well but I just want to know I could if I had to. Quality is given up on in some of my DIY-ness and now I’m getting to the point where I’m happy to pay for something someone else can do ten times better than me.
I’m a big “but I CAN do it myself” person too. I think that’s a super good trait to have, but sometimes I think it can lead us to forget that there is a lot of value in supporting other people and connecting with a community.
So very true! I kinda dig the fact that I can contribute to someone else’s livelihood and by buying quality milk, meat, poultry and produce, and I make friends at the same time! We can’t do it all, but we can do what we love and be good at it, (except laundry & the dishes, we still have to do those things without loving it
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Exactly! I love that feeling of being connected to someone else’s passion and livelihood through my food. I definitely think there’s a balance to strike between learning to do more of these things and feeling like we have to do all of it.
Speaking of laundry and dishes… /sigh.