Chicken coops the focus of forum

When resident Nellie Bhattarai appeared before supervisors Monday night, she showed off a yellow, foam carton of eggs in various sizes and shades.

The eggs came from a farm near Williamsport, and Bhattarai wanted township officials and gathered residents to notice that each egg was different.

“When we go to the grocery store, we don’t have eggs like this in our grocery store,” she said. “And so, again, it’s an opportunity to educate about what the possibilities are and

get away from the homogeneous food we’re served all of the time.”

The show and tell came as the board held a public hearing before a final vote on an ordinance allowing chicken hens on residential township lots. Supervisors passed it 3-2, with Denny Hameister, Cliff Warner and Nigel Wilson in favor, and Bud Graham and Paul Rittenhouse opposed.

The ordinance, discussed since last fall, allows residents on lots less than 10 acres to raise from two to eight hens, depending on lot size. Lots as small as 3,000 square feet may have two chickens.

Residents must apply for a permit to have a backyard, stationary chicken coop, which must be at least six feet from the property line. Permits will be available starting Tuesday.

Two property owners spoke Monday in opposition of chickens. Real estate appraiser Mark Bigatel told the story of his negative experience with chickens 10 years ago, when tenants of a farm he owns starting keeping the birds which, eventually, attracted rats, then coyotes.

“We had to evict our chickens,” he said, adding that the bad odor, rats and coyotes eventually went away afterward. He said he’s most concerned about property values in the village, where properties are close together. “I just wanted people to think of the unintended consequences.”

Kaywood neighborhood resident Barb Fiscus asked supervisors to consider returning to the 20-foot setback in the first version of the ordinance, concerned that six feet doesn’t provide enough separation.

Township Manager Amy Farkas said the change reflects the provision allowing residents to use existing structures, like a shed, as a coop. Those structures may sit closer than 20 feet to the property line.

Supervisors engaged in a short discussion, having talked at length about the ordinance during previous meetings.

Rittenhouse said his greatest concern was the emails in opposition of chickens, and how those residents can control enforcement of potential problems.

“The neighbor can call and complain,” Wilson said.

Zoning officer Todd Shea confirmed he has sent letters to residents for keeping the birds illegally. Now that the practice is legal, he said complaints will result in an investigation to determine if there is an ordinance violation.

Because of the illegal activity previously, Farkas anticipates a flock of residents applying for coop permits.

While Bhattarai said she won’t be in line next week, she said housing chickens is a priority for her family.

“I’m very excited that it was passed,” she said. “It was a respectful balance, and that’s important in our community.”

Dogs and chickens may not mix well

I was in Rural King the other day and there was a poster of chickens. Chickens of all varieties – sizes, colors, meat, eggs, etc., that seemed endless. Nashville has just passed a law allowing people to keep up to four hens – no roosters allowed. One half of every new trade magazine we received over the past six months has been taken up with poultry-related items, from coops to toys.

It reminded me that a few columns ago I mentioned that the Cavaliers were easy when compared to the "terrible trio" of poodles. And that made me realize that I had perhaps told a little white lie, and it's time to fess up.

Years ago we lived out in Shiloh. It was beautiful. The house sat back about one-half mile from the road and was surrounded by pasture where the owner kept a herd of cattle. It had a pond and a stream that eventually met up with Yellow Creek, and best of all, not a neighbor in sight. We got to know everyone around us, but couldn't see anyone. It was great and needless to say, the dogs loved it there. They thought they were in heaven.

Before the big tornado took away most of downtown, we bought our dog food at Ely Feed. Each spring they had chicks and ducks, so one Easter I got John three of each to complete the idyllic picture. Any idea yet where this is going?

The ducklings stayed in or near the pond, and the chicks around the house – usually. The first month went well enough. When they heard the dogs go out in the morning they all came running to the back door for the leftover dog food. Granted, it is not poultry food, but they had the most beautiful feathers you have ever seen!

Then one day, only two ducks came. Eventually they both stopped coming up for their meals and when they got big enough, flew off for parts unknown. Then one morning only two chickens came to breakfast. After looking around I saw a huge pile of white feathers near where the cattle were grazing. Those two stayed near the house from then on. One roosted on the bathroom windowsill (outside). John had named her Annie and I could hear them discussing their respective days through the door in the morning.

I'll have to call Annie the smart one. And now to my white lie. When I called the Cavaliers easy, I didn't say dumb, and they are true spaniels. They know how to climb chain-link fencing but like to just get to the top and stay there looking around as if on the top of the world.

John and Annie were having their little morning talks and when I went out back with the food, only Annie came. As I walked around the house I saw Abby, who this time went over the fence. She was the very first Cavalier we had ever bred, and there she stood with a mouth full of feathers and nothing left but a yellow beak and two matching feet.

The moral of the story is that if you have a dog, think long and hard before adding a chicken to the mix.

Soon, the chickens will come home to roost

Deposed and killed Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, once described the people who had risen against him in demand for freedom as rats. This was at a time when Brother Leader – as he was affectionately known elsewhere – was mobilising the best defence possible against, well, the 'marauding rats' who were no longer satisfied with simply nibbling at slices of national cheddar but wanted, nay, demanded the whole brick.

The use of animal imagery in politics is always amusing; first for the humour it comes wrapped in and second, for the insincerity and hypocrisy it exposes on the part of one who uses it. Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF once declared to a stunned nation that even if it were to put a baboon on the ballot paper as its election candidate, the people would still vote for that ZANU-PF baboon as opposed to the human candidates from other parties.

Someone should have read that famous book by George Orwell, Animal Farm, to ZANU-PF and categorically state that if the people were to vote for this baboon, it is only because they could no longer tell the difference between the humans in power and the baboons in the wild. The human being has become a baboon and the baboon has become a human being.

Imagine the uncouth way in which ZANU-PF has treated the people of Zimbabwe, the ugliness with which they have played their politics and indeed, the plunder of the national cake by a troop of selected individuals, which is clearly reaping where it did not sow. Add the kiss-our-buttocks attitude that has followed calls for reform and accountability and there you have them, the baboons indeed!

And so it turns out there is a resolute determination in this country to follow the path of destruction taken by Zimbabwe to the letter. Introduce also, in addition to the fuel and forex shortages, power cuts, water shortages, bad governance, executive arrogance and ignorance, the use of animal imagery and you have a fitting clone and important lesson on how not to run a country.

According to president Bingu wa Mutharika, some amongst us are chickens. Maybe we are, Mr President; what with the eggs and meat we continue to deliver at State House, fattening its residents while we ourselves get thinner and thinner as a result of the rations we continue to suffer. Meanwhile, in our state of hunger and starvation, we are still expected to shower praises on some allegedly dynamic and wise leadership just as it was at Animal Farm:

"It had become usual to give Napoleon the credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, 'Under the guidance of our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days'; or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, 'Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!'"

Quite evidently, however, this leadership is neither wise nor dynamic but rather arrogant and treats its people with contempt. That is precisely how it has become that we are stuck with this debauched machinery of governance. Hence, it is nothing short of tragedy that president Mutharika and the government of Malawi at large continue to ignore the challenges plaguing this country, focusing rather on insulting citizens whom they have force-driven to their wits' end. It is the arrogance of a leadership that has its mindset frozen in the time warp of feudal politics, believing Malawi was its fiefdom – or chicken coop, if you like.

Still, Mutharika's formidable array of excuses as to why we find ourselves with this repulsive air of national malaise hanging over us simply need to be dismissed with the contempt they deserve. We demand more honesty Your Excellency, seeing that your regime's catalogue of flagitious offences against the people of Malawi are well documented and you must be held to account surely.

While Malawians continue to surprise themselves everyday by the way in which they are able to absorb the shock and horror so faithfully delivered by Mutharika and his cronies, they must not get accustomed to this way for living because it simply is not the way to live in any country, let alone one that claims to be a democracy. Once all this suffering is internalised and embraced, then there can never be a way out of all these insults and the wild expectation that as they are delivered, in the most unpresidential language and tone there is, we must all be somehow grateful for them.

Gaddafi is dead but the 'rats' live on, despite having some problems of their own. ZANU-PF cannot even begin to think of fielding that baboon in the next election as it has become aware of the divisions within and the reality of losing an election has sobered them up. The animal imagery no longer holds any power.

As for the crying chickens in Malawi, well, they may be coming home to roost soon but rest assured it is not for leisure purposes. At some point too, these chickens would want to run free.

Cooking has become the last true art

Why is it that TV cookery shows have become so popular? That recipe websites like Epicurious proliferate? That turning out palatable meals has ceased to be a woman's preserve and now draws men as well?

To make the question still more pointed, how come the culinary arts have grown in prominence, while other contemporary art forms are receding?

Consider modern classical music. One long-suffering audience member said it reminded him of a bus crash. Though read any of the top music reviewers, and you'll find them exulting over this tuneless mess.

Or take modern art. For a mere $140 million, you can buy a painting by Jackson Pollock called "No. 5." I forget if this is the one that hung upside down in a New York gallery.

But if you laid a piece of canvass on the floor of a chicken coop for three months, "No. 5" is what it would look like.

So too modern sculpture. I still recall the horror of local citizens in Kingston, Ont., many years ago, when the city commissioned a centre piece for MacDonald Park and the "artist" erected two huge sewage culverts with sludge spilling out.

The eyesore was improved one night when a bunch of engineering students from Queen's University temporarily transformed the culverts into perfect representations of a Coke and Pepsi can. But the sculptor insisted on returning to his vision of a bombed-out septic field.

You find modernity's palsied hand in updates of the Bible. Thus "Mary was with child" is rendered as "Mary had fallen pregnant," while "through a glass darkly" becomes "puzzling reflections in a mirror."

And what purblind revisionist struck out "It ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women" and gave us "Sarah ceased having her monthly periods"? (Hat-tip to the Rev. Dr. Peter Mullen, who nailed this miserable practice in Britain's Telegraph newspaper).

And while we're on the subject of contemporary poetry, can any of it keep pace with this sort of thing? (From Kipling, on the creed of Afghan warriors): "Four things greater than all things are, women and horses and power and war."

The problem with all these avantgarde monstrosities is that a form of elitism has taken over. The views of ordinary folks are discarded, in favour of appeals to a chichi minority. Values like beauty and harmony have become passé. Melody is dismissed as an affliction of the masses.

In his book on art, The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe perfectly captured the sterility of this project: "In the beginning we got rid of - realism. Then we got rid of representational objects. Then we got rid of the third dimension altogether. Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture."

Very well then. So why hasn't this happened to modern cookery? You could argue that momentarily it did, with the nouvelle cuisine movement and its emphasis on gauzy presentation rather than flavour or nourishment.

But thankfully that didn't last. Most top-ranked restaurants today are serving down-to-earth food. Indeed they display a healthy contempt for elevated views about diet.

In Britain, traditional country recipes are returning. You can eat pigeon pie or rabbit stew in any decent pub.

European countries have wild game festivals in the Fall. B.C. chefs are stressing the culinary delights of free range pork and fresh caught salmon.

And cardiac-implicated butter remains the fat of choice. Hyper-tensing salt is scattered liberally. Infanticidal veal adorns the plate.

These all, in one respect or another, tread on politically incorrect territory. One imagines vegans shrinking at this glorying in the virtues of meat.

The public health lobby is probably appalled at the thought of all that cholesterol being dished out. And the animal rights types must be incensed.

Yet strikingly, unlike the salons of art and literature, cookery has ignored the refined and high-minded. And while the world's great symphony orchestras are headed for the poorhouse, victims of an epic failure to understand their audience, restaurants are booming.

So how did this happen? I suppose one answer might be that food is so central to the human condition, faddists daren't mess with it. Though I wouldn't put it past them.

But it's not just eating in restaurants that's thriving. Home cooking has become a defining hobby of the Baby Boom generation. Forget bowling or ballroom dancing; we're in the kitchen slinging food.

And that, I think, explains why cookery has flourished. It doesn't depend on corporate sponsors or rich benefactors, as most classical art now does.

It is by nature, and by breadth of ownership, a labour of the common man and not of the elite.

My Totally Hot Car: 1919 Ford speedster

Bob and Elsa Robb of Lake Forest are the proud owners of this rare 1919 Ford speedster, a car that originally began its life as a Model T but was enthusiastically transformed into something much more exciting a long time ago.

"After WW I, American soldiers returning from Europe bought worn-out, dilapidated Model T Fords," Bob Robb said about these cars. "They were cheap and plentiful. They removed the original bodies to make them lighter, modified the engines and raced them."

Robb found this model about six years ago in, of all places, a chicken coop in barn at a home in Newcastle, outside of Sacramento. At that time, the car belonged in a man's collection after he bought it from the family of the late previous owner in Ohio, where it had been part of another private collection since the early 1960s.

"I looked at it and fell in love with it," Robb recalls. Just days after returning to Orange County, Robb couldn't get the car off his mind.

"I had to have it," he said. So he dialed up the owner, made a deal, and trailered it home.

"It was in very good condition, but it wasn't runnable," Robb said. "It had not been driven since 1963."

That didn't present a problem for Robb, 75, who had been working on cars "since I was a little kid." (His first vehicle was a 1930 Ford Model A.)

"I worked on it about two months before it was road-worthy," he said.

"The engine is the original that was put in it in 1919," Robb said. "Most of last winter I overhauled it. It had never been bored. I put in new pistons, and the valves were so sloppy you could throw a cat through them."

The L-head four-cylinder now makes approximately 50 horsepower, and Robb estimates the car's top speed at 60 mph. But even at 50 mph, Robb can only describe driving this thing as "scary."

"I said, 'I'll never do that again,'" he said. "It felt like it would fly apart."

And that's not the only thing.

"God gave us two arms and two legs, and Henry Ford gave us four pedals and four levers on top," Robb says of the car's complex controls, which include a throttle lever on top along with the steering column, an ignition advance, a hand-operated clutch and the choke.

But that doesn't deter Robb from driving it every chance he gets. He's a frequent attendee at car shows and has it on the road as much as possible. The car has also been featured in parades and a TV commercial.

"Of all the cars I've had," Robb says, "This has given me the most joy."