What’s the Deal with Urban Farming?

I’ve stumbled upon a lot of articles about “urban farming” recently. They take one of two forms:

Articles written by people who have never heard the word “garden,” and call ordinary vegetable gardens “urban farms” if they’re inside city limits.
Articles written by people who think that skyscrapers ought to be built especially for farming.

Just Google “urban farming” and you’ll see what I mean.

All of this is very weird. How did people forget about vegetable gardens, to the point where they felt compelled to coin a new word for an ancient concept? And has anyone priced floor space in the city recently? I mean, yes, growing crops in concrete-and-steel buildings would put the capstone on industrial agriculture, finishing the job that was started by high-density livestock confinement. I can see that. But why would anyone think it desirable or environmentally sound?

I don’t have the answers, other than a gnawing feeling that people are even more disconnected from the land than I thought. People yearn for the land. I think that people who haven’t spent time in the country feel this deeply, but aren’t sure how to act on their feelings. So you get some unusual behaviors, like calling a riding mower a “lawn tractor” or an ordinary vegetable garden an “urban farm.”

I wonder how one might encourage people to channel these yearnings into actions that will give them as much of a genuine back-to-the-land experience as conditions allow. Gardens are a good start, of course, even if they are being called by a silly name.

More about simple electric fences for chickens

In a recent post about electric fencing, I talked about one- and two-wire electric poultry fences, but not how to go about making or using them.

Plus, I found a funny video that features a simple electric fence (though with a high wire for horses rather than a low one for chickens).

Benefits of One-Wire Electric Fences

You can step over them — after all, they’re just a single wire five inches off the ground — no gates required!
You can drive right over the fencewire without turning the fence off. The wire will spring back.
If a predator gets inside the fence, the chickens can’t be cornered by a one- or two-wire fence: they pop right through. Usually this means that the flock scatters and the predator kills only one. With a conventional fence, the chickens can’t get away, and predators keep killing until they run out of targets. That’s a tragedy waiting to happen.
If a chicken ends up outside the fence, it will eventually work up the nerve to cross the fence to get home. Regular fencing leaves the chickens stranded outside.

One-Wire Electric Fences: Materials

A fence charging unit. I use AC-powered units from Parmak. The bigger, the better. Chicken fencing shorts out easily against molehills and growing grass, so you need a lot of zap.
Step-in fence posts. These are plastic fenceposts with an iron spike at the bottom. As the name implies, there’s a little step on them so you can plant them in the ground with your foot. Get one for every 20-30 feet of fenceline.
Aluminum fence wire. Aluminum fence wire is the good stuff. It stays bright and shiny forever, so the chickens (and other critters) can see it easily and avoid it. Galvanized wire becomes dull and invisible over time. Polywire sags too much for low-wire fences and is annoying to work with.
Insulators to carry the zap from charger to fence. It’s convenient to put the charger in a barn or shed and then run the high-voltage wire along a fenceline. At gates, some people use heavily insulated wire buried slightly underground, but I prefer to jump the fence on ten-foot poles (rot-resistant two-by-fours are okay). Use insulators anywhere the wire touches something.

That’s about it. I used to use metal T-posts at the corners, but I don’t do that anymore.

Lay out the wire around the perimeter of your fenced area, and add fenceposts. Tension the wire by moving the fenceposts in or out until the wire goes tight. The wire should be 4-6 inches off the ground. A second wire at about 10 inches is a nice touch but isn’t absolutely necessary.

The fence works best if you enclose a large area and keep the chicken houses some distances away from it. My fence encloses several acres. If you want to fence chickens tightly, you need something more substantial.

Maybe Auctions Will Work This Time

Usually, when I auction books on eBay, they sell for a pittance, but hope springs eternal, and I try again from time to time. So, please, take advantage of my unwillingness to learn and bid on my book auctions! You’ll get a real deal this way, most likely.

All my most popular books are here, including “Fresh-Air Poultry Houses” and “Success With Baby Chicks.” As I write this, the prices are a penny apiece.

How Good Are Farmer’s Market Customers?

When we started out at the Farmer’s Market in 1996, a customer asked, “Do you accept checks?”

I thought about it for about a second and said, “Sure!”

My reasoning was this: I’d accept checks until one bounced, then I’d think about what my policy really ought to be.

That was thirteen years ago. Still no bounced checks. Are farmer’s market customers great, or what?

All this confirms my policy of “intentional innocence,” where I try things and see what happens, rather than fretting about all the things that might go wrong. Of course, sometimes things blow up in my face this way, but usually they don’t, and you discover that the people around you have been fretting over nothing.

Don’t use this approach when betting the farm, but it works in any situation where you can afford to take it on the chin and write it off as a learning experience.

Electric Fencing: Simpler is Better

Electric fencing has been around a long time, and has been used with chickens since at least 1960. The methods used then still work today.

The earliest mention I’ve seen of electric fencing with chickens was in a 1960 issue of “Egg Producer” magazine. The electric fence consisted of a single strand of wire 4-5″ off the ground. That’s it! This single low wire was enough to hold in the hens and discourage predators. Sometimes they added a second wire at 8-10″ off the ground, but it was mostly just for show.

I’ve tried it, and it works! And I got independent verification by stumbling across a site that talked about keeping raccoons out of your sweet corn. Same deal.

I once watched a coyote chase a hen that was outside the fence, but come to an abrupt halt when the hen raced past the two wires. The coyote stopped so fast I almost expected to hear tire squeal! Clearly the fence intimidated it to the point where even the prospect of a certain meal didn’t tempt it.

I cover this more fully in a follow-up post about electric fencing.

I also have an Electric Fencing FAQ with more details.