I Don't Want to be the Crazy Chicken Lady

I don't want to be the crazy chicken lady. I know people who have chickens in their backyards and I judge them all. They are either crazy hippie jump-on-the-band-wagoners who live in tiny houses and farm their own hops or yokels in the backwoods who come out swinging with a golf club to gather eggs from the old tires where their chickens roost. I will not engage in hippie liberal bullshit or be a backwoods bumpkin!

Yet I want eggs...

Damn it. Our perception of farmers and gardeners is just not flattering. It's not high on our zero to glam scale and definitely not high on anyone's list of 100 most intellect demanding professions. I have absolutely mocked my friends who turned their yards into food gardens and their circles of friends into some bizarre vegetable covens of co-op communism. How nice, you cute little farmers. Do you wear overalls? Do you drive a pickup truck? Do you pick your teeth with hayseeds?

Yet I want strawberries that are actually sweet and tomatoes that taste like something...

Backyard farming has gotten a little more trendy recently. I mean. If Williams Sonoma sells compost turners and designer canning jars, the backyard homestead has got to be transcending the hemp-wearing dreadlock crowd and the apocalypto paranoia off-the-grid-ers and the cowboy hat, high-school-football-watching, county-fair-going, country-music-listening, carrying-a-lariat-around-to-practice-roping Rodeoers.

So if I buy the $475 artisan chicken coop made from reclaimed barn wood and have heritage breed heirloom chickens that lay green and blue eggs like Martha Stewart's Martha's Vineyard flock (although--does she live in Marthas Vineyard? That seems ridiculous...) but I do it with tongue in cheek irony, whimsically poking fun at the archetype of the dust bowl farmer, is that okay? If my compost turner has a hand-tooled copper handle and I wear 5" Stuart Weitzman stilettos to gracefully mist my tomato beds is that okay? Will that keep me from being the crazy chicken lady?! Will it!?!

I try different things to appeal to the approval of my neighbors depending on what I think they will respond to.

To the old lesbian environmentalist: "Hey, I decided to let my lawn die so I can plant a food forest. In the meantime the water savings have gone from 2000 gallons a week (20 sprinklers for ten minutes twice a week at 10 gallons per sprinkler per minute...just trust me) to 175 gallons a week drip watering my raised beds. Oh, and no chemical run off to poison the ducks downstream or the bees!"

To the ultra chic foodie couple with their lavender infused honey and their edible flowers: "Hey, I decided to let my lawn die so I can plant a food forest. Btw I have four different types of blueberries with varying levels of complex acidity and cultivars of strawberries and tomatoes  you can't buy even at Whole Foods. We should totes have a tasting party and make sure we do the wine pairings, something French for sure. As expensive as possible. This is gourmet berr-oir."

To the locavores with their Parisienne baskets for the farmers market: "Hey, I let my lawn die for this food forest because, I mean, farm-to-table, right? You can literally walk from my farm to my table! Yay! Please don't give any more thought to whether my dead lawn is driving property values down in the neighborhood!"

To the haute housewife in her yoga pants-slash maxi skirt and careful pontytail and the Kate Spade diaper bag full of artisan diapers: "Hey, food forest. Hey did you know that backyard chickens, because they are truly free range and can get a more natural diet of worms and grubs as well as the vegetation from your weeds and eat your vegetable scraps lay eggs that are naturally richer in omega-3; and the food you can grow in your backyard from your own compost is jam packed with extra nutrients and flavor? And did you further know that since we started backyard farming my children eat fresh greens and pea pods right off the vines as a snack? Like voluntarily without a fight. It's fine. I mean, I'm an amazing mother."

I still feel their judgement because it's my own judgement. I want fresher more nutritive food! I want a closer ecological connection to the land like my ancestors had! I want to taste things I've never tasted before that you can't buy in any store! I just really don't want to be the crazy chicken lady.

So until I can positively change the iconic image of "farmer", "homesteader", and "pioneer" for the better...I guess I'm farming in heels.