Life Transplanet

Tonight we were told that the Greeley City Council would be simply moving the chicken ordinance to its final stage which would be the public input and final vote on February 2nd. No need to show up as it is a simple formality and we would have our day in the sun on February 2nd to discuss the backyard hen ordinance. So Britton and I decided to watch it from the comfort of our basement living room. It would be difficult to say that it was a serious matter because if I didn’t know better I’d say we were watching a comedy. An awful, scary, comedy.

The headless chicken AKA Greeley City Council: alive but barely functional

First they pulled the chicken ordinance from the consent agenda. Sometimes they will do this so that they can clarify certain items so this didn’t surprise us. They talked about it a little and then the oh, so eloquent Maria Secrest “kind of” suggested that they kill the ordinance and not even move it to public opinion and input. Which is what we have spent the last 6 months working towards! She was not very clear though, so someone else, Sandi Elder made a motion to review the ordinance in a year if it passed on February 2nd.

Then John Gates said that it depended on if the first motion carried. Well, it wasn’t exactly a motion, but then Secrest decided to make it a motion. Poor old Archibeque didn’t even know which item they were voting on, but upon hearing that Gates and Secrest didn’t want to continue with it he said that since EVERYONE didn’t want the ordinance that there was no sense in talking about it. (Since when did 2 people out of 7 become EVERYONE?) But happily, he did ask why Secrest wanted to kill the ordinance in the first place.

This is where the comedy gets really good...she said that if we allowed chickens in Greeley, PEOPLE MIGHT SHOOT EACH OTHER! Yes. That was her excuse for not allowing chickens. I had to close my eyes and blink extra hard to see if I heard that right. I thought I had every myth and fallacy out there covered.  But no, I hadn’t heard about that…I couldn’t help but laugh…yes…this is what she said…If a person’s dog went into another person’s yard and they had chickens and the said dog killed those chickens, the crazy chicken owner might just grab a gun and SHOOT the neighbor and she would not want on her conscience the death of a toddler. WHAT??! WHAT??! Am I living in the Twilight Zone? Is she that off her rocker?

Gunned down by a chicken

Apparently she and three other council members are (off their rockers) because they decided to take a vote and while Mike Finn, Sandi Elder and Donna Sapienza mentioned property rights and at least hearing from their constituents at the next council meeting, the other four voted the measure down out of the consent agenda. This was not after considerable confusion about whether or not they were voting the item down or voting the item in…that damnastid double negative language the government loves to confuse us with. I was watching the whole thing with my mind swirling… now what exactly is happening? A “no” vote means “yes” and a “yes” vote means “no” to the measure. Ok…wait, now what are they voting on again?

In the end, I am not sure what exactly happened but apparently the “yes” votes said “no” to the ordinance continuing on which in essence left us with nothing. No chance to speak, no chance to be heard, no respect for the process, nor our time, the time of the city staff, the planning commission or even the people who were against it who may have been planning to come out in two weeks to give them a piece of their mind. This was the most disgraceful example of local government ineptitude I have ever seen. Incredible!

What will this mean for us? Well that remains to be seen. We still have our original defense which we never had a response to. We also have a few more tricks up our sleeves. In any case, this is not the end of the matter, and we will happily continue our lives in Greeley with Schnoodle, Kitty, Henrietta, Omelette, Football and Greenfoot, at least until we get the hell out of this crazy warp zone.

Today Britton and I went to our first beginning beekeeper class that was put on by the Northern Colorado Beekeeper’s Association. It was quite fascinating all the different things you can learn about keeping bees.

I got to try on the beekeeper hat

We learned about the brood and the queen, the hive and the mead. The honey, the comb, the wax and the drones. We heard just about everything about the biology of the bees and next week the class continues to please.

We will have the opportunity to buy bees and the whole kit and caboodle. It is a more expensive hobby than chicken keeping, but it can also be more lucrative, as they said everyone is looking to purchase honey! It will cost about $200 to get set up with one hive. I think we will try it because we want to have honey bees in Puerto Rico and this will be a great way to learn about it here, although some of the specifics are slightly different.

I searched beekeepers of Puerto Rico and found some info and pictures from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. It is pretty cool that Mayagüez is such an agricultural university there because it will be fairly close to where we want to live, so we can get lots of info on beekeeping (apicultura). We talked with an expert in the class who kept bees in Hawaii and the challenges are somewhat different, but overall, it is slightly easier to keep them because of the weather, but the diseases and problems can also be harder to deal with.

Overall, we had a lot of fun learning about this and found out that beekeeping is completely legal in Greeley! Which makes me laugh that chickens are going to be so regulated. Bees, like chickens, have so many benefits that there is not just one reason to keep them. They pollinate area plants, vegetables and fruit trees, they make honey and beeswax. The honey can be used in all sorts of applications and foods as can the wax to make soaps, candles and even lotions and creams. I’ve even read that taking or eating bee pollen and even local honey can help with allergies!

What wonderful fascinating little creatures. We’ll soon see what this new adventure brings us!

I started out my professional career working at Village Inn when I was 16 years old as a busboy. I learned how to clean the tables pick out which cleaners to use and was responsible and timely with all aspects of the job. It paid off. They moved me up to Dishwasher. Eventually I did so well they moved me up to waiter!

From This (not actually me, Im way hotter)

Its much the same as I did for the company I work at now. Just proving oneself can get you places. I started doing some CD production and distribution and now I am working on software engineering projects for 911 and doing software quality testing with no formal education.

For me its all about setting goals and being persistent. I came here not knowing what the vi editor was in unix. Now I can make advanced shell scripts that run at an enterprise level site (have several hundreds servers and several datacenters). Learning new programming languages, learning about system administration, data cabling, fail over philosophy and many many other attributes of computing that I didn’t even know existed a few years ago.

To This (not actually our data center, our cabling is much cleaner)

When I look at where I started it gives me a good sense of pride to know where I am at now. I don’t exactly know what I will do once I get to PR but if the past is any indication I will do whatever it is I set out to do. I’ve never really failed at anything I’ve tried (rentals, carpentry, flying, computers, sports, jobs, etc)

The saying is true. You can do whatever you put your mind to. The part they don’t tell you is that it takes hard work, perseverance and dedication. Most important of all is that you can’t give up. Ever. The best skill that I’ve gained thru all my hard work is that I will do ‘whatever it takes’ to accomplish something.

I feel the same way about our Puerto Rico goal. I’ll do whatever it takes. Sometimes its discouraging to not have already completed this. Cassie and I were talking about it and as it happens to be; we could complete our goal to move to PR today. We could do this pretty easily.

The issue comes from knowing ourselves fairly well. We have realized that we want a challenge out of this. That is what we do, seek out and accomplish challenging goals. We aren’t ready to retire, we want to get to PR and make a difference or a substanial positive impact and have an adventure.

Who knows. I could start out there doing whatever it takes to get by and end up somewhere I never imagined or thought possible asking myself, “How did I get here?”. I ask myself that pretty much daily already, I don’t expect it to change! lol.

To This?

Today we went down to the city council chambers for the planning commission’s review of the proposed backyard hen ordinance. Even though I have been through some of these processes to change city code before, this is still such a learning experience to me. What I have learned overall though is that if you give the government ANYTHING to review, you have to go through so many hoops, red tape and bureaucracy that it’s amazing anything gets done.

And when it does get done, I am beginning to see who really runs things. In the case of Greeley I see that it is not the planning commission, nor even the city council, but the city staff. The Community Development Director runs the show in this backyard hens thing. She is considered the expert and therefore a lot of leniency goes to her opinion. Same goes for the city attorney. While ultimately the city council makes the decisions, the specifics of the codes have been worked on behind the scenes long before.

I almost think in the case of this ordinance that we would have been better off leaving it alone and buying more land behind our house than having to deal with all this bureaucracy and pleasing of every different type of person. Of course we had our chickens without approval for over a year and no one said a word until we were on the front page of the paper.

But there were other people who are not as rebellious as we are and went through all the proper channels and were frustrated with the current code. So when we go and try to change it I think, this will be fairly easy. We simply have to change the code in one of two ways:  a) call them pets and be done with it, b) go from 1 chicken per 4000 sq ft to maybe 1 per 1000 sq ft. But no…we have to write a whole book on the matter plus multiple meetings, committees, discussions, revisions and bring in all the experts.

No wonder we have so much gridlock at the national level to get things done. I am sure this is not just the case in government, but in corportation boards and other entities, but government is where we, the people, are also privy to the goings-on (if we can stand it without tearing ALL our hair out, not to mention that for people who work or have other less flexible jobs than Britton and I do this would be impossible to be part of).  

Why are they picking on us (or is it pecking)?

I  guess sometimes I wish we had the more simpler time when corporations and huge government entities didn’t run things with such thumbs-on control. An inspector for your backyard? A fee and permit to raise/grow your own food? What will we think of next? Now I know where science fiction novels get their premises from. When did we get so backward that there is no license in Colorado required to sell tobacco, the deadliest consumer item out there, but we have to have a permit and fee to get our own eggs? Oh yah, big corporations that control the big bureaucratic government. If the business is big enough, the local, state and federal governments see dollar $igns and will forgive any transgressions including killing 1200 Americans DAILY, but if it is an individual trying to make a difference by raising her own food, being environmentally and economically conscious, CHARGE her.

Yah, you could say I’m a little frustrated.

Britton and I wrote a guest column for the Greeley Tribune about the backyard hens, and they published it yesterday!

Here is the print version