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Community garden celebrates keeping chickens

Barracks Lane Community Garden | 07.06.2010 10:31 | Ecology | Education | Free Spaces | Oxford

As keeping chickens increases in popularity, Barracks Lane Community Garden in Cowley/ East Oxford is holding a Chicken Day, this Saturday 12th June, with the aim to give local people information about keeping chickens on your allotment or at home in your garden.

Local chicken keeper and one of the garden’s Trustees, Lorraine Jackson, will allow children and adults to meet and stroke her chickens and answer questions on how she looks after chickens in her small Oxford garden.

Lorraine says, “keeping chickens in your garden is lots of fun and of course you get lovely fresh eggs. I hope to encourage more people to take up this rewarding activity.”

Julia Hollander, author of When the Bough Breaks which she also dramatised for Radio 4, will be launching her new book in the garden on keeping chickens. Chicken Coops for the Soul is a record of the five year journey charting the joys and challenges that face any aspiring poultry keeper. Julia will give a workshop on keeping chickens, their housing, food, health, social habits, weeding abilities and more. Julia will also advise on the legal issues around home grown eggs. Copies of the book will be available to purchase.

Julia says “most people don’t realise that you are allowed to keep chickens in urban gardens and on allotments. My workshop will show how this is possible, and my new book will give all the information a budding chicken keeper needs”.

Barracks Lane Community Garden’s Chicken Day event is part of a series of Local Food Programme events being put on at the garden between 2010 and 2012. The workshops are free and open to all. The garden is situated on Barracks Lane, off Cumberland Road, in East Oxford. See website  http://www.barrackslanegarden.org.uk for further details.

ENDS
Notes
1. The event is on from 11am to 5pm on Saturday 12th July 2010. The book launch will take place at 2pm. A full programme of the event can be found at:  http://www.barrackslanegarden.org.uk/events.php.
2. Barracks Lane Community Garden is a community-run green space off the Cowley Road in East Oxford. It hosts many regular events as well as special and annual events. It is also open every weekend from Easter to autumn for all to visit and enjoy. The garden can be booked for children’s parties, meetings, workshops, and other community events.
Barracks Lane Community Garden, Barracks Lane, off Cumberland Road, Oxford OX4 2AP, E: barrackslanegarden@yahoo.co.uk, W: http://www.barrackslanegarden.org.uk/
3. Julia Hollander, previously an opera director, is now a writer, journalist and playwright. She is the author of Indian Folk Theatres (Routledge, 2007) and When the Bough Breaks (John Murray, 2008), which she also dramatised for Radio 4. She has written features and blogs for the Guardian and Telegraph newspapers and for a variety of magazines including Opera Now, The Spectator and Red. Julia lives in Oxford with her family and chickens. Chicken Coops for the Soul is available from Guardian Books,  http://www.guardianbooks.co.uk/.
4. Local Food: has been developed by a consortium of 15 national environmental organisations, and is managed on their behalf by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT). Supported by the Big Lottery Fund's Changing Spaces programme, Local Food will distribute grants to a variety of food related projects to make locally grown food more accessible. www.localfood.org

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT): is a registered charity, incorporated by Royal Charter, to promote conservation and manage environmental programmes throughout the whole of the UK. It has established management systems for holding and distributing funds totalling more than £20 million annually to environmental projects across the UK.

The Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces programme was launched in November 2005 to help communities enjoy and improve their local environments. The programme funds a range of activities from local food schemes and farmers markets, to education projects teaching people about the local environment. The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK.
www.biglotteryfund.org.uk.

For further information please contact:
John Green and Annie Davy (Trustees)
36 Kenilworth Avenue, Oxford OX4 2AN
Tel: 01865 249 450

Barracks Lane Community Garden
- e-mail: barrackslanegarden@yahoo.co.uk
- Homepage: http://www.barrackslanegarden.org.uk/

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

Caging chickens = slavery

07.06.2010 11:25

Why should children be encouraged to engage in slavery? Hardly an idea worth being applauded.

A vegan


A more coherant response

07.06.2010 15:47

Let me try a response phrased more articulatley than that of our vegan buddy who has responded with the exaggerated and poorly thought out emotive vitriol that has pushed me away from the AR movement and will ensure that it stays a nieche ghetto for emo kids and lunatic pensioners -

While I would not condone buying chickens bred for the purpose, it is undoubtebly environmentally friendly to supply your own local source of eggs, and as eggs are a refuse product, provided you can keep the chicken in a large open space with a variety of stimulus etc, then it is no more unethical than making use of any other refuse product.
Rather than buying a bred chicken (which often just puts money into the hands of the same people who breed chucks to supply battery farms; defeating the purpose of you even buying the chicken), I would suggest using one of the numerous and brilliant charities that work to rehome battery farm chickens, thus giving a neglected and abused animal a happy place to retire to. Alternativley, Battery farms are notoriously shoddily built and poorly guarded....... draw your own conclusions!

Point being, the post that I have just written will inform more people of ethical ways to come by chickens, and some of the reasons against animal breeding, wheras the post by 'a vegan' just came across as angry, exremist nonsense that will only push people away from AR issues, while offering nothing postive.

Maybe a pointless rant, but I'm tired of the militant vegans fucking it up for everyone else (e.g, making people feel unwelcome for being veggie, not vegan, chucking peoples cheese sandwiches out of the sab van, acting holier than thou etc etc etc) which does nothing but drive people away from AR and ensures that the AR movement will continue to wither into insignificance.

My chooks are happy!


@ My chooks are happy!

08.06.2010 10:54

I eat food, not refuse. The menstrual discharge of hens is a diet for trolls.

NP


A challenge to NP

08.06.2010 15:21

Come back with 1, just 1 coherant response to my post - tell the masses why i'm wrong to say that they should not buy purpose bred hens and adopt an ex-battery hen insted.

Yours is the exact type of ranty, incoherant, pointlessly angry, un-constructive and knee-jerk attitude that has pushed me, and hundreds of others away from the AR movement (although thankfully not away from AR itself)

My Chooks are happy


Some battery hen rescue organisations help fund factory farming

09.06.2010 13:59

Battery farms regard chickens as "waste products" that are just discarded after their laying life is not so profitable. Some battery hen rescue groups actually pay the scum who run these factory farms to take the hens off their hands, thus adding to their profits and making their "waste" disposal problem smaller. And helping fund the next round of abuse. So best idea is to liberate them yourselves or get them off someone else who has liberated them without the farmer's permission.

Personally I wouldn't eat eggs at all, but if someone wants to eat eggs from their battery chickens then I can't see a major problem, unless it creates a taste for it and promotes egg-eating to other people. Bear in mind battery chickens are pumped full of chemicals and don't tend to live very long though.

vegan


Birdforms are sacred..

09.06.2010 20:15

..in my theology, so I do try and avoid eating them and their products.

However I would share whale with the Makah if so honoured as to be invited. We all have different ways and none is neccessarily better than anothers. Veganism per say is not any better or 'holy' than any other way. Soya from ex rainforest involves huge destruction and cruelty, for example.

I do feel that the 'forest garden' concept and practice is excellent, providing incredible beauty and also productive outputs for people ..and birds! (etc). For example in my opinion, the mini farm (semi zoo) of Hackney City Farm...

 http://www.hackneycityfarm.co.uk/

...would be a creation of incredible beauty, inspiration and usefulness as a forest garden. Having seen Martin Crawfords forest garden in Devon...imagine that in Hackney. WOW!


 http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/trustinf.html

 http://transitionculture.org/2006/11/09/a-trip-to-the-agroforestry-research-trusts-forest-garden/

 http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=agroforestry+reseacrh+trust&btnGNS=Search+youtube.com&oi=navquery_searchbox&sa=X&as_sitesearch=youtube.com&hl=en&rlz=1C1RNNN_enGB361GB361

Martins new book looks excellent by the way:

 https://secure.agroforestry.co.uk/publs2003.html

Mr Oak


Indymedia is not...

11.06.2010 10:35

Indymedia is not supposed to be a platform for the promotion of animal exploitation. Both the OP and the above comment from mr oak do just that. Troll posts?

NP