Think about predators - everything: rats, cats, dogs, hawks, mink, snakes, raccoons, foxes, bears, alligators, human thieves etc - depending on where you are. They taste like chicken. Can you predatorize the coop or will you accept a certain rate of loss (be aware that once they know the chickens are there, they’ll be back). And what are you going to do with injured, not dead chickens?

Our run has hardware netting on all sides including the top and under the dirt, and we let them out in the garden to live their best lives when we’re at home. So far this has kept predation down although we have had some curious cats.

Also if you have kids think about whether your chickens are livestock or pets. Ours are pets that lay eggs.

You can definitely take the train from Italy to Sweden. This summer we took the train back and forth from Denmark to Italy, with children.

Where is the existing building mass in those pictures? It’s all weird glass pods. I don’t want to live in a glass pod. Did we just blow up all the old brick warehouses, Victorians, old farmhouses that got engulfed by the city, etc etc?

I want to see my little old house from the 1930s that’s been energy retrofitted, with solar panels and a solar water heater and barrels under the gutters, with apple trees and chickens in the backyard and some bicycles in front.

It’s still important to acknowledge that the usage in the medical/health sectors is also dehumanizing. It’s so disempowering and alienating.

I work in the health sector not in the US and I would never refer to a patient that way no matter what language I’m speaking.

So, what you’re saying here is that your life would improve if you got a divorce…

Fascinating read, thanks for sharing. It reminds me a little of the natural historians of the 1800s but with less colonialism.

He was 34 when he started in 2013.

And reducing food waste! I was surprised to see that individual/household food waste is so significant in terms of agricultural impact.

This is super common though. I mix up my kids’ names on a daily basis, it’s not because I don’t know who they are or can’t tell them apart. They do think it’s hilarious when I mix them up with the chickens.

The common factor is that I am usually saying the same mindless stuff to my kids (and chickens), like “get down from there” or “move out of the way please” or “stop making so much noise”.

Oh God, I swear our local supermarket moves the fresh fish every three weeks. It’s always the fish and it just fills me with rage. I don’t want to do a meter by meter search for a chunk of salmon while my picky children are whining and chewing on my kneecaps.