malaise*lithium

Alternative lifestyles abound in Portland. Cyclists roll en masse and stark naked through the streets downtown. Gays marry. Well, they can’t marry but they can get one of them domestic partnerships, which are alternately described as just as good as and not at all like the real thing. (Err, scratch those links. Reverse them.) Skaters are romanticized. Stoners toke deep on plentiful and loosely regulated sticky green rope. You can get a certified organic, 100% vegan, gluten-and-trans-fat-free meal at more than a few restaurants or you can get bacon on a donut.

In the liner notes for World Gone Wrong, Bob Dylan wrote, “give me a thousand acres of tractable land & all the gang members that exist & you’ll see the Authentic alternative lifestyle, the Agrarian one.” (Capitalization characteristically his.)

Indeed. With the sustainable lifestyle movement approaching full swing, Urban Agriculture is fast becoming the swingingest. There are people who can help you grow a vegetable garden in your front yard or even in your apartment (though the aforementioned stoners may be the ones to turn to for information on the latter. )

No more than five miles from where I live lie downtown Portland, Portland International Airport and the shipyards at the Port of Portland. But less than five blocks from my door are two nurseries. Neither Pistils nor Livingscape carry Diazinon and MiracleGrow. Both boast carefully selected seeds and sprouts and somewhat snooty if well-intentioned patchouilli-infused advisors. Neither carry Kentucky Bluegrass or anything meant to kill weeds more dangerous than a bit of sugar water and a clever design. And both actively promote urban chicken keeping.

The reasons for keeping a chicken where others might keep a hot tub are many. They are an effective and safe means of controlling many kinds of pests. They can efficiently convert a surprising portion of a household’s table scraps into a dandy if particularly odious fertilizer. They lay eggs if you keep them happy, and they exemplify that mysterious balance of hip and cooky to which so many aspire.

But while many other alternative pursuits often flirt with the boundaries of the law, it is quite legal to keep chickens in Portland, as it turns out. According to Paragraph E of City of Portland Code Section 13.05.015 and section 13.10.010, so long as there are not more than three chickens and none of them are roosters, the urban flock is practically welcomed. I have heard of codes requiring that the hen house be not less than 15 feet from a neighbor’s kitchen window, but I could find nothing more about that beyond hearsay.

And so, I have chickens. Well, we have chickens. Actually, J9 has chickens and I just went along with it. I rush to say, though, that the important thing is not that I went along with it but the gusto with which I went along. I researched and built a not-to-be-undersold hen house, and while soon enough the chickens will scratch right into the cool dark earth, now they scratch on newspaper. The henhouse (cough, cough, convent) is equipped with a low-maintenance wire-mesh floor, a tilt-up roof for easy egg collection, and a roller at one end to make it easier to move about the yard. My intention is to move the henhouse every week or so to collect the precious chicken shit that accumulates beneath it. This will be used to accelerate the reaction that will fuel the compost bins which have not yet left the drawing board.

There are a few proper planting beds now. Janine filled them with vegetable sprouts almost before I had driven the final screw. There is garlic and peppers, peas and tomatoes, onions and even some kabocha. Across the yard there will be corn. We don’t have a lot of space, and because it’s the front yard that gets most of the sun, vegetable theft is a concern. And though we have had some flowers stolen, I can’t yet say if people will be smouching our watermelons or not. While the bane of the traditional farmer’s existence may be the gopher, that of the urban farmer may well be the passing pink-eyed teenage punk afflicted with the munchies. We will simply have to wait and see.

It is true that we are not heavily tattooed. We cannot, so far as I understand the law, get gay married. We do not giggle with the jolly green giant and the “man” which keeps us down does so with permissive emissions regulation and myopic foreign policy. But we are most assuredly and authentically alternative. Urban Agrarians. Real Hip.