First - unfriendly bylaws. Want to learn about raising chickens to support a great idea, i.e., eat local? You can’t. There are bylaws that won’t even allow a pilot project inside city limits.
Second - an unreasonable Deputy Mayor, and trust me, I don’t throw the phrase ‘unreasonable Deputy mayor’ around very often. (However, I use the word ‘reasonable’ a lot.)
["Where's Gord? Out of tune?"]
This from Tuesday’s issue of The London Free Press:
Deputy Mayor Tom Gosnell said it’s better to leave raising eggs to the professionals, who in Ontario are raising some of the best food in the world.
Yes, the professionals. All you amateurs out there, take note. Forget how good fresh eggs or meat or vegetables or fruit or bread or jam or home preserves or any homemade product tastes - the pros do it better. Yeah, right.
“This is not the 1920s,” Gosnell said. “We are a very urban society.”
That’s right. No one can argue that. We don’t live in a time, like 90 years ago, when the majority of people were more self-reliant and could raise some of their own food or make some of their own clothes, if need be. Now we rely on others, from the womb to the tomb, to do perfectly healthy chores for us, all on the back of cheap oil, thereby leaving our society vulnerable to any changes in the price per barrel.
Mr. Gosnell continued:
["What? We can't grow red pepper for our omelette? There's a bylaw?"]
He said he’s “shocked” at the debate about backyard chickens in a city like London.
“We’re becoming a sophisticated research and development, high-tech community.”
And we can’t do both?
I.e., we can’t raise a few hens, collect fresh eggs and make a healthy, low-cost omelette (better than the professionals) while becoming a high-tech community?
We can’t multi-task or appreciate natural processes while making, what... a better cellphone?
If I was Carla on Cheers I’d say, “What a maroon.”
But I’m not, so I’ll just keep singin’ the blues.
***
More to follow.
Yeah, we’ve dropped the egg on this one.
.
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