Sunday, April 19, 2009

Let's Talk about Chicks


Off you go to your new home.


A few weeks ago when I arrived at the Master Gardeners Annual Heirloom Tomato and Pepper sale a few minutes after the 9 AM start time only to find there were NO PARKING places near the event and then 15 minutes later after parking a short distance from the sale and walking to the rows and rows of tomato plants only to discover many varieties were already sold out, I got the feeling that home vegetable gardening had become something of a phenomena.  There were scads of people cruising the aisles, loading up on tomato and pepper plants and these weren't just us old-timers like me.  There were plenty of young people including young parents pulling wagons full of kids and plants.  How heartening!  This weekend I decided to check out the chick sale at Sam's Downtown Feed store and saw a scene similar to the plant sale only a smaller scale.  Sam's hosts a baby chick sale each year with 4H members on hand to inform and educate the public on chicks and 4H.  The chicks were selling like crazy.  I overheard one customer urge someone on the other end of her cell phone to decide quickly because there was only one of a particular variety left.  Are these "victory chickens" to get us through tough times?  If you would like to get in on this backyard chicken movement then head on over to Sam's on Saturday, June 6th when this event repeats.  You can learn all about raising poultry, buy a few chicks and pick up all the feed and equipment you need for them while you are there.

3 comments:

nbalike said...
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JIm Gunson said...

Here in coastal British Columbia, heirloom varieties are becoming popular, but only, I suspect, for the enlightened few. Last week I bought five varieties of tomato (pronounced TOE-MAR-TOE) at the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Horticultural Dept sale.

These are for my greenhouse. I stopped growing tomatoes outside about 15 years ago, when a cool damp June brought early blight that killed all the exposed tomato plants. I suspect blight is not a problem in San Jose.

emily said...

so i don't think there's a more general place to comment so i'm just commenting here. first i wanted to tell you i just got to your page by memory(i kept on forgetting where the dashes and dots were so i would log into my email and find the link - why i dont just use "favorites" i dont know. second, are you getting chicks this year? i would assume no since i think i would have heard by now if you were but i could be wrong, hopefully. third, hopefully i'm comming to sj from sat until wed. and also i wanted to tell you i went and pet the cutest little baby pigmy goats today...i miss baby goaties!