Brian & Hallie

[Brian & Hallie]

Thanks Amber – we really appreciate connecting with you as well! We have wound up moving more times than we would’ve anticipated over the past 7 years, but it’s given us a lot of different environments to operate in. We’ve started 4 food forests in the last 10 years or so – they have become our footprints along the way, and I love planting things and seeing what can grow! I really hope you can find a way to have chickens in your life – they are seriously fun to care for and get to know. I like to set up the runs so I can see them while I wash dishes – great entertainment! We have a couple chickens that we have moved from Washington state to Utah to Idaho and now back to Washington… :).

Tummy time in the grass is a great idea. She has been much more unsettled and vocal in the last couple weeks, so you are totally right, it feels the easiest to just pick her up too often. Taking her outside is about the only way I can settle her down fairly quickly (Hallie can nurse her…), so I will start putting her down in the grass when I take her out. It’s incredible to think that her head is 30% of her weight, but it actually makes sense when I think about how it feels to pick her up. What a workout the tummy time is when I think about it. We have a sonic slider – Hallie loves it! We have used it with our son, but haven’t on our daughter yet – good idea for rebalancing her.

[Brian & Hallie]

We’ve used 2 of these feeders for the last couple years with success – they seem to waste far less food and are a handy way to store the extra food and be able to leave for a week +. They still get lots of interaction from us (especially our son) and they do lots of foraging in a large and luxurious chicken area right now. :). This company also has a DIY kit that you can attach to any barrel etc that you may have already to keep the cost down a bit.

https://rentacoop.com/collections/poultry-feeders/products/outdoor-rainproof-galvanized-chicken-feeder?variant=44886837919987

[Brian & Hallie]

We have nut trees planted in our chicken run and have grown elderberries and mulberries around and in their run as well. It works great – just have to protect the young trees/roots from the scratching and digging until they get a little bigger. I also built a chicken tunnel and moat around our last food forest/orchard sort of like the idea in the Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Garden book. I cross fenced it to rotate the sections around the orchard that the chickens had access to, and then was able to sow clovers and other chicken crops when they were rotated into the other areas to create more feed for them. We noticed the chickens presence helped everything in the orchard grow better – think it was a combo of energetics, insect balancing, and chicken fertilizer.

[Brian & Hallie]

Does the HOA specifically exclude ducks? That might be a work around – or try out the Anastasia thing and let the ducks migrate in the winter and come back to you :). They are free ducks, who like to seasonally visit then – not livestock. If you go stealth chickens, don’t go for Rhode Island Reds – in our experience, our Rhode Island Red was our noisiest chicken! We have a buff orpington who is a lot quieter and our barred rock and black sex links are a lot quieter as well. Our chickens make less noise the more range or variety they have had. Even a small chicken tractor moved frequently kept them busy. I built a chicken moat around our orchard at our last property and here they have a fenced tree covered hillside – really only hear them when they are laying eggs or if something causes an alarm. If they get bored, they get noisy.

We lived with an HOA years ago and the terms of that one said they couldn’t step onto your property to inspect – so they had to stay in the front of our house-road or sidewalk. So, in our backyard, I ran a fence line just inside the edges of the sidewalls of our house which they could not see from the front of the house – that’s how I built a dog run with fencing that wasn’t allowed by HOA rules. I talked to our neighbor first who could see what I was doing, and they didn’t care, so we were all good. I got the love letters from the HOA for some other things which I had fun responding to, but they couldn’t do anything about the fence since they had no legal ability to see it. :).

[Brian & Hallie]

Thank you Dave – I really appreciate your thoughtful response. It is challenging once you are aware of the fraud to continue to participate in it in any way, but also have to be realistic as to the time and place and system that exists around us. If it was just me solo I would’ve wandered out to the woods years ago and worked through whatever inconveniences that meant, but I am truly fortunate enough to have a family around me on the journey which totally changes the considerations. We have shrunk our footprint in the system as far as I can figure out how to so far, but still definitely have a foot in their world. It is really helpful to hear individual stories on what actions have been taken and how it has worked out. The anecdotes in the law fare circles tend to be very short on details, and I guess that’s somewhat understandable since none of us usually knows who we are actually talking to online and no one wants to wander into another bear trap. I really appreciate this forum when people share what they’ve done and what they are trying and documents etc.

I know it’s all an individual journey, and hopefully we can all keep putting little cracks into the system and put energy towards the alternatives. It’s so encouraging to see the number of people who have become aware of the massive fraud and artificial chute that was built. I signed up for Greg Paul’s new course, so I’m curious what I learn from that, and I think Marcia Ann’s I am the living law approach is the real deal – especially if you have your own business, but I definitely have more to learn. In the meantime, I will continue to minimize the theft and try to avoid loading our kids into the chute. They can each choose their path someday, but hopefully we can at least help them to know what they are choosing. Thanks again – I really appreciate the support!

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