I must have been busy or something last year. Otherwise, there’s no excuse for me to have missed a flurry of news reports in April and October about backyard chickens — legal and illegal — in Chicago and suburbs, including Oak Park.
The illegal ones are being housed by a bioethicist for Northwestern University, who wants to see the city ordinance changed, according to a report by WTTW’ s Chicago Tonight.
In Oak Park, Helen Standen, who started raising backyard chickens because she wanted the natural fertilizer for her garden.
Then the reasons expanded. Standen, aka “The Chicken Lady” according to the Pioneer Press, realized that raising chickens helped connect her children to the source of their food, the science involved and, of course, sustainability.
But my favorite part of the report from Rich Samuels are the clips from the movie Mad City Chickens.
Standen gets into the nitty gritty details of her backyard chicken raising experiences in Oak Park in this essay she authored for The Local Beet. And there’s more coverage of backyard chickens and Standen here from ABC 7.
Yay Helen Standen. You’re an inspiration!
http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/Jx8o5ZPDRw&pid=SF3Df0Gj2Nw2RiB9Tojx0XdLZXyGabQr
Virtual Farmgirl 
Just learned about you from Alma. My husband writes for The Local Beet and is helping start a farmer's market in our community. I look forward to connecting.
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Yes. I met you a while back at a Local Beet function at Mado: http://virtual-farmgirl.blogspot.com/2009/03/steppin-out-with-locavores.htmlLooking forward to reconnecting.
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Just learned about you from Alma. My husband writes for The Local Beet and is helping start a farmer's market in our community. I look forward to connecting.
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Yes. I met you a while back at a Local Beet function at Mado: http://virtual-farmgirl.blogspot.com/2009/03/steppin-out-with-locavores.htmlLooking forward to reconnecting.
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