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Ok, well today has been quite a busy day around here! First, I went to City Hall to see Lisa Garst become the 3rd woman to serve on Salem City Council (YAY LISA!!!), and to see our newest mayor become elected. Congratualtions to our new Mayor, Randy Foley.
Then, at 11, channel 10 (WSLS) came out to interview me about our chickens, and how the current laws are in conflict with each other. I have to say, I felt that the piece ran a little on the negative side, but in all it was fairly good. The best thing though would be that within an hour of the piece airing on tv we had 8 more people sign our petition!!! YAY!!!! Here's to hoping THAT will continue! Here is a link for anyone who would like to check it out: http://www.wsls.com/sls/news/local/article/chickens_wont_fly_in_salem/13370/
After this I invited Vickie Daulton over to see the chickens. Mrs. Daulton works on the Planning Commission in Salem and will be part of the board that 'yay' or 'nay's the decision to go before Council to allow chickens. We talked for about an hour. I tried to impress upon her, as I have other City Officials, that the current laws in the code dictate how chickens are to be kept. Currently they're worried that, while we may be responsible chicken owners, others will not and how to enforce that/what to do. I've told them they already have that in place. Perhaps I see it more simply than they do.
After this I talked with Melinda Payne who works with Planning Development in Salem. She said the current situation is that they don't know what to do, so for now, our chickens have been given a reprieve to cluck away happily. This is only mildly comforting.
Finally, we've had a slight set-back in our kwh usage & solar power commitment. Jomo, our newest puppy, is full of mischief and has COMPLETELY destroyed our solar-powered pump for our pond. Luckily, the pond came with an electric pump so we've been able to hook that up. The odd thing is that the solar pump didn't really have much of a filter on it and the water was full of algae; we knew we needed to do something, we just weren't sure what we could do cost-wise. I guess Jomo made the decision for us. When the pump was turned on the odor that began coming out of the pond was fairly foul, so we're hoping there aren't lots of dead fish in there. I suppose we'll see soon. Till then, I guess we will have to add "saving $$ for a new, improved & proper solar-pond pump & filter" to our list of things we need to be doing.