In the summer of 2020, as lockdown brought us deep truths about how the world turned and a renewed focus on the importance of creating self sufficiency wherever we could in our daily lives, we welcomed three earth scratching, bug eating, egg laying feathered friends to our little garden plot. We'd kept chickens before, six of them - backyard chooks had been a long held dream for me. When I bought my first home, the only question I'd asked the solicitor was "can I keep livestock". He was an older gentleman, who wrote with a fountain pen, and wore his glasses on the very end of his nose. He removed these when I asked the question, looked at me with a furrowed brow, and asked me what sort of "livestock" I was considering. Pigs? Sheep? I remember giggling, in a way that was entirely unfitting to the formality of a solicitor's office, with its ancient, solid desk, high ceilings, and dusty white plasterwork. Chickens, I said. Just a few chickens. He put his spectacles back on his nose, peered over the top of them at the bundles of paperwork in front of him, flipped a few pages and concluded that nothing in my deeds said I could not, and so his professional opinion was that yes, that should be fine. I fairly skipped out of the office, with my copy of the house deeds, my brand new keys and a heart full of possibilities.
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