The invitations have been sent. The speakers confirmed. Nothing left to do but wait for the people to show up. Well, not exactly. Just a bit of background....
I live in a community, an "Equestrian" community of 167 lots, average 5 acres each. We are located in the High Plains, aka Eastern Plains of Colorado. We are a semi-rural community, sometimes referred to as a bedroom community as there are many who commute to a larger city for work and merely sleep at there homes. I live and work in this community. My husband commutes 1 hour & 15 min. each way to work, 5 days a week, because we love it here. We live on dirt roads with nearby paved communities. Each home is different as each lot is different. Some have homes and outbuildings, some just homes and stables. We are several buildings on a lot including sheds. Saturday nights you can either hear the loudspeaker from the sports games being played at the high school, or the loud music from the house down the road, sometimes nothing at all.
There is one very unique thing about our covenant controlled community. As mentioned we are an equestrian community. I guess that is to advertise that we are horse friendly. The entire county is horse friendly. Regardless, that is the statement on the big sign as you drive in to our subdivision. The community encourages horses. That being said, we do not own any horses. We have dogs. Two wonderful active dogs that love it out here. We lived in the city and a backyard was simple too small for them so we bought them a dog park. Our five acres has a fenced in area of around an acre and the rest is protected by an invisible fence buried in the ground around the border of the five acres. We love the horses. The pass by on the bridal trails that border our property and we wave at the riders. We enjoy seeing the new horses come in as well as the occasional colt that is born, although that is a rare sight here. Next door to us there is a delightful miniature horse who entertains us to no end with his antics. Much to our delight two weeks ago he gained a new friend and now there are two. My granddaughter loves mimicking them and I love everything about them.
Our HOA was formed in the early many years ago and very few changes have been made to our covenants since the original ones were set. Regarding domestic animal,s we are allowed 4 horses, up to 4 dogs, cats, etc. No donkeys, cattle, sheep, any livestock really or poultry. This county is fairly active in 4-H and LLama/Alpacas are very popular as are goats for projects. Not allowed here. OK. I can deal with that, after all we only have 5 acres. But how does poultry fit into the equation? One could argue this a few ways, and many have tried. Known as "The Chicken Wars", this issue has been brought to the table long before my time here as a resident. One Chicken War ended up in Court costing one resident over $4000.00. Not to mention the fight it caused between homeowners...but that is another post.
The reason for my blog is to document the journey to change our covenants to allow poultry. Our County zoning regulations currently allow for poultry on our lots so it is not a matter of changing county ordinance, just our HOA covenants. As I go up against this I have to wonder if it would be easier to change a county ordinance.
I have set up a meeting for the residents to attend to learn about chickens. As you will read in another post there seems to be some fears about having them in our community so I am bringing in a local veterinarian as well as a local author who is an advocate for changing city ordinances to allow urban homesteading. The invitations have been sent. I've received a few emails in support of my effort, which is awesome. I have a gut feeling that this meeting will be just the beginning. Although the timing for this was planned specifically for the upcoming July HOA meeting in which I will be submitting a request to change the covenant, this is a big challenge, one I expect to be working on for quite some time. I have planned this so I will have time in June to attempt to meet more homeowners and possibly collect proxies from those who don't attend meetings. So much to do...
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