Politics; Like Backyard Chickens -
Jeremy Shaffer
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Thoughts, Ideas, and Discussion Items revolving around Community Development, Planning, Economic Development, and Technology; that put together correctly will lead to the Building of an American Utopia in Towns across the Nation.
Pervious Pavement - The Perfect Material for Sustainable Streets and Walkways.
When I was Mayor, I heard about a project at the Cincinnati Zoo using pervious pavement for walkways and drives. After a couple years in use the Cincinnati Zoo has great things to say about pervious pavement. The product has excellent life span, better than blacktop and is concrete based. The material itself has a built in fix for water displacement, which is the number one maintenance issue in all types of streets and walkways. Check out the link to pervious pavement. It is a foundational piece for a sustainable infrastructure.
A few weeks ago I posted on Economic Development incentives, focused on available options in Ohio. The link, Steal this small town development idea, offers an interesting local model for residential building/development incentives in targeted areas of Burnet, TX. The incentive program hopes to reduce urban or rural sprawl.
This a great repost from a blog I actively follow. It covers the do's or dont's and is an informative, perfect if your starting from scratch or freshening an active plan. Some of the items it seems many of us are drawn to do, and they are beginner mistakes. I hope you find this article helpful in establishing or re-establishing your rural community image.
Jeremy Shaffer, Highland County Commissioner
Recently, I listened to a session on How to Market a Community with Roger Brooks of Destination Development International. I wanted to share my notes with you.
The first fact he mentioned is about how we search when we’re looking for somewhere to go. We search on activity first, then location second. So we’ll search “mountain biking western Oklahoma” or “sailing southern Ontario.” Brooks’ examples showed people searching on an activity and then a town name.
“Have you ever gone anywhere because they ‘have something for everyone’ or they are the ‘gateway to’ someplace else?” Brooks asked.
He says 97% of community-based marketing is ineffective. The reason is that we filter out everything that isn’t directly relevant to us.
Pretty Prairie, Kansas, promotes only one thing on their highway sign: the largest night rodeo in Kansas.
Destinations must act like businesses: narrow your focus.
What do you have that the people you are hoping to attract can’t get or do closer to home?
What makes you worth a special trip?
What sets you apart from everyone else?
(If you read my weekly emails, you know I hammer on this one, as well.)
What ever it is that makes you different or clearly better, you must hang your hat on that, Brooks said. But it isn’t enough for you claim that you’re different or clearly better. That difference has to come by third party endorsement. Other people have to say it, too.
Most communities are stuck in the “group hug mentality.” They try to make everyone happy with their tourism marketing. The “membership mentality” of “we don’t want to leave out any of our members” leads to generic, “something for everyone” market that is ineffective. 10 things you need to know and do to win
To drive home the message about narrowing your tourism marketing to a niche, Brooks presented 10 things to know. 1. Don’t get hung up on logos and slogans.
They are not brands. They are just marketing messages that support your brand. Logos and slogans are 2% of marketing, but 98% of local attention goes to them, Brooks said. You don’t choose Ford over Chevy because of their logo or slogan. 2. A brand is a perception.
A brand is what people think of you, not what you say you are, Brooks said. We create them through visual cues, people and attitudes, word of mouth, publicity, and social media. Negative perceptions can require a repositioning or rebranding effort. Good brands evoke emotion. They make a statement. They sell a feeling, not a place or a product. Brands are all WHY, not WHAT or WHERE. 3. Successful brands have a narrow focus.
If I can take out your town’s name, and plug in any other town, it fails, Brooks said. You’re not doing anything wrong, you’re just saying the same thing everyone else is saying. You must jettison the generic. You cannot be all things to all people. Promote your primary lure. Memberships kill attempts to specialize tourism marketing.
Here are some of those “everyone uses them” words and phrases to delete from your marketing:
explore
discover
outdoor recreation
so much to do
four season destination
historic downtown
center of it all
best kept secret
close to it all
playground
I’m sure you can think of many more.
Don’t just market what you have, market what will close the sale, Brooks said. 4. Narrow focus so much that your name becomes synonymous with your brand.
Brooks listed off destinations that have succeeded at this: Napa Valley for wine, Las Vegas for adult fun. 5. Brands are built on product, not just marketing.
People are looking for things to do, not just things to look at, Brooks said. That’s why it’s so hard to market your history in tourism. You have to find ways to make people involved in the experience of that history. Brands are always experiential. Tourism organizations sell cities, towns and counties before experiences. Economic Development groups sell infrastructure and land before opportunities. These are mistakes according to Brooks. Avoid hiring any branding company that does not talk about product, he said. 6. Never, ever use focus groups.
They are never the way to build a brand, Brooks said. Cute and/or clever seldom work in tourism marketing. Never do branding by public consent. Period. When lots of people get involved, that carefully crafted narrow niche gets spread out into making everyone happy. Build your brand by feasibility, not local sentiment. Top-down branding efforts fail 98% of the time, Brooks said. 7. You never “roll out” your brand until you can “deliver on the promise.”
If you market your community for a niche you really don’t deliver on, you are setting up for upset visitors, Brooks said. Brands are earned, good or bad. Communities have used transitional brands to talk about what they are becoming. 8. Great brands always start with a plan.
Brooks outlined a simple plan:
What do you want to be known for?
What do you need to own the brand?
How will you tell the world?
What goes on the to do list?
9. Build your brand by feasibility, not local sentiment.
Brooks said to start with an assessment. Where you are today? Then, ask the locals, where do you want to go as a community? When someone mentions your community in 10 years, what do you want them to mention? Next, do the research. Which of all the ideas make the most sense? Answer these key questions about feasibility:
Is this something the markets we are hoping to attract can’t get or do closer to home?
Can the community buy into it over time?
Can the private sector invest in it?
How much will it cost and when will we see return?
Does it have legs? Can we start with a niche, then add extensions to the brand?
Can we make it obvious and pervasive throughout the city?
Will it extend our seasons?
Do we have tireless champions for this cause?
Is it experiential? Things to do, not things to look at.
Only once the concept is proved feasible does Brooks recommend developing an action plan. The strategies, goals and objectives should fill no more than 10 pages. An action plan is a to do list. Each item on the plan should include:
the recommendation – what is to be done
who’s in charge
what it will cost
the source of funds
when it must be completed
the rationale – give the reason
10. Don’t let local politics kill your branding efforts.
Brooks listed three killers of branding efforts:
local politics, especially “membership” politics that try to please everyone
lack of champions
lack of money
What lessons have you learned in marketing your community?
Edible landscaping could easily become an important part of the local food movement and provide a home healthy choice. There are many plants that grow well in Ohio, which can easily be incorporated into a flower bed. Many might vision the garden as the traditional square plot, set aside for vegetables and other plants. Actually, many vegetables can be intermingled with ornamental flowering plants that could assist with inhibiting pests, as well as promoting pollination. There are many varieties of perennials and annuals to fit your needs. Fresh herbs, as well as some small shrubs(rugosa rose) make for useful additions, offering flavors that will make meals pop. Find a reblogged article below for Top Edible Picks for those of us in the Ohio region, as well as couple other useful links.
Jeremy Shaffer, County Commissioner
Here are the top edible landscape picks from four local experts.
Jeanne’s Picks
Jeanne Quartz, co-author of The Ohio Gardener’s Journal: The Edible Landscape
(330) 854-2306
Asparagus
Asparagus officinalis
This early season perennial will be productive for about 10 years. Plant in well-drained soil in a sunny spot with lots of compost. After you’ve enjoyed the wonderful veggies, let the last small shoots grow into beautiful four-foot foliage that turns gold in the fall.
Red Currants
Ribes sativum
Beautiful red berries can be used for jams and jellies, but the shrub grows to six feet and can produce about 10 pounds of fruit when mature. Dark ornamental leaves provide a beautiful backdrop to the fruit.
Fig Tree
Ficus carica
This houseplant that can be moved outside in the summer and brought in for the winter. Small, multi-stemmed tree reach only about 4 feet and like indirect light most of the day. A great porch plant, a two-year old tree may yield a few dozen figs.
Potted Rosemary
Rosemarinus officinalis
In Ohio, rosemary likes to winter over indoors with sparse watering, but outdoors prefers sandy soil. An indispensable kitchen herb, plant it as a border or a small shrubby plant.
Ornamental Quince
Chaenomeles
Native to Asian countries, this beautiful early blooming shrub delivers a showy display of watermelon-colored blossoms and yields apple-shaped fruit for chutney, jams and jellies.
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Jennifer’s Picks Jennifer Bartley, author of Designing the New Kitchen Garden (2006) and Kitchen Gardeners Handbook (2010),
(740) 927-7642
Scarlet Runner Beans
Phaseolus coccineus
This annual climber produces edible red flowers for salads, is easy to grown on a trellis and will attract humming birds. Loves full sun…oh, and don’t’ forget the reward of the beans.
Elderberry
Sambucus nigra subsp. Canadensis
Deciduous shrub the likes full sun to part shade and moist soils. Enjoy the berries for jellies and wine in early fall. For best fruit choose, 'Adams', 'Kent', 'Nova' or 'York' and plant two varieties.
Pawpaw
Asimina triloba
A small ornamental tree and a beautiful native plant to Ohio, it can be used as a small landscape tree in full sun or part shade and will produce fruit that taste like banana custard in the fall.
'Redbor' Kale
Brassica oleracea Acephala Group
This biennial is grown as an annual in Ohio. Full sun to part shade, its an edible member of the cabbage family, red with frill leaves. Cool weather loving, it survives in containers or perennial beds for a long season. Use the leaves in salads and stir fry dishes.
Flat Leaf Italian Parsley
Petroselinum crispum
Another biennial grown as an annual, what kitchen couldn’t do without a crop of versatile parsley for salads and salsas? The beautiful green border thrives in the garden all season, attracts beneficial insects and can be easily started from seed.
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Ruth’s Picks
Ruth “The Grower” Ham, owner April Showers Greenhouse
7464 Old Route 39 NW in Sugarcreek
(330) 473-8603
Lady Blue Blueberries
Vaccinium corymbosum
This lovely, shrub will begin producing beautiful blueberries in just 3 years. With pruning, it will stay compact, about 4 feet high. Loves full sun and a peat moss mulch.
Golden Child Raspberries
Rubus hybrid
The upright-based shrub has thorns to keep the rabbits at bay. Prefers rich soil, full sun and compost mulch. The yellow fruits are sweet, require less sugar and are the best for making pies.
Gooseberries
Emblica officinalis
An upright, kind of boxy shrub with long thorns and a wild look; doesn’t require much pruning. The berries are good for pies and freeze well for making smoothies in the winter.
June Bearing Strawberry
Fragaria x ananassa
Produces better in cooler soils, composed with mulch and straw, and does not require much fertilizer. A perennial favorite, plant them as a border among flowerbeds. Big beautiful flowers attract honeybees and beneficial insects and yields delightful berries, too.
Bell Peppers
C. frutescens grossum
Container planting allows for incorporating vegetable production into landscaping. Does best in full sun with a compost rich potting soil mix. Varieties called Red Beauty and Hungarian Wax are good choices for adding color and the fruits are good for preserving and freezing.
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Bill’s Picks
Bill Hendricks, president Klyn Nurseries (wholesalers)
3322 South Ridge Road in Perry
(440) 339-4720
Serviceberry
Amelanchier species
As a shrub, the bluish-green elliptical leaves turn into intense fall foliage colors or yellow, red and orange and winter interest plant with gray streaked branches…all this after the yielding small sweet fruits in June, best used for jelly, pie and wine making.
Cornelian Cherry
Cornus mas
Large ornamental shrub or small tree, like full sun and is adaptable to a range of soil conditions. One of the first plants to flower in the spring and bear tart cherry-like fruit ripens in late summer and can be used for jelly and jam.
Hops
Humulus lupulus
Long-lived perennial grows vigorously like pole beans on tall poles, strings or trellis up to 10 feet. The pine cone-like bracts of the hops, picked young, have a pleasantly bitter taste and can be used in salads.
Persimmon
Diospyros virginiana
Beautiful sun loving tree tolerates some shade and blooms in late spring and bears fleshy tomato-shaped fruit tasting of honeyed apricots when harvested fully ripe.
Sea Buckthorn
Hippophae rhamnoides
Extremely hardy deciduous shrub likes full sun and good drainage. Small, bright orange, tart berries on female plants can be used in juice, jellies and sauces
This presentation was delivered on June 14, 2013, at the BALLE Conference in Buffalo, New York. Download a PDF version of the text.
Welcome, everyone. Thanks for being here. (Slide 2) I’m Stacy Mitchell. I direct the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Independent Business Initiative, which provides research, policy analysis, and tools to help communities gain greater control over their own economic futures.
Reblog,
By Jeremy Shaffer
Highland County Commissioner
What a tasty little article. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did. Let use this slice of advice to assist in the development of local tourism, perfect for the foody in all of us. Jeremy Shaffer, Highland County Commissioner
You have your own local food specialties. Show them off while educating your locals with a Taste and Tour event. Photo by Becky McCray.
Here’s another great small town/rural tourism idea you can steal, this one from Canada.
A two-day Taste & Tour Middlesex Conference started off with networking and local food. It’s important to do the fun stuff first. Then they turned to learning the second day, with a traditional conference event.
You’ll find Tourism Middlesex at www.tourmiddlesex.ca
So any local or regional group could combine the fun and learning together into an event people really do want to attend.
But instead of targeting only tourism professionals or tourism businesses, open the fun part up to more locals. Anybody! Invite them all to come out, taste, and then give them a bonus: more information about what they can see and do in their own neighborhood. New here? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
Susie Coston, national shelter director at the Farm Sanctuary based in Watkins Glen, N.Y., is holding Becky, a pet hen, as former backyard birds wander nearby. About 250 abandoned backyard birds are waiting for homes at the shelter's three sites on both coasts.
Despite visions of quaint coops, happy birds and cheap eggs, the growing trend of raising backyard chickens in urban settings is backfiring, critics say, as disillusioned city dwellers dump unwanted fowl on animal shelters and sanctuaries.
Hundreds of chickens, sometimes dozens at a time, are being abandoned each year at the nation’s shelters from California to New York as some hipster farmers discover that hens lay eggs for two years, but can live for a good decade longer, and that actually raising the birds can be noisy, messy, labor-intensive and expensive.
“Many areas with legalized hen-keeping are experiencing more and more of these birds coming in when they’re no longer wanted,” said Paul Shapiro, spokesman for the Humane Society of the United States. “You get some chicks and they’re very cute, but it’s not as though you can throw them out in the yard and not care for them.”
That accusation is disputed by advocates of home-grown chickens, who say that a few negative incidents shouldn’t give a bad name to a practice that encourages both self-sufficiency and the consumption of sustainable food grown in a humane manner.
“We’ve experienced smell, noise, pests, etc., way more from improperly cared for dogs and cats than we have from backyard chickens,” said Rob Ludlow, owner of the fast-growing website, BackYardChickens.com, which started with 50 members in 2007 and now boasts 200,000 members. He is the author of three books, including “Raising Chickens for Dummies.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people are realizing the wonderful benefits of raising a small flock of backyard chickens, the pets that make you breakfast,” he said, noting that cities nationwide have agreed, passing ordinances making it legal to keep small flocks of urban chickens.
However, at the Farm Sanctuary headquartered in Watkins Glen, N.Y. -- which operates three shelters on two coasts -- some 225 former backyard chickens are waiting now for new homes, said National Shelter Director Susie Coston. They’re among at least 400 to 500 abandoned chickens that show up every year, including many suffering from maltreatment or illness.
“They’re put on Craigslist all the time when they don’t lay any more,” said Coston, 48. “They’re dumped all the time.”
It’s the same scenario at the Chicken Run Rescue in Minneapolis, Minn., where owner Mary Britton Clouse has tracked a steady climb in surrendered birds from fewer than 50 in 2001 to nearly 500 in 2012.
She traces that rise to the so-called “locavore” movement, which spiked in popularity in 2008 as advocates urged people to eat more food grown and processed close to home.
“It’s the stupid foodies,” said Britton Clouse, 60, who admits she speaks frankly. “We’re just sick to death of it.”
People entranced by a “misplaced rural nostalgia” are buying chickens from the same hatcheries that supply the nation's largest poultry producers and rearing them without proper space, food or veterinary care, she said.
The most commonly available hens have been bred to be good egg layers. At the same time, backyard farmers often use enhanced feed, light or other tools to prompt hens to lay constantly. After keeping up that pace for 18 months to two years, however, hens often develop reproductive problems including oviduct diseases that can kill them, veterinarians say. However, healthy hens can live for years longer, up to a decade after they stop laying.
Niko Kallianiotis / for NBC News
Many people would be surprised to know that chickens are smart, with funny, quirky personalities, Coston said.
Because chickens are notoriously hard to sex, some backyard farmers wind up with roosters, which are often culled and killed because they can be noisy, aggressive and illegal, and, of course, they don’t lay eggs at all.
In addition to the noise, many urban farmers are surprised that chickens attract pests like rats, and predators including foxes, raccoons, hawks, and even neighborhood dogs.
When they get sick or hurt, they need care that can run into the hundreds of dollars, boosting the price of that home-grown egg far beyond even the most expensive grocery store brand.
Enthusiasts who start out with good intentions frequently wind up posting messages like this one delivered to Britton-Clouse last month: “One of our hens grew up into a rooster and our neighbors are starting to complain. Do you know someone who might take him?”
“People don’t know what they’re doing,” Britton Clouse said. “And you’ve got this whole culture of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing teaching every other idiot out there.”
But Ludlow, the backyard chicken enthusiast, said that “it’s very rare” that people make such mistakes or underestimate how difficult it is to raise chickens.
“While we definitely want to see more education around the lifespan and laying lifespan of chickens, we find that most people become so attached to their hens as pets, that even though they planned to eat or cull their hens at the end of their laying life, they decide to keep their girls around even without laying eggs,” he said.
Coston, the Farm Sanctuary shelter director, said she wished that were true. Most people don’t realize that chickens are funny, with quirky habits and affectionate personalities as distinct as any other pet’s.
“Oh, my god, they’re amazing,” said Coston, who frequently cuddles her chickens. “We have some of the sweetest ones here. They just sit beside you and they let you pet them. And they’re big and dumpy.”
She hopes the enthusiasm for raising backyard chickens will fade and that consumers will take a second look at their appetite for eggs and poultry.
“To go back in time sounds wonderful,” she said. “But there is not enough land on this earth to sustain the amount of meat, dairy and milk that people want.”
"Communities across the country are making roads safer and more accessible for everyone who uses them, and these changes are happening on a larger scale than ever before. In 2012 nearly 130 communities adopted Complete Streets policies. These laws, resolutions, executive orders, policies and planning and design documents encourage and provide safe access to destinations for everyone, regardless of age, ability, income, ethnicity or how they travel."(smartgrowthamerica.org/complete-streets-2012-analysis)
