I’ve always thought of myself as a farmer and I’m not really sure why. Technically speaking, I’ve never lived on a farm. Maybe it has to do with the fact that almost 50 percent of Americans lived on farms around the turn of the 20th century and that we are all a mere stone’s throw away from our agrarian forefathers. I suspect it probably has more to do with where I grew up: a small town in Nebraska. When you live in one of those Midwest plains states, everyone just assumes you are a farmer.

My childhood home did sit on a rural mail route, bordering the very edge of town where an alfalfa field separated my house from the high school I attended. And as a youth, I trespassed on many a farmers’ properties, leapt across giant rolled hay bales with great abandon, got liquored up in more than one cornfield, and went to work in those same fields at the tender age of 12 detasseling corn.

A further reinforcement of identifying with farm life comes from being a descendant of a long line of Swiss dairy folk. My mother spent her formative years on a Southern California dairy with her Swiss immigrant father who milked 40 cows, twice a day, by hand. Though my parents did not own acreage, farm lore was most definitely a part of our family consciousness. Consequently, my decision to actually “farm” wasn’t a huge conceptual shift for me.

What did take a bit of adjustment was the idea of putting that farm into the context of the city. I didn’t set out with the idea that “Now I’m going to be an urban farmer” since those two words “urban” and “farmer” are diametrically opposed to each other in our current cultural conceptions. The shift was more of a gradual “becoming” an evolution that has its roots in my childhood and continues into the present.

Three years ago, my husband and I came to the conclusion that it was time for us to buy our own home. We had both been living in the San Francisco area for well over a decade and had developed strong ties to the community. Though I had hoped to move somewhere a little more countrified, we ended up purchasing our postage stamp sized bit of earth in the Excelsior district where we now live with our 6 year old daughter. It’s certainly not the chunk of acreage that is usually brought to mind when one hears the word “farm,” but we’ve got exactly 1,000 square feet of soil to plant and raise whatever strikes our fancy. You’d be surprised what you can pack into such a tiny space.

The initial impetus to think big for our little lot began with a nagging obsession to own a chicken. Where the idea came from is not completely clear to me. Maybe it was the cost of truly free range, quality eggs that set the wheels in motion. At $7.50 a dozen for guilt free eggs, a more affordable and entertaining option seemed like a good choice. All I recall is my constant chattering about all things poultry. The response from friends and family was always the same: “Is it legal?” Heck if I knew whether or not San Francisco had laws about these things!