homesteading

Sheffield Lake is a small suburb of about 9,000 people living in about two and a half square miles, according to Mayor Dennis Bring. In such a densely populated, compact space, the town really needs to manage the chickens. “When you take that many people and put 50-foot lots – which are not very wide lots – and you start having animals, on 50-foot lots, anything that effects your neighbor becomes a problem, and that’s why we should have some rules in place,” he says.

Some food pantries are benefiting from home chicken keepers' desire to keep collecting the birds as pets, which results in more eggs than they can handle. But sometimes it can be hard to find takers.

Here's the trick to holding chickens: Once you get them settled in your hand, they're actually pretty friendly.Inside the City Folks Farm Shop in…