looking for a pgh. neighborhood....

[DaBurgh]

Originally Posted by fleetiebelle

I know that someone was keeping goats in my neighborhood a few years back because they got loose and were running around the streets.

Bla-a-a-a-a-a-a-sphemy

[Aran]

Try Polish Hill.

[afewgoodcommunities]

.

My husband and I actually use dandelion, viloet, ground ivy, plantain, and many other common "weeds" in foods, vinegar, oils, and teas. They are very nutritious. It is an unfortunate turn of events the way people are poisioning themselves with pesticides/herbicides. Notice I'm not saying "poisoning the earth". I think to assume that what we are doing is hurting the earth is silly. The earth will be fine. We poison ourselves. One is eight women will get breast cancer. My father died from pancreatic cancer at 54 and I grew up in the suburbs of pittsburgh with my parents getting non-organic food from corporate farmers at Shop n Save, and spending money for the chemlawn truck to come every month. Eggs were also from Shop N Save most likely from a huge corporation collecting them from chickens kept in cages witht their own feces and never allowed to walk. Poor chickens? I'm concerened less about the chickens than my own health eating a food that came from something that was sick. f you can't walk, you're usually sick in one way or another whether you're a chicken, a human, or a dog.
They outlawed DDT for a reason- it causes birth defects. Studies from prestigious universities are comming out every month linking the still legal pesticides to diseases such as ADHD, obesity, and cancer to pesticides. Last fall I worked on a small, still family owned, all- organic vegetable farm in Northern VA. God bless them. It was far from Idyllic. I was there at 6:30AM soaking wet from the dew, pulling out the thorny amaranth from the beet beds with my bare hands. I helped pack the vegetables, lift the crates, sell the produce at the roadside stand- I've never done anything so exhausting in my life, and for less than minimum wage. But they let me have any of the vegetables and eggs (i also watered and fed the chickens daily) that I wanted, God bless them. That fall, my husband and I ate well, and felt good about where our food came from. We KNEW where our food came from. And that means the world to me- what is so basic as that?

All I want is to be able to grow old in a place where I can take care of myself. Sure, money is important, but it's not everything. There is an old proverb that goes something like this
"When the last river, and stream, and fish have been poisoned, will we be able to sit back and eat our money?"

Our yard in Northern VA is all weeds, and so are all of our neighbors. And we haven't had to pay to water our lawn at all. Weeds are weeds for a reason. They're hearty. They're resistant. They're the things that survive while everything else shrivels away. And the pesticides only serve to burn it even more in the hot sun.

I don't want weeds so that our property can look "unkept". We cut our lawnfull of weeds, there is grass mixed in there too. We trim our bushes, we keep everything as healthy as we can. And I don't want chickens and goats so that they can run rampant and bother people. I'd love to be able to provide fresh, healthy eggs to my neighbors at prices that aren't insanely expensive. I didn't realize this was so wrong.

An article was just in the Pittsburgh Post Gazzette a few months back about Women and Farming. Thank goodness that women, who have primarily been the ones concerned with their family's health and well-being since the beginning of time, are realizing that intimacy with one's sustenance is one of the most important things- more important than wearing fashionable clothes, or going to fancy shopping malls, or having a million dollars in the bank. Money won't buy health, and looking good on the outside doesn't equate to health on the inside.

Thank you for those of you who gave me sincere advice, I do appreciate it!!

[greg42]

Nothing wrong with any of it! It's just a tough thing trying to predict where would be the best place to look, for those of us (pretty much everyone reading, it seems) who don't live in such an area. I still think you're most likely to find like-minded folks doing these things for the reasons you specify in parts of the East End of the city. I'm not up on the regulations on having chickens in your yard though, and I tend to see more such people being vegetarian. Certainly if you go to look at houses you can eye up the neighbors' yards, but it's otherwise going to be tough to predict if any of them are of the perfect lawn persuasion. I'm guessing immediate neighbors subscribing to lawn care places would make you uncomfortable, both culturally and health-wise.

I think what you have to consider more than all those things is whether you want to be somewhere where you're driving all the time, driving somewhat far to the city (maybe 45 min), etc. vs being in or close to the city. If you want, any of the surrounding counties in this area (Beaver, Butler, Westmoreland, Washington are the immediate surrounding counties; Allegheny contains Pittsburgh) have parts that are truly rural where you can have a lot of space, probably more than what you're suggesting, and in your price range. But it's a tradeoff, of course. Although many of the things you'd be trading off aren't things you actually mentioned here as important to you, so maybe that's okay. You seem to be more concerned about personal environment than overall environment (not that one doesn't help beget the other, that's a longer discussion than I mean to have here, but generally speaking from your remarks), so perhaps a rural space and having to drive everywhere is in fact more appropriate for you. I think there would be less of the like-minded folks out there, though.

Good luck with it. You might try to find a more specific forum, Facebook group, not sure. I don't have a suggestion but something focused towards these sensibilities, even if it's not local to Pittsburgh, may also help steer you in the right direction.

[BrianTH]

Just an idle thought, but there might be some West End neighborhoods that split the difference between a little more space and convenience to the City. I'm not sure about like-mindedness, but you never know--although not necessarily the most crunchy-granola sort of town, I think a lot of people in Pittsburgh have a healthy respect for farming, independence, and some of the other values you are invoking. Unfortunately I'm not a West End expert, so this is more a vague concept than a specific idea.

[jay5835]

Originally Posted by afewgoodcommunities

.It is an unfortunate turn of events the way people are poisioning themselves with pesticides/herbicides.

[snippage of much good stuff]

One is eight women will get breast cancer. My father died from pancreatic cancer at 54 and I grew up in the suburbs of pittsburgh with my parents getting non-organic food from corporate farmers at Shop n Save, and spending money for the chemlawn truck to come every month

I couldn't agree more. I would love to have you as a next-door neighbor if I lived in a house.

[Copanut]

I pull weeds by hand.