I read about the fellow in British Colombia yesterday after following links to it … what boggles the mind is that it took one complaint from a neighbor who "didn't like the smell of the fresh manure on the plants" quoted from the city.  Wow.  Goes to show how little the neighbor and the city know about growing veggies … nobody puts fresh manure on plants!  Perhaps the smell is from the fellow several houses down from the small urban farm under attack that is keeping cows and horses, maybe, perhaps, hmmmmm?  Nothing quite like the viral nature of the internet to rain embarrassment onto the hubris of city officials.   What is fascinating it once the city starts down an unpopular path is how badly their collective ego won't let it go.

BTW, the Michigan gal's petition has almost made it to 25,000 signatures.  Gotta love it!

Sigs are up to 26k for the Michigan family!

Miss Judy, you could always speak with your immediate neighbors, offer to share some eggs, they'll be the ones to take up for you if there are complaints from other neighbors further down the road.

kellyb, same thing happened near me, an established hog farm (not a corporate factory farm, a family hog farm) was sued by a community of retirees (most of them from north of the mason-dixon ; )) for the smell it produced–farm was here for 50 years prior to the sub-division.  The judge laughed them out of court.  Told 'em that to a farmer, that was the smell of money!  And then the same community went so far as to try to annex the area around the farm so they could then legislate the farm out of business. The state capital got in on that real quick.  Stopped it before that mess could get started.  Poor farming family still had to incur all those legal fees, but at least they got left alone.  

Well, it seems like so many people won't be happy until there are no farmers, and then where will they get their food?

Thanks for the update, BuckeyeGirl.  I hope all the exposure might get them some donated legal expertise to fight all this.  Too sad that a nice family is going through something this that is so minor, yet speaks volumes.  Wonder who they ticked off in the neighborhood, someone has an ax to grind…

And Miss Judy, you're right, and I too am guilty as charged! I briefly got involved in county politics after groups of wild dogs kept decimating my chicken flocks.  Helped get animal control more active, but that was very self-serving ; )) 

I think there's an election coming up next year for mayor; I could be wrong. I don't live in that city.

Joel Salatin mentioned in one of his books (Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal) about reading in the paper that his city was outlawing sawmills on the private property, and how he went down the day of the vote and got it rewritten. The whole ordinance was being written without considering all the facts, out of ignorance really, and thankfully he was there to correct them.

I always used to say you can send a genius to college and suck all the common sense right out of them (not everyone of course), and I see it most in people with power. It's a shame.