After years of debate, one of Nova Scotia’s smallest towns is seeking to put to rest the question of whether to allow farm animals within town limits.
On Monday, residents of Mulgrave will have the opportunity to vote in a plebiscite on whether the town should enact a poultry and farm animal bylaw.
“They’re very nice people,” said one woman, concerned with her neighbour’s farm animals, but who along with her husband didn’t want her name used.
Yes, she’s a sweet lady,” added the husband.
“When her pig was over here rooting up the ground, she came over and was down on her hands and knees fixing it up. It’s just I worked on the sea all my life and I couldn’t wait to finally get home, have a few toys and take care of my property. I don’t mind her having animals, I just want them to stay over there.”
Over there in this town of of some 800 souls on the Strait of Canso is Karen Hearn.
The 37-year-old wasn’t able to work anymore cleaning houses when COVID-19 first arrived.
She and her husband had long kept chickens on their lot, but with the pandemic she added a Berkshire pig. Then another pig and meat birds.
They have three children.
“We’re here still drowning in debt and we just want to feed our family good, healthy food,” said Hearn.
They now have 12 laying hens,12 ducks, two pigs and 20 meat birds.
They have fences made from pallets, a barn she built for $10 with lumber salvaged from a railyard and a mini water tower with a cedar shingle roof fed by rainwater and a vegetable garden on her lot.
Hearn knows the neighbours who have concerns with her animals and made a point of stating she wouldn’t speak ill of them.
Like them she was attracted to the community by reasonable house prices years ago and the opportunity to build her idea of the good life.
It’s just in this community of tightly packed homes, differing ideas of how to create that life have come to overlap.
About six people currently have chickens or other farm animals in Mulgrave.
The debate began two years ago in neighbouring Pirate Harbour, which is part of the town, with noise and odour complaints by neighbours of a family with farm animals.
That family has since moved to rural Cape Breton, but the issue continued with presentations by both those in favour and those opposed to town council.
“Every year it’s the same thing,” Mulgrave Mayor Ron Chisholm told The Guysborough Journal on June 8.
“There are complaints about farm animals running on other people’s property. The other people are paying their taxes, too; if they wanted farm animals, I’m sure they would have had them. Right now, we are getting a lot of complaints about smell, very bad smell. We just want to have it over with, let the people decide what they want to do, and that will be the end of it.”
Mayor Chisholm couldn’t be reached by The Chronicle Herald for comment.
Those in favour of the animals formed The Mulgrave Backyard Farming Association and circulated a petition that got over 100 signatures.
At the other end of town, Chesley Carr has had laying hens for a decade and now also has pigs.
The 43-year-old said it is in part a generational divide — that some of the young families in the area want to raise animals to feed themselves and their children.
“This is driving young families away from the community, most of us can’t afford the cost of groceries now,” said Carr.
Like the family in Pirate Harbour, Carr and his partner have purchased land in rural Cape Breton and are moving there to start a small farm that will subsidize his income working for Mulgrave’s public works department.
While the debate has seen many line up on either side, others in Mulgrave are on the fence.
“Oh sure, his chickens come over but I don’t really mind them,” said Hilda Drake, Carr’s neighbour.
“I’ve got my three chihuahuas, I let them out and they chase the chickens right on back over. They’re quite the little dogs,they think they can take on the world. I don’t really care one way or another.”
Another of Carr’s neighbours, who didn’t want her name used, also said she had no opinion one way or the other.
“The rooster can be a bit irritating, but he gets my ass out of bed in the morning,” she said.
In his June interview, Mayor Chisholm said town council would take direction from the results of Monday’s plebiscite on whether to draft a poultry and farm animal bylaw.
The town doesn’t have its own bylaw enforcement officer, instead relying on the service being provided by the neighbouring Municipality of the District of Guysborough.
