Why I Love My Friends, Part Two

I was standing in front of the meat case at my local grocer and felt my pocket buzzing. Taking out my phone, I was greeted with a text from a friend who'd shared the photo above. She'd just come home and found the pair waiting on her porch, looking like they were dancing a reel.

It startled the butcher who was helping me when I let out a whoop of delight, then got a "That's awesome!" when I showed him the photo. Nothing better than that.

Why I Love My Friends, Part One

It's kind of like that British series that played here in the 80s called Good Neighbors. An English couple…well, the husband, actually…turns 40 and decides he and his wife need to become self-sufficient on their little walk-up in Surbiton.

Mom and kid.

My friends, who stopped short of their Brit-com counterparts in that they don't try to make their own clothes or generate their own electricity from animal waste, rented the as-yet-undeveloped pasture behind their Happy Valley home—which is surrounded by 9,000-square-foot McMansions—for their dozen or so chickens, a flock of sheep and some newly acquired Nigerian Dwarf goats.

Talk about DIY city living. And I get to visit and play with the animals. I call that awesome!