What the Heck

A little background: I am a lifelong resident of Las Vegas in general and the East side of the Valley in particular. Growing up here we had horses and were involved in 4H which I think sparked the flame of a wanna be farmer in me. My wife and I acquired a half acre property about 4 years ago and I started getting chickens. My son and his fiancé rent the house from us so every time I went by the feed store I would pick up a couple of chicks, raise them till they were big enough to run around on their own, and them turn them loose while my son was at work. After a while my wife, who worked in an exotic bird store brought me home an incubator that somebody brought in. Big Mistake! I started by hatching out a bunch of my backyard mutts, I was bit by the Chicken bug bad now! Next thing you know the wife wants to know why I'm getting eggs in the mail, "why it's the only way to get Black Copper Marans" duh. Notice the "duh" wasn't in quotes? I been married to Karen for 25 years and learned not to say some things out loud long ago. And why do we need BCMS? she asks, "How else are we gonna get chocolate colored eggs?" duh! Below is a picture of the area where my coop (the red barn/shed) is being moved to.

That was a brief explanation of the chicken part of "fruity chickens" the fruity part comes from us wanting to do something to all of the dirt areas on our little piece of Vegas. It's to much area for grass, rocks are OK I guess, but we wanted something productive. After a lot of research and thought we came up with the idea of an urban orchard. Below is the area we are going to plant about 20 fruit trees in. We are also researching using gray water for a portion of the irrigation needs of the trees. So far everything I have found says it is an ideal use for gray water and is legal in most of CA and AZ but still a bit of a grey area here in NV.