She griped about both, the zoning board demanded I get rid of the chickens.

I was tempted to leave their corpses on her doorstep and egg the municipal building as a petty sort of revenge, but that would have been too obvious.

Those chickens were good eating, though, especially with some homegrown corn on the cob and baked beans. The squash didn't work out so well, unfortunately.

What was she griping about with the garden? Chickens I can understand if there are smell complaints. In San Francisco you are allowed to keep them but there are rules about the number you can have and the minimum distance their enclosure can be to any neighbors window, etc. But squash? That’s really an odd thing to complain about.

backyard chickens don't have a smell, that's only once you start mass producing them in a factory. The same way yours or your neighbors dogs, that produce substantially more feces than a chicken, don't cause neighborhood wide odor.

My biggest problem with my neighbor's chickens was that they kept getting out an coming over to my property and he'd have to ask me to let him in the back yard so he could take them back home. Never noticed any smells near their coop which was near the property line.

Never really bothered me since they mostly just hung out around the back fence far from my house, but finally another neighbor complained to the city and they had to get rid of the chickens. Chickens are allowed here (up to 10 per property), but have to be kept confined and on your own property.

I was probably just interpreting the ordinance requirements of a minimum distance of 20 feet from any neighbor’s door or window as having to do with smell when I read it.

The ones my neighbor keeps smell terrible. Perhaps he doesn't clean their enclosure though.

Obviously regulations vary across counties and municipalities, but when/where I lived in PA, the zoning rules spelled it out pretty clearly that hens were fine but roosters weren't.