Bees on the roof. Goats by the bedroom. Chickens in the backyard.

All around Santa Fe, people are raising animals that provide honey, eggs, wool and, if one isn’t overly attached, meat.

They’re also good for providing some laughs, for teaching responsibility and for being balm for the soul.

Meet some of the urban hobby farmers in the City Different.

Goats near the bedroom

The Romero family knows some secrets to coaxing teenagers away from video games: Betsy, Bonnie and Clyde.

Betsy is a woolly sheep the family adopted in January when she was an abandoned lamb. She was bottle fed, now gives kisses and is thoroughly spoiled. "The janitors at school asked when was she going to be lamb chops," said Judy Romero. "I said, 'We don't eat family.' "

Bonnie and Clyde are siblings, Nigerian dwarf goats Patrick Romero bought from a breeder in Los Alamos. Bonnie will be used for breeding and milk; Clyde is just her buddy.

When the Romero boys — Daniel, 13, and David, 17 — have friends over, they would rather play with the animals than video games, at least for awhile. Both teens get a kick out of watching their friends fawn over the sheep and goats.

The bleating, baah-ing menagerie at the Romero house on Agua Fría Road also includes four young hens and two dogs — one rescued from N.M. 599 and the other adopted from the animal shelter — on almost an acre. When Betsy, Bonnie and Clyde aren't grazing in a tiny pasture behind the house, they hang out with the hens in a side yard outside one of the bedrooms.

The Romeros share the care of their little urban farm. David and Daniel feed the dogs in the morning. Judy Romero feeds the other animals after she drops Daniel off at Gonzales Community School. Her husband, Patrick, and Daniel take care of the animals in the evening after he gets off work from his job as a facilities technician for the city of Santa Fe.

He spends Saturdays at the Santa Fe Farmers Market sharpening knives. He's been there on weekends for four years and is a market board member. Most of the family's menagerie, and advice on how to raise them, came from people he met there.

Patrick Romero grew up in Santa Fe. But his dad always leased pastures in La Cienega, where the family kept pigs, some sheep and steers until they were butchered for the family table. "I learned so much as a kid and teenager," Romero said. "We used to watch the lambing in the spring, under a full moon watching from a barn."

Now he's giving his kids a taste of farm life.

Chickens in the backyard

The eight hens and one colorful rooster in Bruce Garber's backyard off East Zia Road have a spectacular view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from their coop.

They're also safe from the cooking pot. "We won't eat them," Garber said.

He and his family enjoy the eggs and the chickens' antics. Richter, one of the family dogs, likes herding them back into their fenced yard when they escape the coop. But he doesn't eat the hens, either.

Garber and his son, Dustin, built the walk-in coop and fenced outdoor pen. They screened in the top after a chicken hawk made off with two hens and a rooster one year.

Dustin brought home the first set of chicks several years ago after hens at a friend's house intrigued him. They kept the chicks in the garage until the coop was finished, complete with insulation, a window for natural light and a thick layer of straw on the floor. Garber said the chickens do well all through the winter without extra heat.

Greg Gillespie, general manager of The Feed Bin on West Alameda Street, thinks there must be quite a few people in Santa Fe now with chickens in the backyard. "We had one of our biggest chick seasons ever this year," Gillespie said of the store's chicken sales.

He chalks it up to the economy. "People were worried about where their food was going to come from," he said, adding that once a coop and pen are built, hens are pretty cheap to keep.

Across town, off Baca Street near Larragoite Park, City Councilor Miguel Chávez has 12 hens that also are for eggs, not eating. He also has three roosters.

Chávez grew up in the neighborhood and remembers a time when people had horses in corrals by their houses. His family raised rabbits, not hens.

He bought chickens 12 years ago for his young son. "That gave him some responsibilities as far as feeding them and collecting the eggs."

His son is about to graduate from high school now, so Chávez does more of the work, but he enjoys the fresh eggs the family gets every day. He puts the roosters in the coop at night to muffle their morning crows. The neighbors don't seem to mind the roosters, though. "For some people, they feel like it is a sense of security when they hear the crows — like everything is going to be OK," Chávez said.