A plucky new breed of New Yorkers;
Backyard Brooklyn chicken farmer finds no shortage of customers willing to pay $3 for her fresh six-in-the-city eggs
BYLINE: CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE, Special to The Globe and Mail
On a busy street in Brooklyn, over the rumble of city buses and delivery trucks, it's hard to detect the sound of poultry coming from Maria Mackin's backyard. Ms. Mackin, a 45-year-old real estate agent, is part of a growing breed of New Yorkers: the urban chicken farmer.
Behind her modest row house, sandwiched between a glass factory and a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, Ms. Mackin and her husband keep more than 40 hens in a coop they built themselves.
New York has no law against keeping chickens (only roosters are prohibited), and a new wave of taste-sensitive New Yorkers such as Ms.
Mackin are skipping the grocery store to raise birds of their own.
Some are even selling to gourmet food shops, where wealthy New Yorkers pay $3 for a half dozen of the freshest and most local eggs.
"New York has always had people keeping chickens," says Owen Taylor, training and livestock co-ordinator for the City Chicken Project at Just Foods, a not-for-profit in Manhattan. But he credits the growing demand for local food, as well increasing concern for the environment, with turning urban chickens into a growing trend.
"Foodies love chickens," Mr. Taylor says. "Once you taste one of these eggs, you wonder why people even bother buying eggs at the store." He adds that urban chickens don't just recycle food waste, they also mean less fuel used for transportation - another environmental plus.
Ms. Mackin was inspired to start her flock after a stay in a rural Pennsylvania bed-and-breakfast four years ago.
"The host went out to get some fresh eggs, and I thought, 'Oh my God, these are so good,' " Ms. Mackin remembers. "The next thing we knew, we had chickens in the car."
She feeds her chickens food scraps, and takes the droppings to a local community garden, where they are used as fertilizer. The neighbours have complained only once, when Ms. Mackin tried introducing roosters.
"They made a lot of noise," she explains with a shrug.
Mr. Taylor was hired last year as Just Food's "chicken intern," to help more New Yorkers such as Ms. Mackin take advantage of the benefits of urban chickens. His first job was writing a guide to help New Yorkers navigate the practical obstacles to raising their own birds. "Keep coops away from sidewalks and streets to discourage vandals and complaints," the guide advises. Talk to your neighbours beforehand, it adds, "to let them know that the odour will be minimal." And if the neighbours still have misgivings, suggests the guide, offer to share your eggs.
Meanwhile, interest in the program is taking off. "The number of people that come to our workshops is huge and growing," says Mr.
Taylor, who also gets e-mails from groups in other cities, eager to start urban chicken programs of their own.
The city's gourmet food industry has taken notice of the urban chicken trend. The eight chickens Ms. Mackin and her family brought back to New York have since become 42, and she soon found herself with more eggs than she could eat on her own. Earlier this year, she approached Jeremy Wachalter, owner of Cobblestone Foods in Brooklyn's upscale Cobble Hill neighbourhood, about selling them through his store.
Mr. Wachalter, whose store sells Roquefort cheese, Molinari sausage and orzo salad by the pound, jumped at the chance to carry eggs from Ms. Mackin's backyard flock. "They taste very rich, very fresh," Mr.
Wachalter says. Even at prices more than three times the average, "they're sold before we can put them on the shelves." Mr. Wachalter's customers order the eggs in advance, often waiting weeks for Ms.
Mackin's birds to lay a new batch.
Meanwhile, Ms. Mackin is planning her chickens' future.
"We're going to have chicken soup soon," she says.
"And I think we're going to have a little coq-au-vin over the winter." |
