t a Wh FUCK? A 9 the 9BK
The buzz on your newest animal neighbors
I
story and photographs by Tara Morgan
n an alley-like strip of weed-ridden easement they call “no man’s land,” Southeast Boise chicken owners Amy Westover and her husband Jay Blackhurst have made some new friends—about 10 of them. Three years ago, they put three chickens back there, in a tiny coop with a solar-activated front door. Now the reclaimed space has become a veritable neighborhood hangout for chickens and fledgling neighborhood poultry farmers. “It’s kind of brought this whole neighborhood together, us getting these three chickens,” explained Westover. “All the neighborhood kids, once they figured out we had chickens, they came over every day because they wanted to see the chickens. We’d always be giving them eggs and they’d take them home … I think it just really started to inspire people. Now I think there are 17 chickens back here. All the neighbors now, they’ve got chickens. It’s kind of our chicken colony. Everyone takes care of their own flock, but they all run together.” For centuries, city and country duked it out in a battle over the locus of the good life. It was a battle in which the quiet repose of rolling meadows often won out in the end, after a time waged in the city’s debaucherous and unforgiving streets. But the recent rise of pastoral urbanism has turned that eternal battle on its head. In the span of an hour, an urban Boisean can go from plucking bulbous turnips from the garden and scattering feed for the chickens to zipping downtown in a hybrid for a patio-side Beaujolais and a foreign flick. On a typical quarter-acre backyard plot, city code allows for three hens, three bee colonies and as many veggies as
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your compost-enriched soil can handle. With a little practice, any urban dweller can create a symbiotic mini-ecosystem and still be walking distance from the city’s thriving cultural core. City, meet country. While the trend toward pastoral urbanism is all about food—bolstered by the crappy economy and good old-fashioned nostalgia—it has spurred new ideas about urban communities. “My caution to you if you’re on the small lots, like the North End: Get to know your neighbors really well and make sure you cultivate those friendships,” warned long-time Boise bee hobbyist Dick Knapp. But while Knapp and Westover have been at it longer than most, it’s now clear that the spring of 2009 was, as writer Malcolm Gladwell might put it, a tipping point for backyard ranching.
THE BIRD IS THE WORD
If you were one of the many folks trying to break into urban chicken-keeping this year, evidence of the tipping point trend was frustratingly apparent. “People were almost fighting to get in line to get chickens,” said new North End chicken owner Zach Jones. “They were gone in a half hour. D&B [Supply] said there were people who would come three or four hours beforehand and just hang out in the store and wait for the chickens to arrive. Then even after we got them, I guess chickens were so popular this year that all the stores ran out of chick feed.” While urban chicken-keeping has been on the rise for the past few years, Treasure Valley chick retailers say it really exploded this spring.
BOISEweekly
| JULY 8–14, 2009 | 11