March 12, 2009
Last weekend, the weather here in New York turned positively balmy — right up into the 60's — melting the cover of snow, revealing the first shoots of daffodils, stirring hope in frozen hearts. The bees in my apiary came outside, not just hovering in front of their hives but flying off in search of pollen — perhaps from the early-blooming pussy willows in the Botanical Garden and along the Bronx River.
The gardener's fancy turns.
In years past, gardening has been just a pleasant hobby to me, a way to relax, get dirty, and almost as a byproduct, reap those precious midsummer rewards: tomatoes so tender and sweet you wonder why you ever buy those tasteless pink cardboard balls from the supermarket, and little cucumbers crisp and fresh and perfect for pickling. This year, as I thumb through the seed catalogues and plan for the season, I feel different: Gardening isn't just a hobby anymore, it's an essential part of a new way of living that is making sense to more Americans all the time.
Not so very long ago, eating organically and locally was seen by most as the kooky fixation of a tree-hugging micro- minority, old hippies and the grandchildren of old hippies stuck on sprouts and tofu. But just as climate change moved from an obsession of the lunatic fringe to a matter of universal urgency, so too the question of where our food comes from and how it is produced is entering our consciousness with force. With every E- coli and salmonella outbreak, we wonder all the more whether the industrialization of food, which by the economies of scale have kept prices low, is such a wonder after all. People are assembling in their heads the pieces of the food puzzle, and the picture that's taking shape is not as beautiful as we'd long thought.
Aptly-named Michael Pollan, the chief apostle of what has come to be called "sustainable agriculture," has been laying out the problems and his solutions for a while now. In the October 12 issue of the New York Times Magazine, he published a lengthy open letter to whichever candidate would win the presidential election, urging him to treat the food crisis with the same urgency as the energy crisis — indeed, to see the two crises as interrelated. He points out that industrial food production consumes 19% of our annual fossil fuel use — second only to motor vehicles — and generates as much as 37% of our greenhouse-gas emissions — the hidden cost of single-crop farming and factory- type meat and dairy production. Petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides, farm machinery, processed food, and cross-country transportation eat up oil and natural gas, and feed-lot animals, besides being at high risk of disease, "are now one of America's biggest sources of pollution" from their waste.
Further, he remarks, the shipping of produce across the continent, and the processing and chemical preservation of almost every type of mass-produced food, lowers nutritional value and is a proximate cause of an incongruous malnutrition in the best-fed country on earth. Pollan notes that improper diet is a major factor in four of the leading causes of death in this country — heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer — and cites a disturbing prediction from the Centers for Disease Control: one- third of all Americans born in the year 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime.
Pollan's solution to these problems is a national commitment to old-fashioned "solar-based," rather than petroleum-based, food production. On the macro-scale, this entails an overall reversal of federal farm policy: the elimination of subsidies for massive single-crop farms and the regionalization (or re-regionalization) of agriculture through the support of small farms growing a diversity of crops regularly rotated to maintain soil health and retired periodically for use as grazing land for cattle, yielding not only better meat but natural fertilizers — in other words, a return to farming as it was typically done before World War II.
Of course, Pollan admits that this labor-intensive decentralizing of agriculture will result in somewhat higher food prices — but it will also result in a healthier population, thus helping to cut health-care costs. He also predicts that the "revival of farming in America ... will lead to robust economic renewal in the countryside. And it will generate tens of millions of ‘green jobs,' which is precisely how we need to begin thinking of skilled solar farming: as a vital sector of the 21st-century post-fossil-fuel economy."
These ideas sound wonderfully romantic, even to confirmed urbanites. They also sound hopelessly romantic, until you realize how widespread the concern about food quality and safety is, and how vigorous the change toward organically-grown local food has become. During the campaign, President Obama made much over "politics from the bottom up" — he seldom mentions it now — and with or without his doing, this literally grass-roots movement, drawing support from liberals and conservatives alike, may soon be able to break the stranglehold of the big-farm lobby on American agricultural policy.
There is a more intimate component to our collective consciousness about our food, the one I feel as I contemplate the potential of my little plot of ground here in the South Bronx: It's not just the small farmer that's important to our national agricultural sustainability, it's the smallest farmer: you and me.
I'll write about this in the next column.
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sustainability. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
YULETIDE LETTER, 2008
January 1, 2009
Dear Family and Friends,
Adell Allen, a long-time parishioner of St. Augustine Catholic Church here in the South Bronx, died on the first of December. She was 92. Born in Jamaica and trained as a teacher, she moved to New York in 1945, working menial jobs for years before finding employment at Lincoln Hospital and rising to unit coordinator. She and her husband raised two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom became medical doctors. At her funeral, her son told the mourners: "My mother defied the racial prejudice she experienced here in America and made a successful career, as did my father. They motivated us kids to do the same. But Mom always said she'd never live to see the day when a Black person would become president of the United States. For the first time in her life, she was wrong about something."
On election night at eleven o'clock, the neighborhood around St. Augustine's erupted with firecrackers and shouts: "O-bam-AH! O-bam-AH!" Not long ago, the noise would have come from gunfire and fights.
Talk about "change."
Whether or not the new administration will be able to effect change in the political sense, profound change has already occurred in the symbolic sense. Electing a Black president has lifted not only Blacks' self-esteem but the whole nation's — and the world's. My friend Georg Michels, a history professor at U.C. Riverside, told me that his aged father in Germany — along with most of the globe — stayed up till dawn watching the election returns and Obama's victory speech. His dad calls Obama der Weltpresident — the World-president.
Let's hope our new leader can use this enormous cache of good will to make genuine progress toward peace and justice here and abroad.
Change: It definitely was a year of it, wasn't it? Just look at your retirement account. Who but those few economists that take the dismal science literally could have predicted what might be the Great Depression II?
Oh well, it's only money.
A receding tide lowers all boats, but it's less evident in areas that are perpetually aground, like the South Bronx. The working poor here are still working and still poor, but the basics get harder to meet. Rents continue to rise, as downsized Manhattanites begin finding the Bronx suddenly attractive. The population is slowly diversifying; White artistic types are colonizing the far south of the South Bronx, doing the loft thing to rundown furniture factories on the waterfront and opening up tony restaurants nearby. Albanians are retreating north, selling their bodegas to the Arabs: Up on Third Avenue, the Kosovo Grocery has become the Anwar Deli. Many West Africans are moving into this formerly entirely American Black and Hispanic neighborhood, as well as a few daring Jews and Asians.
The building boom continues here, though it may only be the completion of securely-financed projects. Two blocks west on Third Avenue, a brewery from the 1920's, one of many in this once-German area, long since turned into warehouses and parking garages, has been demolished, to be replaced by a strip mall, of all things.
But if there is any indicator of economic health and sickness, it is food. The number of people coming weekly to the St. Augustine Food Pantry has tripled, from 200 a year ago to 600 today. Obtaining that much food is a challenge to the pantry's director, Sister Dorothy Hall, an African-American widow and mother who retired from government service six years ago to join the Dominican Order of nuns. One of her main funders is America's Second Harvest, a Chicago-based food philanthropy. This year my sister Jeannie requested our family to forgo Christmas gifts and donate the money to this charity, which I most gladly did.
A related food issue is "sustainability" — decreasing dependence on industrial agriculture by producing food locally. Everywhere in New York City, community-run farmers' markets are springing up, supporting upstate family farmers and bringing urbanites fresh fruits and vegetables at reasonable prices — particularly important in places like the South Bronx, where poor nutrition and low-quality supermarket produce lead to virtual epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other diseases.
Community gardens also contribute. Last summer, our tiny garden here produced enormous quantities of vegetables, the surfeit of which we gave to the farmers' market up the block, run by local high-school students.
But it's not just vegetables anymore. In August, faculty, students, and alumni of St. Augustine Catholic School built a chicken coop in their garden, and in October, 15 hens arrived from an upstate chicken farm to live and lay in it. In addition to giving the community fresh, nutritious eggs and providing our gardens with natural, nitrogen-rich fertilizer, the chickens have become a unique kind of clucking teacher, showing children where their food comes from and asking them to take responsibility for their care. (The chicken project, by the way, was funded by Heifer International, the organization known for supplying livestock to poverty areas worldwide — another worthy cause to support.)
And my beehives continue to thrive, yielding great quantities of pure, healthful local honey.
It's only natural.
For the chickens' bedding and nesting, we buy hay from a feed store just a few blocks from here — the last holdover from earlier times, when West Farms was not just the name of a subway stop smack in the middle of the Bronx.
There's something timeless about it. The sweet smell of hay in our henhouse stretches back to Bethlehem.
Wishing you peace and well-being in the New Year,
Roger Repohl
Dear Family and Friends,
Adell Allen, a long-time parishioner of St. Augustine Catholic Church here in the South Bronx, died on the first of December. She was 92. Born in Jamaica and trained as a teacher, she moved to New York in 1945, working menial jobs for years before finding employment at Lincoln Hospital and rising to unit coordinator. She and her husband raised two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom became medical doctors. At her funeral, her son told the mourners: "My mother defied the racial prejudice she experienced here in America and made a successful career, as did my father. They motivated us kids to do the same. But Mom always said she'd never live to see the day when a Black person would become president of the United States. For the first time in her life, she was wrong about something."
On election night at eleven o'clock, the neighborhood around St. Augustine's erupted with firecrackers and shouts: "O-bam-AH! O-bam-AH!" Not long ago, the noise would have come from gunfire and fights.
Talk about "change."
Whether or not the new administration will be able to effect change in the political sense, profound change has already occurred in the symbolic sense. Electing a Black president has lifted not only Blacks' self-esteem but the whole nation's — and the world's. My friend Georg Michels, a history professor at U.C. Riverside, told me that his aged father in Germany — along with most of the globe — stayed up till dawn watching the election returns and Obama's victory speech. His dad calls Obama der Weltpresident — the World-president.
Let's hope our new leader can use this enormous cache of good will to make genuine progress toward peace and justice here and abroad.
Change: It definitely was a year of it, wasn't it? Just look at your retirement account. Who but those few economists that take the dismal science literally could have predicted what might be the Great Depression II?
Oh well, it's only money.
A receding tide lowers all boats, but it's less evident in areas that are perpetually aground, like the South Bronx. The working poor here are still working and still poor, but the basics get harder to meet. Rents continue to rise, as downsized Manhattanites begin finding the Bronx suddenly attractive. The population is slowly diversifying; White artistic types are colonizing the far south of the South Bronx, doing the loft thing to rundown furniture factories on the waterfront and opening up tony restaurants nearby. Albanians are retreating north, selling their bodegas to the Arabs: Up on Third Avenue, the Kosovo Grocery has become the Anwar Deli. Many West Africans are moving into this formerly entirely American Black and Hispanic neighborhood, as well as a few daring Jews and Asians.
The building boom continues here, though it may only be the completion of securely-financed projects. Two blocks west on Third Avenue, a brewery from the 1920's, one of many in this once-German area, long since turned into warehouses and parking garages, has been demolished, to be replaced by a strip mall, of all things.
But if there is any indicator of economic health and sickness, it is food. The number of people coming weekly to the St. Augustine Food Pantry has tripled, from 200 a year ago to 600 today. Obtaining that much food is a challenge to the pantry's director, Sister Dorothy Hall, an African-American widow and mother who retired from government service six years ago to join the Dominican Order of nuns. One of her main funders is America's Second Harvest, a Chicago-based food philanthropy. This year my sister Jeannie requested our family to forgo Christmas gifts and donate the money to this charity, which I most gladly did.
A related food issue is "sustainability" — decreasing dependence on industrial agriculture by producing food locally. Everywhere in New York City, community-run farmers' markets are springing up, supporting upstate family farmers and bringing urbanites fresh fruits and vegetables at reasonable prices — particularly important in places like the South Bronx, where poor nutrition and low-quality supermarket produce lead to virtual epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and other diseases.
Community gardens also contribute. Last summer, our tiny garden here produced enormous quantities of vegetables, the surfeit of which we gave to the farmers' market up the block, run by local high-school students.
But it's not just vegetables anymore. In August, faculty, students, and alumni of St. Augustine Catholic School built a chicken coop in their garden, and in October, 15 hens arrived from an upstate chicken farm to live and lay in it. In addition to giving the community fresh, nutritious eggs and providing our gardens with natural, nitrogen-rich fertilizer, the chickens have become a unique kind of clucking teacher, showing children where their food comes from and asking them to take responsibility for their care. (The chicken project, by the way, was funded by Heifer International, the organization known for supplying livestock to poverty areas worldwide — another worthy cause to support.)
And my beehives continue to thrive, yielding great quantities of pure, healthful local honey.
It's only natural.
For the chickens' bedding and nesting, we buy hay from a feed store just a few blocks from here — the last holdover from earlier times, when West Farms was not just the name of a subway stop smack in the middle of the Bronx.
There's something timeless about it. The sweet smell of hay in our henhouse stretches back to Bethlehem.
Wishing you peace and well-being in the New Year,
Roger Repohl
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
DOWNSIZED
December 11, 2008
Well, what do you think? Now that gasoline prices have fallen by more than half since last summer and may drop even further, will you rush to your GM/Ford/Chrysler dealer and buy that new SUV at that unbelievable markdown?
Talk me down, as they say, but I tend to doubt it. You'll probably never go for a guzzler again.
It's ironic that just as prices at the pump were plummeting, the American auto execs were begging Congress for a bailout: Just get us through the next few months and we'll get better, promise.
They could be thinking of what happened after earlier gas crises: As soon as the cost of fuel went down, America's lust for big cars went back up.
It may not happen this time. There are too many other factors in play.
The big slogan of the presidential campaign (remember that?) was "Change," a vague term candidates would fling at each other, the Congress, and the present administration. As the economic implosion continues, however, a real, profound kind of change seems to be occurring from the bottom up — a change in individuals' attitudes toward consuming and conserving.
The auto industry hangs in the balance.
I may have missed it, but in all the Congressional hearings on car-company bailouts did anyone ever mention the very first principle from Economics 101, the law of supply and demand? The reason why the news from Detroit is so bad is not only that Americans aren't buying Hummers, but that they're not buying cars, period. Even the Asian companies with their host of fuel- efficient vehicles are suffering. And it's not only because credit is so tight they can't get loans, it's because people all over are looking at the car in their driveway and saying to themselves, "Heck, it looks good, it runs great — why not keep it a while?"
As Consumer Reports and other sources continue to show, the durability and reliability of cars both foreign and domestic have improved dramatically over the last years. Provided you were not in a major wreck or your cat hasn't torn up the interior, you could easily keep your car for a decade or more, and even then trade it in for what dealers now proudly call a "pre-owned vehicle," thoroughly inspected and serviced and almost as good as new.
Having less money — and even the fear of having less money — necessarily turns people conservative on consumption, particularly of durables: If goods are still good, why toss them out? Living like this for a time, they may come to realize a more fundamental fact: that their identities and self-esteem do not depend on how new their car or their kitchen is but how well it is used.
Last summer's petroleum peril forced many skeptics to see practical value in "going green," a mentality and a movement that had been gaining ground well before the economic meltdown: contributing to a "sustainable" environment by reducing energy consumption, living more simply and frugally, eating locally- grown foods.
Seriously taken and widely practiced, a sustainable lifestyle will have a major effect on the auto industry that has not been voiced in all the bailout ballyhoo. It is not just about making more fuel-efficient cars, it's about how many cars to make.
On Monday, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) announced that ridership on public transportation increased in the third quarter of 2008 by 6.5% nationally over the same period last year. Increases in Los Angeles, the very symbol of the car culture, were even more pronounced: 14% for subways, 15% for light rail, 17% for commuter trains — all this despite falling fuel costs. APTA president William W. Millar commented that "As gas prices rose, more and more Americans made the choice to ride public transit. Now, even though gas prices are falling, Americans tried public transit and may find it convenient."
And not just convenient. "To sum it up," Millar said, "public transportation is good for the economy, good for the environment, and good for energy independence."
President-elect Barack Obama agrees; spending on transit is a major component of his massive public works proposal, and for the same reasons Millar cites. If that comes to pass, there will be many more transportation options available, and it is likely that the trend from the car to the train will continue.
So where does this leave the auto industry? The real issue, the big-picture issue, is not merely about "restructuring," it is about permanent downsizing. In the future, people will buy fewer cars and keep them longer. They will realize that ecologically, the greenest car is the car that is never built. Back to Econ. 101: Millions of individual decisions not to buy will force a different kind of restructuring not presently contemplated by either government or the car companies.
Predictably, both Obama and Congressional Democrats support the biggest car-loan ever, fearing another sector collapse. A better course would be to let the Big Three restructure themselves based on market forces and pour those billions into the industries of the future, the so-called green technologies, giving incentives to locating them in the very places affected by old-manufacturing unemployment. Wouldn't Michael Moore be ecstatic to see solar-panel and fuel-cell companies revitalizing Flint, Michigan?
Bailout or no bailout, the economy is re-shaping itself through decisions made at a million kitchen tables. When all this ends, small may be beautiful again.
Well, what do you think? Now that gasoline prices have fallen by more than half since last summer and may drop even further, will you rush to your GM/Ford/Chrysler dealer and buy that new SUV at that unbelievable markdown?
Talk me down, as they say, but I tend to doubt it. You'll probably never go for a guzzler again.
It's ironic that just as prices at the pump were plummeting, the American auto execs were begging Congress for a bailout: Just get us through the next few months and we'll get better, promise.
They could be thinking of what happened after earlier gas crises: As soon as the cost of fuel went down, America's lust for big cars went back up.
It may not happen this time. There are too many other factors in play.
The big slogan of the presidential campaign (remember that?) was "Change," a vague term candidates would fling at each other, the Congress, and the present administration. As the economic implosion continues, however, a real, profound kind of change seems to be occurring from the bottom up — a change in individuals' attitudes toward consuming and conserving.
The auto industry hangs in the balance.
I may have missed it, but in all the Congressional hearings on car-company bailouts did anyone ever mention the very first principle from Economics 101, the law of supply and demand? The reason why the news from Detroit is so bad is not only that Americans aren't buying Hummers, but that they're not buying cars, period. Even the Asian companies with their host of fuel- efficient vehicles are suffering. And it's not only because credit is so tight they can't get loans, it's because people all over are looking at the car in their driveway and saying to themselves, "Heck, it looks good, it runs great — why not keep it a while?"
As Consumer Reports and other sources continue to show, the durability and reliability of cars both foreign and domestic have improved dramatically over the last years. Provided you were not in a major wreck or your cat hasn't torn up the interior, you could easily keep your car for a decade or more, and even then trade it in for what dealers now proudly call a "pre-owned vehicle," thoroughly inspected and serviced and almost as good as new.
Having less money — and even the fear of having less money — necessarily turns people conservative on consumption, particularly of durables: If goods are still good, why toss them out? Living like this for a time, they may come to realize a more fundamental fact: that their identities and self-esteem do not depend on how new their car or their kitchen is but how well it is used.
Last summer's petroleum peril forced many skeptics to see practical value in "going green," a mentality and a movement that had been gaining ground well before the economic meltdown: contributing to a "sustainable" environment by reducing energy consumption, living more simply and frugally, eating locally- grown foods.
Seriously taken and widely practiced, a sustainable lifestyle will have a major effect on the auto industry that has not been voiced in all the bailout ballyhoo. It is not just about making more fuel-efficient cars, it's about how many cars to make.
On Monday, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) announced that ridership on public transportation increased in the third quarter of 2008 by 6.5% nationally over the same period last year. Increases in Los Angeles, the very symbol of the car culture, were even more pronounced: 14% for subways, 15% for light rail, 17% for commuter trains — all this despite falling fuel costs. APTA president William W. Millar commented that "As gas prices rose, more and more Americans made the choice to ride public transit. Now, even though gas prices are falling, Americans tried public transit and may find it convenient."
And not just convenient. "To sum it up," Millar said, "public transportation is good for the economy, good for the environment, and good for energy independence."
President-elect Barack Obama agrees; spending on transit is a major component of his massive public works proposal, and for the same reasons Millar cites. If that comes to pass, there will be many more transportation options available, and it is likely that the trend from the car to the train will continue.
So where does this leave the auto industry? The real issue, the big-picture issue, is not merely about "restructuring," it is about permanent downsizing. In the future, people will buy fewer cars and keep them longer. They will realize that ecologically, the greenest car is the car that is never built. Back to Econ. 101: Millions of individual decisions not to buy will force a different kind of restructuring not presently contemplated by either government or the car companies.
Predictably, both Obama and Congressional Democrats support the biggest car-loan ever, fearing another sector collapse. A better course would be to let the Big Three restructure themselves based on market forces and pour those billions into the industries of the future, the so-called green technologies, giving incentives to locating them in the very places affected by old-manufacturing unemployment. Wouldn't Michael Moore be ecstatic to see solar-panel and fuel-cell companies revitalizing Flint, Michigan?
Bailout or no bailout, the economy is re-shaping itself through decisions made at a million kitchen tables. When all this ends, small may be beautiful again.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
CHICKEN THERAPY FOR THE SOUL
November 27, 2008
Every school day at 7 a.m. sharp, 12-year-old Mame arrives at the Peace Garden adjoining St. Augustine Catholic School in the South Bronx.
The chickens are waiting.
The rustle of her footsteps through the fallen leaves brings 15 big, colorful birds out of their coop and into the pen. They come around her, eyeing her intently, clucking curiously. Mame (pronounced "Mommy") checks their water and food, then looks inside the henhouse. Today she finds a clutch of three large brown eggs, neatly laid in a nest of straw on the floor. She gathers them up.
"I love to take care of the chickens!" Mame smiles. "They look so beautiful, and they know me!"
Mame, whose family immigrated from Senegal two years ago, is a member of the school's Chicken Club, nine students whose year- long project is to learn about ecosystems and human nutrition while practicing hands-on animal husbandry. They perform the daily tasks of keeping the water fresh, the food abundant, the pen cleaned and layered with sweet-smelling straw: farmers' work. They monitor the health of the chickens, their egg production, and the cost of feed. In the spring, they will present their findings at the New York Catholic Schools Science Fair. They're confident they'll win.
"Whenever I go to a principals' meeting," says Cathryn Trapp, St. Augustine's principal, "their first question always is, ‘Well, how are the chickens?' They're jealous."
The school's experiment in urban agriculture is sponsored by Heifer International, the same folks who turn your donations into beehives in Bolivia and goats in Ghana, and Just Food, a nonprofit group committed to localizing the food supply by organizing neighborhood-run farmers' markets and showing community gardeners how to increase their productivity and diversify their output. Their mutual goal, in the word of the day, is "sustainability."
"Chickens are a must for farming ecologically," remarks Owen Taylor, who heads up the chicken project for Just Food. "They eat everything. They'll pick off the insect pests in your garden and consume all your kitchen scraps — meat and egg-shells included. They also aerate the soil by their scratching. In return, you not only get absolutely fresh eggs but the best high-nitrogen fertilizer around. It's great nutrition for you and less chemicals for your garden. And they're not that much work. Plus, they'll bring people to your garden just for the interest."
Mike Brady, the development director at St. Augustine's, was intrigued by the idea and last summer secured a grant from Heifer and Just Food for a coop and pen, 15 chickens, and dry feed enough for a year. In accord with Heifer's philosophy of "passing on the gift," the school's chicken corps will share their expertise with other interested gardeners and lend a hand in new coop construction. Just Food currently sponsors six sites in the city, and Taylor anticipates three more next year.
The St. Augustine group built their structures over three days in August. It was a cooperative project: Taylor drew up the plans and ordered the materials — basically wood, nails, and of course, chicken wire — from Home Depot. Students (Mame among them), teenage alumni, and community gardeners performed the labor. "Working with St. Augustine's was really satisfying, with all the young people involved," Taylor notes. "That's where it's at in terms of community involvement."
The chickens arrived in October from Awesome Farm, a 30-acre organic livestock operation in Tivoli, N.Y., about a hundred miles north of the city.
"The kind we brought them," says KayCee Wimbish, a crazy- for-chickens young woman who runs the farm with her partner Owen O'Connor, "are called Black Sex-linked chickens, which I know is a weird name — it means you can tell male from female chicks by their color as soon as they hatch. They're a cross between the Rhode Island Red and the Barred Rock varieties. They're bred for their heartiness and their productivity, and because they mature early."
The hens at the St. Augustine Peace Garden are mateless — New York City codes forbid roosters because of their noisy crowing (car alarms, however, are permitted) — but this does not matter, to the humans at least; unmated hens will still produce an egg every 18 hours or so.
The fowl are well-fed. In addition to poultry pellets (which Brady buys along with bales of straw from the only remaining feed store in New York City, right down the block), they are given the leftovers from the school cafeteria, which in the past were just bagged up as garbage. That's urban ecology.
But there's human ecology too.
Sixth-grader Ken, age 12, is a member of the Chicken Club.
"He's a little crazy — attention-deficit," Trapp admits. "He's on meds, he's in special ed, he's a terror in the classroom, but he's a different person when he gets out there. I call it ‘chicken therapy for the soul.'"
"I like animals," Ken says. "I can tell all the chickens apart — they're just like people. I have a favorite one, too — I named her Cassandra. She always comes when I call to her."
"It's amazing," remarks Brady. "Kids who are hyperactive, who have no patience in the classroom, are patient with the chickens. They love it when the chickens pile out the henhouse door to greet them."
But there is another side. The productive life of a laying hen is about two years, which means that before they graduate, Mame and Ken will have to face the hardest fact of farming: turning the hens they have come to love into chicken soup.
Brady is unruffled at the gruesome prospect. In the spring, he'll add a pair of turkeys to the school's micro-farm; they'll be ready for slaughter by November.
"I'm not sure what next Thanksgiving will bring," he says. "There may be some heartbreak here. But kids need to experience that too. They need to know how food really gets to their table."
That teaching may come slowly. Right now, the children — and even some of the teachers — will not eat the eggs. "They think it's robbing the cradle or something," Brady guesses.
"They're learning about the cycle of life," says Trapp. "They're learning about caring and taking responsibility. And they're learning that we're all part of nature — even here in the South Bronx."
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