Stalking the Feral Asparagus

My daily walk to work takes me past a rarity here in Georgia’s most densely populated city—an open lot in a residential neighborhood. There’s a house there, but it sits almost invisible way back off the street, and the expanse before it could reasonably accommodate another house entirely. It won’t surprise me at all when the lot is split and construction starts.

The ancient one

But for now, the lot is the province of the wild and green, though someone at some point had a vegetable garden there. I know this because every spring about this time, a few stalks of asparagus shoot up. It’s nestled amidst a thick, ancient border of monkey grass crammed up against the sidewalk, but there it is, a persistent perennial that has thrived despite what I am guessing is decades of neglect. I like to think of it not as Euell Gibbons’s “wild asparagus,” but more of a feral asparagus—once domesticated, now a resourceful, clever survivor.

Some of the gardening smarty-pants say asparagus can’t really be grown in Georgia. It’s too hot here, too humid. The plants will be too slender, the harvest season too short. But my friend the feral asparagus and I, we know better. For years I have waited to see that perfectly formed stalk shoot up. And for years I have been tempted to harvest it when I know it has reached its tender, crisp perfection and stand there on the sidewalk and eat it raw. But I’m more curious than hungry. I want to see what it will do—how tall it will grow, how much it will fern out, whether the red berries will form then later turn yellow, whether anyone else will notice that that’s an asparagus, for crying out loud.

Skinny leg and all

The feral asparagus inspired me, so I decided last year to try to grow some for myself. It made sense to me that one should plant the crowns in the fall, to give them a cool-season chance to muster up their energy in the earth before the first big show in April. So last September, I did my level best to find some. I googled, emailed, called around, but there were no crowns to be had in the autumn. I even received a stern email lecture from one source about how no asparagus crown grower in his or her right mind would ever sell in the fall. So I waited, chastened, until February, when the seed catalogs arrived, and I ordered myself a batch of twenty-five Jersey Knights.

They arrived in March, looking like a tangle of squid that had been beached for a few days. I got seventeen of them into the ground (the rest I gave away to neighbors) in a couple of choice locations with just enough sun and loamy, well-drained soil. I dosed them with heaps of good compost and long, regular drinks of water.

The first skinny leg poked through about ten days later. It is so hard to resist harvest, but asparagus needs time. A few years of it, in fact. So once again, I find myself waiting and watching the asparagus grow.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to pay my daily respects to my feral friend, with gratitude for the lesson in what can be done.

What I learned from a bunch of city chicks, part the second

The Chicks in the City class meets at the Southern Urban Homestead

We began this tale with a look at one flockkeeper’s beginnings, the growing fascination around my neighborhood as word got out that there were actual chickens in my backyard, and a brief account of the first Cluckapalooza.

In the meantime, a local environmental education nonprofit, the Oakhurst Community Garden, had asked my neighbors and me to develop a two-hour workshop for area folks interested in keeping chickens themselves. Not sure our nascent knowledge really qualified us to lead such a class, we put together a syllabus on topics ranging from local ordinances and coop design to breed selection and health issues. In October 2004, we offered the first “Chicks in the City,” a two-hour workshop for ten people. Not only did the class fill up, but it was over-enrolled and still had a waiting list. And so it has gone every time we teach it (which we did regularly until last year). We even taught it to an SRO crowd of eighty people at this year’s Georgia Organics conference.

Our students came from Atlanta’s in-town neighborhoods as well as the suburbs and exurbs. Some grew up with chickens themselves, or, more frequently, they would say, “My grandmother kept chickens. I used to love to gather eggs.” Some were trying to convince a spouse they can do this successfully; others had recently begun keeping chickens and come with specific questions.

People who take Chicks in the City learn to keep birds from hatchlings on.

Most impressive to us, however, were the experienced flock keepers who simply wanted to meet other like-minded folks. A neurosurgical nurse who took the class had been keeping chickens for several years when she enrolled one winter. She keeps thirty chickens on her three and one-half acres on the outskirts of Atlanta, but she acquired her first chick while living in an apartment complex in Decatur. “I would take her out and let her graze in the grass,” she told me, “and she was completely tame and knew where she lived and would go up the stairs to the apartment. I had lived there ten years, and people I had never spoken to who had lived there just as long ended up coming over to see the chickens.”

In hopes of encouraging workshop “alumni” to keep in touch and share ideas and inspiration, we set up a newsgroup at yahoo.com for the growing community of chicken keepers in our area. The “Citychickens” group members trade advice about local breeders, ideas for coop designs, predator updates (anyone else noticed how the hawk and owl population has boomed along with the chicken population intown?), advice about where—or where not—to acquire birds.

Another workshop alumnus, a local Waldorf School teacher, introduced his third-graders to flockkeeping. His students helped build the coop, and they are responsible for the birds’ daily care—food; water; a clean, comfortable shelter; and some free-range time each day. “Most of the children love it, but they also have learned that it takes some effort and discipline,” he said. “I think they’re learning to respect the tasks and the chickens.”

The volunteer-built coop at the Oakhurst Community Garden in Decatur

In autumn 2005, a similar desire to connect kids to their natural environment drove another expansion of Decatur’s chicken-centered community. A group of volunteers—mostly parents of young children—designed and built a chicken coop at the Oakhurst Community Garden, which owns an acre and a half of greenspace that serves as an outdoor classroom for environmental education. Soon five laying hens were installed—another demonstration of how community and sustainable living really do nourish one another. The Oakhurst Garden inaugurated “Team Chicken,” a spirited collective of six families who share in the volunteer care of the birds, from the morning and evening check and feeding to weekend coop-cleaning chores.

The team, most of whom had never been around chickens, have shared the challenges of learning to care for the birds, rejoiced together over the arrival of eggs, and even grieved together when they lost a hen to egg yolk peritonitis. One mother of two young daughters offered to coordinate Team Chicken “because I really wanted to get more involved in the community,” she said. “I’ve focused so much on my kids that I realized I’d been very disconnected. We wanted the chickens to be a part of the community landscape for our kids, because I had seen how kids interacted with them.”

She added that her early morning chicken chores at the Oakhurst Garden have also taken on a much-needed contemplative dimension for her. “Sometimes I take my older daughter with me, but I like going over alone, too. Sunday mornings are so quiet—I hear the birds as I walk over. It’s very rewarding, to feel for a moment like I’m amidst nature, or at least closer to it.”

That longing for both solitude and society caught the interest of an anthropologist friend of mine. She has pursued a study of how urban dwellers are increasingly appreciating such opportunities to reconnect with nature and one another. She began with a survey of Team Chicken, asking them to respond “yes” or “no” to statements such as, “I want to deepen my sense of connection to this place where I live,” and, “This work lets me be more connected with my family’s farming past.” For some, she found, the power of engagement with nature is very powerful. It’s restorative, as well; people see these activities as important for their mental health. It’s an ethical activity, too—some of the respondents like that they’re living more sustainably on the earth. For others, the work is fun and also connected to deep spiritual values. The fascination the children feel is often shared by their parents and neighbors—the chickens become a focus for neighborhood interaction and friendliness.

Four years into the Team Chicken experiment, the birds at the Oakhurst Garden are thriving, and so are their caregivers. A few challenges have cropped up along the way, but mostly it’s confusion about the schedule. A staff member at the Garden often fills the gaps, and the group mounted a flagpole on the coop to help signal that the birds had been let out or tucked up for the evening. Good, reliable email communication and the occasional group meeting at the coop seems to help.

With the chicks we acquired for the Southern Urban Homestead this past spring, our flock is up to eleven birds. We get eggs that are cream-colored, blue, green, chocolate brown, and almost red. And later this month, a kindergarten teacher will be bringing her students over to visit. Apparently, as an urban homesteader, I’m a “community helper,” according to the Georgia state department of education.

Makes sense to me.

What I learned from a bunch of city chicks, part the first

Which is our egg, and which is storebought?

Saving the planet was not foremost on my mind when I decided to start keeping chickens. As I have written before, I wanted to link my rural roots to my more recently established city self. Really, though, it was about the eggs. Fresh, yummy eggs with yolks as richly yellow as new dandelions.

But I was soon to discover that urban flockkeeping is about much more. Indeed, there is a growing movement of city folk who are discovering the pleasures of keeping a few chickens. Books have been written. Documentary films have been made. I was on National Public Radio talking about my chickens. And for many of us, one of the greatest satisfactions is knowing that our food hasn’t traveled thousands of miles over land and sea, at the cost of untold quantities of fuel, to get to our tables.

Indeed, my next-door neighbors, with whom I share the costs, labor, and benefits of our birds, and I quickly saw what community can really mean in a huge metropolitan area. Our little poultry project unexpectedly tapped into the quickly expanding ranks of people who are seeking ways to connect with the origins of their food—and with one another in an often isolating and artificial urban world.

Our avian adventure is a story of identity, friendship, and flock formation, you might say. My neighbors also grew up in rural places, in West Virginia and western North Carolina, and shared my longings for something like home. When we discovered to our surprise that it was legal to keep poultry in Decatur, we decided one evening in 2004, during an across-the-backyard-fence chat, to give it a shot.

In spite of living quite congenially next door for ten years, my neighbors and I had never has any real imperative to get to know each other well. But for this project, they brought design and carpentry skills that I lacked, and I had an existing building on my property that would serve as a fine henhouse.

Foraday (background), Lucy (the redhead), and her sidekick, Ethel (the blonde), enjoy a sun-dappled dustbath

We began meeting for dinner to pore over poultry books, draw up plans, and research local breeders. Together we hammered, stapled, and stretched chicken wire on our new coop, most of which we built from recycled materials. One afternoon we headed north of town to pick out two Buff Orpington chicks from a breeder. I will never forget the late summer evening our first five pullets were at last happily scratching and clucking in the coop, as the three of us sat watching with our (what else?) cocktails raised to new friends—feathered and otherwise.

News of our endeavor spread quickly. Neighbors we had never met soon tapped on our doors, curious about our birds. Drawn to what amounts to an exotic animal in the midst of Georgia’s most densely populated city, they wanted their kids to understand where their scrambled eggs (and chicken dinners) came from. Neighborhood kids brought other neighborhood kids. We would often find ourselves delivering informal lectures on the requirements and benefits of keeping chickens in the city.

Scene from the first-ever Cluckapalooza

By the fall, we had had so many visitors that we decided to throw a party to celebrate all things chicken. The first Cluckapalooza, now an annual event, drew about seventy-five friends. We strung lights around the coop and decorated it with flowers and art. Guests admired both the “East Wing” (my side, where the family resides) and the “west wing” (my neighbors’ side, where all the power resides) of the coop. Everyone feasted on a huge potluck dinner, including deviled eggs from our hens and other treats from my garden, now enriched with copious chicken manure. Games—with prizes—included a clucking competition, a Funky Chicken dance-off, and a contest to name one of our new birds (“Delilah” was the winning entry, but “Layla” ran a close second). Musicians brought their instruments and played their favorite chicken songs (there are more than you’d think).

A frittata from our "girls'" eggs I recently prepared with roasted peppers from my garden, potatoes from my CSA, and some turkey andouille sausage I got from the DeKalb Farmer's Market. Salad was arugula (my garden) and baby lettuce (CSA) with muscadines (CSA) and some Georgia pecans (Dekalb Farmer's Market).

But the event was more than fun and games. Our guests witnessed first-hand the role of the chickens in our turn toward a more sustainable lifestyle: they provide safe, nutritious, and delicious food that didn’t get here on a refrigerated eighteen-wheeler; they are humanely kept; they reduce household waste; they fertilize my garden; and they aid in weed and pest control.

Coming up in Part the Second: Chicks in the City, and Team Chicken (whoop!)

The sun and the rain and the salad greens

Welcome to my Southern Urban Homestead, a long, narrow lot in a beautiful neighborhood of Decatur, Georgia, a small town situated fifteen easy minutes east of downtown Atlanta. Over the past fifteen-plus years this little slice of urban earth and I have had quite the partnership. We have rejoiced together. We have exchanged magnificent gifts. We have argued, even fought (I usually lose). But I have come to understand myself and my homestead better. I have, I like to think, become more awake, more patient, and more respectful of the nuances and cycles of my immediate natural surroundings.

I grew up in Rabun County, Georgia, in the southern tip of the Appalachians, and for most of my adult life, I have searched for ways to link my rural roots to my more recently established city self. So it made sense that I would have a garden. My mother and grandmothers kept gardens.

My grandmother's old pressure canner, my green beans

They also “put up”–that is, they canned and froze the produce from the garden. My dad planted an orchard–another lesson in patience–and decades later, we are still harvesting apples and pears and blueberries from the trees and bushes he planted when I was a teenager. And the offspring of his blueberry bushes now thrive in my yard here in the city.

Blueberry bushes, a fig tree, and a small garden–that is how it started, when I moved here in April 1994. Soon I had expanded the garden, added a second one, and was cramming vegetable beds into every sunny nook I could find. I improved soil and began starting all my seedlings indoors each winter, as soon as the catalogs started arriving. I started canning like my mother and grandmothers had done. I composted obsessively.

Then in 2004, my neighbors and I acquired our first batch of baby chicks–fulfilling a dream I’d had for several years. We all wanted the eggs, of course, but my garden wanted the chicken poop. Thus launched an exploration of what community can really mean in a huge metropolitan area. Our little poultry project unexpectedly tapped into an exciting local movement of folks who wanted to model a certain kind of ethical living and to connect with one another in an often isolating and artificial urban world.

Our latest spring chicks

This blog will tell stories of how we connect and interconnect around food–where it comes from, how it circulates, brings us together, shapes our identities both as individuals and as communities. There will also be stories of how we struggle with food–how it challenges us, disappoints us, forces us to work hard and get creative, even alter our understanding of what food is. There will be tales of my war (well, not war exactly; more a kind of gunboat diplomacy) with the squirrels. Chronicles of my close encounters with other beasties great and small. Legends of my ongoing quest for free water. Shocking revelations of unimagined thrift. Inspiring accounts of efforts to establish a local barter economy. And culinary adventures that will, I hope, drive you to the garden yourself.

My intention here is not to live “impact free”–no extremes, no gimmicks. Rather, I aim to share my daily search for ways to live effectively, efficiently, and responsibly in an urban landscape. Growing numbers of city dwellers are becoming more thoughtful and creative about their own environmental impact as it relates to quality of life. I can think of no better reason in this world to be optimistic.

The arugula in the garden that will soon be in my dinner.

For me, it all begins with the act of providing–of feeding ourselves and those we care for. This goes to the core of how we live on the earth and with one another. It’s a daily invitation to be mindful of labor, consumption, and reward. Even here, in the heart of the urban South, we can be aware and grateful.

Grateful for the things I need–the sun and the rain and the salad greens.