Dispatch From Upper Falls - Farming in the Falls

About a year ago, I was invited to a party at Julie Irish and Dean Whitney's house.   Julie I knew from my daughter's school - she's one of the PTO co-presidents and Dean I had met a few times around the neighborhood.  I didn't know either of them well.

Their house was at the very top of the very steep hill on Columbia Ave in Upper Falls.  I rang the bell, Dean answered it, and then I completely confused everybody including myself.  It turned out that I was exactly a week early for their scheduled party.

After the initial confusion, they invited me in anyway and we hung out in their kitchen and gabbed.  In the course of the conversation they matter-of-factly mentioned that they keep chickens in their backyard.  At first I thought it was a joke, but no, they did indeed have a flock of chickens in a coop right outside the back door.  I ended up going home that night with a 1/2 dozen Upper Falls eggs.

Since then I've found out that they aren't the only ones with chickens in the neighborhood.  There's another house down on Thurston Rd with a flock.  Later still I learned that Megara Bell and Brian Flaherty, friends from Nonantum, have a flock of 100% genuine Lake chickens.  Apparently, in the last 10 or 15 years there's been an explosion of urban and suburban back yard chicken farming all over the country.  Just this morning, I saw a bumper sticker that said "Legalize Chickens".  Once you've got bumper stickers, you know it's a full-fledged "movement".

Julie and Dean have six chickens that they ordered on-line from MyPetChickens.com (really!).  Better yet, they were delivered as newborn cheeping chicks via the U.S. Mail service.  All six chickens share their birthday with Julie so October 4 is a very big day at their house.   The chickens are what I'll call "partial free lawn" chickens.  They spend most of their day in the coop but usually get a stint out in the yard.  When they're out and about they wander all over the yard and sometimes in the neighbor's yard but they have sense enough to stay out of the street and not wander off.  

They don't take a lot of work to tend says Julie but she does always stay out with them when she lets them out of the coop.  They've got a few local predators - coyotes, foxes, and hawks, to watch our for.  Hawks are the strangest.  Hawks have a taste for chicken's internal organs.  If they snag a chicken, they'll quickly cut it open, grab its organs and fly away with them.  It's not something Julie ever wants to see.

Julie and Dean's are particularly proud of their "Upper Upper Falls" eggs.  Their corner lot is one of the highest spots in the whole city.  Upper Upper Falls is just a hair lower than the top of the famed Heartbreak Hill but much more dramatic.  Their tiny hill top drops off steeply in all directions.  They say that their "Upper Upper Falls, high altitude eggs are hatched where the air is thin and clear, and the chickens like it that way".

A few weeks ago, we recruited all our chicken farming friends to Hemlock Gorge on a beautiful Sunday morning and cooked breakfast for the whole neighborhood.  We went through six dozen eggs, many pounds of bacon, and a bounty of other food provided by the 30-35 neighbors that turned up.  There was a fair amount of trash talking between the Falls vs Lake egg partisans but in the end everyone seemed happy enough to eat any Newton eggs of any kind.

I'm guessing that there are plenty of other backyard chicken flocks across the city.  Does anyone you know raise chickens in Newton?  In what village?  Post details below.