Mother hens; New Eden chicken co-op forming to watch over the flock

Wanted: Nurturing souls with an interest in the environment and organic local foods to care for 16 newborns along with two cohorts.

Reward: The satisfaction of raising babies to adulthood, developing a mutually satisfying relationship — and about one dozen fresh eggs every two weeks.

The New Eden Collaborative at First Parish Church in Newbury is launching a chicken cooperative this spring as an extension of its organic community garden.

The chicken co-op is also built on the community model — shareholders who buy into it will take responsibility for caring and raising the chickens in exchange for their eggs. Each co-op member must commit to one weekly watering and feeding of the group's 16 hens and two ducks, who will live on the grounds of the church on High Road, where New Eden is based.

"There's a lot of benefit to the shared responsibility," said Mary Ryan Carpenter, a newcomer to New Eden and one of the members of its Chicken Committee.

Erin Stack, New Eden's garden coordinator, who is temporarily housing the baby chicks until the coop at First Parish is built as part of a community raising later this month, said there has been a lot of interest in the 10 co-op shares still available to the public for the inaugural year, at a cost of $76. In anticipation of having more applicants than available spots, the collaborative has decided to use a lottery to select the first team of hen mothers and fathers, who will tend to the flock and guard the hen house beginning in May through July 2011.

The inaugural members of the co-op will get the special honor of naming the flock, which includes Araucanas (known for their blue eggs), Rhode Island Reds, white leghorns, golden comets, Barred Plymouth Rocks and an especially friendly hybrid, plus the two Peking ducklings — which Stack said will yield a rainbow of eggs when they start to produce.

In keeping with New Eden's commitment to being stewards of the Earth and fostering a life-affirming, sustainable community, Stack said the chickens will be raised organically and humanely in a cage-free and free-range environment. They will be used only for their eggs, and their lives will be protected unless the need to relieve them of unnecessary and unavoidable pain arises.

Stack hopes the co-op will give people who have thought about raising chickens at home a chance to get their feet wet as part of a group. Together, the shareholders will build a hen house and a chicken tractor designed to keep the hens safe from predators when they feed. New Eden Collaborative will also be offering workshops on caring and keeping chickens and building a hen house to assist shareholders as well as others looking to add chickens to their households.

"It's hard for people to start. This way, they will feel safe," Stack says. "It really fits with the whole point of New Eden trying to be an education model for what people can do to live a greener lifestyle."

But while Stack hopes it will be a fun, learning opportunity for both shareholders and visitors, she stresses that raising chickens is a serious commitment. All co-op members must sign a detailed covenant that spells out their responsibilities in caring for the health and well-being of the flock, including the vow to treat the animals with "respect, affection and unfailingly provide for their most basic needs."

Shares will be revoked if a member is suspected of endangering the lives of the flock, according to the covenant.

"If you have a community garden and someone doesn't come and tend your garden, you lose some plants," Carpenter said. "If you have community chickens, it's a little more serious. It's literally life and death."

But Stack believes shareholders won't have any trouble growing attached to the chickens. While tending to the baby chicks in her basement before they move to their permanent residence at First Parish, she fell so in love with them that she decided to get three chickens of her own as pets.

"I can see how people get hooked on them," she said.

John Dodge of Dodge's Agway in New Hampshire, who has been raising poultry for 70 years, will present an "Introduction to Keeping Poultry" for aspiring shareholders and other interested individuals next week at First Parish. The lottery to determine this year's chicken co-op shareholders will follow.

Stack ultimately hopes to have a high turnover in shareholders from year to year, as members decide to break off from the group after fulfilling their first term to raise chickens at home. "Hopefully, the shareholders will see that they can do this on their own," she said.

Carpenter, the park ranger and visitor services specialist at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island who spent several years pursuing her master's in environmental studies, said she and her husband were drawn to First Parish because of its environmental mission. In addition to being one of the facilitators and shareholders of the chicken co-op, the couple, who are new parents to a 7-month-old, will be growing vegetables on one of the 41 plots in the New Eden Community Garden this season.

Carpenter said while growing all your own food on your own land can seem out of reach, "doing it in a community is a lot more feasible."

"It's important to know where food comes from and what goes into it," she said. "It's kind of important to make the connection between work and food. You often lose a step when you go to the grocery store and hand over cash."

All 41 of the plots at the community garden have been spoken for this year, and there's now a waiting list, Stack said. New Eden is adding bees to the garden this year, with one of its members offering to serve as beekeeper and teach others about colonies and hives. The group is also set to build an outdoor earth oven on the grounds.

"This is really on the pulse of some psychological need that I think people want to nurture," she said. "We've lost touch with the wild, even though these are domesticated birds, I think we're really nature deprived. I think we need some touch with something that's not electronic or plastic. ... We're over-datarized and looking for something else."

ChickEN CONNECTION

What: "Introduction to Keeping Poultry" and lottery for New Eden Collaborative's chicken cooperative shares

When: Tuesday, April 20, 6 to 9 p.m.

Where: First Parish Church, 20 High Road (Route 1A), Newbury

How: Open to aspiring shareholders as well as anyone interested in raising chickens on their own. Free admission, but donations to support building the New Eden hen house welcome.

For more on the New Eden chicken co-op, including the chicken covenant shareholders are required to sign and adhere to, visit www.newedengarden.org or e-mail Mary Ryan Carpenter at m_cluck@earthlink.net or Erin Stack at erinstack@comcast.net.

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