Peebottle Farms is a series about the backyard farm Nina Lalli maintains in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn.

OMG you guys! I’m so excited to tell you all about the lush organic garden I planted at exactly the right moment for optimal nutrition and beauty, because I’m perfect. Just kidding. I planted some seeds rather randomly and then my stir-crazy chickens destroyed the whole thing.

It’s my third summer as a backyard gardener, and apparently I’m still on the curvy part of the learning curve. First of all, when exactly were we supposed to start planting this year? Instructions like “after the last frost” are vague enough in a normal year. But I think New York’s last frost may have occurred sometime in October this year because the world is ending. Since we had such a freakishly warm winter, I held out for the possibility that Mother Nature would throw some ice at us in May just to keep shit crazy.

When I did eventually plant seeds directly in the recently tested soil of my garden beds, I started out simple, with lettuces, herbs, and leafy greens. I also put in lots of flowers outside the beds — in the soil you couldn’t pay me to grow food in. A few hours of digging and hacking at the glass-and-rock filled dirt left me appalled by how out of shape I am, but I also felt pretty accomplished. Planting seeds gives me a giddy feeling. It’s a slow-burning night-before-Christmas feeling for a plant nerd like myself. As soon as I planted the seeds, I imagined my garden as a veritable orphanage for bees and butterflies, with milkweed, cosmos, zinnias, and sunflowers surrounding my glorious produce supply.

Who let the girls out?

Soon after the planting, when adorable baby arugula leaves were just poking their heads out of the dirt, someone let our six chickens out to pillage the backyard for several hours.

Okay, it was me. One of the hens made a beeline for the door of their run while I was changing their water, and slipped past me. I could probably have kept the rest in, but my heart wasn’t in it. I feel for those ladies, who are well-fed but very bored, and just dying to forage for worms and bugs out in the yard.

They snacked on some buckwheat plants I had put in for them, pecked at some weeds, and made their way toward the compost pile. I thought, “Maybe that’ll be enough.” But soon they went straight for the garden beds, murmuring and pecking. I tried to wrangle them, but six is a lot, and chickens — unlike dogs — don’t seem to speak English. In the end I managed to barricade one of the beds and my pretty blue hydrangea bush. The chickens went back to their little home when the sun set, having eaten every other plant and seed in the garden.

It was especially stupid of me to let this happen since I had already lost two-thirds of our garlic, our sage plant, and our sorrel patch to earlier chicken adventures. And the hens don’t just nibble on leaves, they go deep; they dig seeds out of the ground and break roots. You can tell yourself they’re on pest-patrol, but there’s a price to pay, even in the off-season.

Heirloom seed selection at Comstock, Ferre & Co.

A seedy adventure

So garden Christmas was cancelled, and it was my own fault. For a couple of weeks I wandered the streets, peering into the wild, green community gardens in my neighborhood and kicking myself.

Then, I heard that Comstock, Ferre & Co. — a seed company in Wethersfield, Conn. —  was about to celebrate its 201st anniversary. At the last minute, I hauled my boyfriend Tei and our dogs up I-95 for a visit. The event had bluegrass bands, cooking demos, and a panel about GMOs. But the real treat was perusing drawer upon drawer of rare heirloom seeds and meeting Jere Gettle, who bought the company with his wife Emilee two years ago. The Gettles also own Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which Jere, now 32, started when he was only 17.

The Gettle family, of Baker Creek Seed Company.

Since the visit I’ve been reading the Gettles’ book, The Heirloom Life Gardener, and have become obsessed with the whole family. (Did I mention that Emilee is a Little House on the Prairie-style knockout and they have an adorable daughter and they’re all always smiling and holding huge bundles of squash and wearing suspenders and bonnets?)

But I knew none of this when I first asked Jere for plant advice in the greenhouse. He had such a baby face I didn’t consider that he might be the owner — and he didn’t mention it either.

Jere grew up on farms in Montana and Missouri, and was homeschooled by homesteader parents, so he was obsessed with seeds from an early age. During Jere’s teen years he learned that some of his favorite seed varieties were in danger of disappearing because of all the newer hybrids on the market made to look perfect and survive long-distance travel.

As the seed industry consolidated and companies like Monsanto and DuPont introduced genetically modified seeds in the 1990s, Jere’s obsession became his life mission. He began saving seeds at 13 and, a few years later, began sending them with a small mail-order catalog. At 22 he started traveling and collecting rare seeds in places like Mexico, Thailand, and Guatemala. Today Baker Creek sells 1,300 varieties of open-pollinated, non-GMO, non-hybrid, non-treated, non-patented seeds.

Peebottle garden beds after.

Anyway, this is the guy who was helping me decide what to plant in my silly little urban garden, and he was so enthusiastic about how many eggplants I would be able to grow that I basically forgot about what a garden failure I was and felt giddy all over again.

We picked out little wild cherry tomatoes and pink Brandywines, Pingtung and Listada De Gandia eggplants (long purples and round striped varieties, respectively), cucumbers, zucchini, some herbs, and some seeds for leafy greens he thought still had a chance of making it (black mustard, amaranth, and rainbow chard).

Back in Brooklyn the next day, it was Christmas again. I planted the new heirlooms while it drizzled, Tei pruned our huge mulberry tree to give the heat-loving eggplants the sun they deserve, and I wasn’t even cranky about my premature back pain.

I’m a phenomenal putter-offer, and getting my backyard soil tested is exactly the kind of chore I am fantastic at avoiding. It is the obvious, responsible thing to do, after all, but the results can be a punch in the gut to any urban farmer.

So I blindly ate my way through two growing seasons before curiosity compelled me to find out whether I was slowly consuming an enormous amount of lead and vintage Brooklyn arsenic.

After clearing our building’s backyard of waist-high weeds and an array of very upsetting litter (note the name of our “farm”), my boyfriend, our helpful friends, and I built three raised garden beds about two feet deep. We debated whether to seal the beds off before adding new soil, using pond liner or, preferably, some organic material, but decided it was unnecessary since we wouldn’t be growing anything with very deep roots.

Were we right, or just cheap and lazy? Maybe all of the above? Sometimes, the paranoid part of my brain plays me footage of all the scary shit in that pale, diseased, clumpy soil leaching its way into our moist, innocent dirt. In this imaginary film, the toxins seep up from under the wood frames of the beds, and up the stems of our precious plants. I’ve also tried to imagine our compost somehow fighting it off. And we do even have our own organic-fed chickens pooping nitrogen gold. What more could you need?

I scooped up some dirt from all three beds and brought it over to Brooklyn College, where Joshua Cheng runs the Environmental Sciences Analytical Center. I ordered their $75 advanced quality soil test, and asked him to talk me through the possible results. I told him my garden was in Bed-Stuy, and he said, “Yeah, that’s probably a bad area for lead, and I would expect a high frequency of contamination, like arsenic.”

Joshua Cheng poses with soil samples at the Brooklyn University Environmental Sciences Analytical Center. (Photo by Nina Lalli.)

Not what I’m looking for, Josh! He casually explained that Bed-Stuy is near former industrial areas, like Bushwick, and the buildings are old, meaning they’re often flaking lead paint into the air and soil. Also, there’s a high possibility that pesticides made with arsenic are imbedded in the ground. “It kills bugs, it kills you,” said Josh.

I got particularly hung up on the lead. I know two Brooklyn mothers whose sons recently tested high for lead. They were worried about their sons’ health and stressed about whether New York would punish them as parents. (The state requires that children be tested for lead at ages 1 and 2, and doctors must report any blood test results over 10 micrograms per deciliter [mcg/dL ]).

Josh asked if I was feeding any small children my backyard produce, and said that developing brains are really the concern with lead. “Adults already have a lot of lead,” he shrugged. “Did you grow up in New York?” Yes I did. “In an old building?” Yup. “Well, then this isn’t really going to matter,” he said. Great, so the damage is already done.

Maybe if I hadn’t spent my babyhood in a pre-war building in Manhattan, in the early ’80s (when the acceptable lead level for babies was a whopping 40 mcg/dL), I would have turned out to be a Great Mind.

“Don’t worry too much,” Josh said. “You look pretty healthy.” I left my soil with him, in a lab full of samples that looked much worse than mine, a fact that made me feel a little better. I headed home to snort a few lines of lead and wash that down with some arsenic.

While I waited for my soil results, I looked into getting my own lead levels tested. Having no medical insurance, this became an amusing game of “No.” But I finally found a clinic in Chinatown that would see me in a timely fashion and on a sliding scale.

When I sat down with a doctor and told her why I was there, her eyes widened. “Are you experiencing lead poisoning symptoms? Do you work in an environment where you are exposed to a large amount of lead??” she asked. I explained that I was just doing it for research and out of deep self-involvement. She was a little perplexed, and said she didn’t have a lead test for adults. So, I got a regular blood test (I’m a little low on vitamin D), and a very bizarre free magazine explaining that before the Great Flood, humans regularly lived to be 900 years old. (No, really.)

The East New York Farms' David Vigil explains the soil tests. (Photo by Nina Lalli.)

When my soil test came back, and I opened it eagerly, I found a lot of science I couldn’t comprehend. Brooklyn College sends helpful references along with the results, but I needed a human to break it down for me. So I scheduled a visit to East New York Farms, an inspiring organization with two urban farms, a farm stand, and a CSA. They also provide support for other community gardens, and I’m enamored of their work with young people and their focus on growing West Indian, Southern American, and Southeast Asian produce for the local population.

I sat down with David Vigil, the farms’ manager of six years, and he gave me his expert prognosis. To my surprise my soil’s lead level was only 63 parts per million (ppm), whereas the median listed in my area is 411 ppm. The organic content of my soil is high at 33 percent. My zinc is also a little high, which Vigil says is common in soil that has compost added to it. “It’s not ideal, but it’s not toxic,” he said. Arsenic came in at 5.9 ppm, which sounds like 5.9 too many, but the median number is 15 ppm and it turns out the range goes up to 79!

The N.Y. State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Soil Cleanup Objective allows 16 ppm of arsenic and 400 ppm of lead in soil meant for food growth. And, as David Vigil explains it, dust is by far the most dangerous form of lead. He also said he would be more comfortable eating food that was grown in lead-contaminated soil than vegetables grown in clean soil but housed in a space where lead particles were blowing around and possibly settling on the leaves of the plants themselves. Brooklyn College’s advice to gardeners points out that organic content (compost) can bind with lead and inhibit plants from absorbing it. They also recommend ground limestone as a way to reduce the availability of lead to plants.

So that’s all the new information that is crammed into my tiny, lead-infested brain. I’m relieved to know that my soil is relatively non-terrible, and I’m anxious to see how the next generation turns out, what with their fancy new lower lead levels and all.

See more stories from the Peebottle Farms series here.

Every year, I dread the arrival of winter. When leaf-watchers get jazzed and back-to-school sales are in full psychotic swing, my nail-biting worsens; my stomach turns with every minute the sun sets earlier.

This year, it was worse than usual. Since my joyful entrance into chicken-keeping last summer, the most frequently asked question I’ve heard has been: “But what happens in the winter?” “Oh,” I’d shrug, and say, as the farmer who sold us our six chickens had, “These birds are native to the Northeast. They’re fine, as long as their water doesn’t freeze.”

Nonetheless, as the stupid earth continued to revolve around the stupid sun, my anxiety became more and more precise. I pictured myself shoveling a path through four feet of snow every morning towards the chicken coop in the frigid darkness to feed the hens and defrost their water. And all for naught, since hens go on semi-strike due to lack of sunlight in winter, producing far fewer eggs. I started strategizing early: Should we install lights and put them on timers? Should we insulate the coop just in case?

In the end, the only winterizing we did was to cover their window with a sheet of plastic and their coop and outdoor run with tarps. A funny thing about chickens: They’re unwilling to change their routines, even if it improves their own comfort level. Chickens hate – hate – being wet, and yet would never think to go into their coop when it rains. Instead, they just stand in the rain and squawk. They always stay outdoors until the sun begins to set, and never a moment earlier.

So far my snow nightmare has yet to materialize. Winter in New York this year has featured sun-soaked afternoons with temperatures around 50, and even a few creepily warm days in the mid-60s. People are wearing denim jackets and strolling around warily, with question marks floating above their heads. And our chickens have continued to lay three or four eggs a day for the household, even during the shortest days.

In other words, we’ve had a lucky break, so far. But we have learned some lessons in the last couple of months — some seasonal, others budgetary.

Aquarium heaters can explode

Yep, that’s what I used to defrost the bird’s water on cold mornings. Perhaps everyone else knew that you can’t take an aquarium water heater out of the water and lay it on the ground while cleaning out and refilling a bucket. When it begins to hiss, you might have the instinct to dump water on it, but that’s when it explodes. No one was hurt in the learning of this lesson, which is all that matters. There were a few very cold days following my I Love Lucy moment, when we had to pour hot water over the ice in the chicken’s water trough in the mornings. And we have since upgraded to an automatic water dispenser, which sits on a heated base. Sometimes the right tool is worth a small investment.

Laying hens will cuddle each other, not their eggs

The only obvious change in the hens’ behavior during winter is that they huddle together even more often (and more adorably) than they do in warmer months. They now leave all their eggs in one nesting box, but because they are not laying fertilized eggs, they don’t care about them at all.  On the rare days with freezing temperatures, when we were working and couldn’t get to the coop quickly, we’ve collected a few frozen eggs, or “egg popsicles,” as our dogs think of them.

Bed-Stuy is not a pasture

A few months ago, I sought the advice of experts about what to feed our chickens. In addition to good quality feed, I’ve been hoping to compensate for a true pasture experience by letting the birds out every day to forage. They were happy, and returned to the coop every day at dusk. But they quickly depleted the terrain of our “farm” and started jumping the fence to our neighbor’s yard. I wasn’t concerned, because their routines are so consistent and they came back each afternoon. Eventually they roamed several backyards away, toward the street, and we had to put the kibosh on their free-ranging.

It’s cool to be the weird food hoarder at work

For my day job I often end up on the sets of photo shoots for food magazines, where a lot of food is thrown away. I’ve begun asking food stylist friends to throw their scraps in a bag. (They’ve raved about the eggs I’ve brought them as thanks.) I don’t take anything with chemicals or mystery products, but get a generous yield of the same scraps I produce in my own kitchen: vegetable trimmings and little bits of meat or a random shrimp help replicate the pasture diet, which is diverse and rich in vitamins, minerals, and protein from plants, worms, and grubs. No, we don’t feed them chicken.

Spent grain is not chicken feed

I may or may not have boasted about my ingenious plan to barter eggs for grain leftover from the home-brewing beer process in this very column. But I did try it, and I did find interested brewers in Brooklyn. After a few schleppy-but-pleasant transactions, we found that, although chickens quite enjoy eating spent grain, large proportions of it cause them to stop laying eggs completely. I am now offering eggs in exchange for the beer itself, for human consumption. The latter feels more ingenious.

Chicken feed is not in great demand in Brooklyn

We’ve purchased organic, soy-free chicken feed at farm supply stores and directly from farmers in Upstate New York and amazingly, even found it a pet store in our neighborhood. Unfortunately, the store stocks it only sporadically; the rest of the time, they have never heard of chickens at all, let alone food for chickens. Of course, high quality feeds are easy to find on the internet, but shipping costs are prohibitive. Today I fed them a homemade concoction of oats, barley, peas, corn, and cabbage, but that’s not going to last long. In fact, excuse me — I have to go drive to the border of Queens and Long Island to see a guy about a 50-pound bag of pellets, if you know what I mean.

A friend sent Nina an urgent text message that said: “Alert! Today is a good day for planting garlic!”

Before she gave me a crash course in her brand of biodynamic farming (on the telephone) from Southold, Long Island, the other day, all I knew was that biodynamic made organic look like amateur hour and had something to do with Rudolph Steiner and the moon. It sounded, as my dad would say, pretty hoogy-moogy. And that was before I learned about dowsing rods, let alone the cow horns or the herb-stuffed buried intestines.

Yet, after hearing KK talk about cosmic forces, moon rhythms, the balance of the earth, and the all-knowing plant life that surrounds us, I wanted to convert immediately. Right off the bat, she told me it has nothing to do with astrology or “fortunes.” But the logic behind biodynamic farming — part scientific and part spiritual — makes sense of nature and is intriguing because it feels far beyond my understanding. The science will have to come next, and I have a long winter of reading ahead of me.

KK started her farm in 1999 when she and her husband went looking for a getaway house. “When we turned up that driveway, everything changed,” KK said of finding the barn where they have lived ever since. The couple soon made it their full-time home, and KK launched herself into a deep education in farming, which started at The Nature Lyceum before she attended the Pfeiffer Center. (Both are schools in her area that focus on biodynamic farming and the work of Rudolph Steiner.)

KK doesn’t trust any soil or fertilizer that comes in a package, even if the package says “natural” or “organic.” Aside from manure from a neighbor’s horses and a few supplemental minerals, KK’s farm is self-sufficient, and dependent on recycled materials to keep the soil balanced.  

When she began planting and harvesting based on a biodynamic calendar (mine’s in the mail!) and making biodynamic compost, KK saw a marked difference in the colors and flavors of the food she was producing. Biodynamic compost requires a much more specific formula than what many of us do with our kitchen scraps. (I’m planning to attend a workshop in the spring. In the meantime, check out the reading list on her website.)

Some kids from the neighborhood helped Nina prepare her garden for winter.Photo: Nina LalliKK says that many people have dead soil, or their compost is too dry or hot, and the minerals get damaged. “Nature knows everything,” she says. “We just don’t.” She says her work with dowsing rods (metal rods which move back and forth and “answer” her questions) is her way of cooperating. For example, she asks her plants “do you need water today?” and waters according to the yes-or-no answer the rods provide. “The plants know the weather. If it’s going to rain the next day, they’ll say no. No one waters like God. Rain brings down all kinds of stuff, like nitrogen and pollen, so for them getting water from a hose is like filling up on McDonald’s right before going to the greatest restaurant in the world.”

Sigh. I can’t tell you how many times I effectively filled up my garden with McDonald’s food right before a rainstorm this summer. At this point in the conversation, I was feeling a little sorry for my land, and jealous of KK’s intimate relationship to hers. One thing I do have going for me, thankfully, is poop. Chickens (I have six) are alarmingly prolific manure producers, and once it has broken down in the compost pile, their manure makes fantastic fertilizer.

KK talks about the steep learning curve she had to endure when she started practicing biodynamics, and her determination to teach others what she knows now, literally, in an effort to save the world. My personal garden mentor (and a fake uncle of sorts), Steve, has already learned a lot from her. He sent me an urgent text message recently that read: “Alert! KK says today is a good day for planting garlic!” I got her on the phone for garlic instructions and advice on readying the garden for winter. According to KK, winter is the most active time for the earth’s soil. “It actually takes a big breath in,” she said, and snow is “God’s mulch.”

The chickens helped too.Photo: Nina LalliKK suggested I let my chickens help clean up the plants that were wilting in my garden beds, a perfect plan that led to by far the greatest day in the life of the flock. I cut back plants that will come back next year, like sage and sorrel, and let the hens peck around at leaves, bugs, and worms. They cooed with joy and roamed the backyard all day.   

I cleared the garden beds, harvesting the last sage and arugula for myself, and threw the remaining greens into the chicken run. Then it was time for garlic. I made a row in each of the three beds, about 4 inches deep, and loosened up the soil. (Garlic likes sun, so I placed it accordingly.) Then I planted eight cloves in each, sprout ends up, about five or six inches apart, and covered them over. Then, according to KK’s instructions, I distributed the mature compost I had among the beds. She also suggests sprinkling kelp onto the soil.

The kids next door asked to help, and their mother approved, so together, we covered the beds with leaves, as mulch. (Then they dug up worms to feed to the chickens, with equal parts disgust and fascination.) And their mother watched from the window, to make sure I wasn’t a psychopath.

In the midst of all this, I filled a jar with a mixture of samples taken from different parts of the garden. Tei and I didn’t have the soil tested when we cleaned up the backyard; we just dug a few feet into the ground and put in new, store-bought soil, but we didn’t seal the beds from the surrounding dirt. So we’re long overdue to send the sample off and face the diagnosis. My Brooklyn land has seen some serious abuse in its time — if it’ll take some sweet-talking and cow guts to nurse it to health, I’m game.

“I think they’re carnivores,” my new friend finally revealed, with a devilish twinkle in his eyes. I was pretty positive he was wrong.

I’ve been a backyard egg farmer for just a few months now, and my eggs are good, but I’m going for Italy-good.

I spent a semester in Rome during college; my classes were easy and I mostly focused on making dinner for my roommates. The dollar was strong and my Italian was decent. I shopped from two different vegetable guys, a wine guy, a salami guy, and a big fat butcher. I’d get my eggs at the supermarket but they were special and delicious. Their rich, creamy, deep orange yolks were like nothing I had seen. I would whisk a few whole eggs in a big bowl, grate in Parmigiano until my arm got tired, and add copious amounts of black pepper before tossing in hot pasta and serving. The eggs were the star of this meatless carbonara — they coated the pasta in a nourishing and perfect way.

Lately, I’ve been wondering what I have to feed my chickens to recreate that pasta here in Brooklyn.

I started my search for advice with the cookbook author and teacher Giuliano Bugialli. He said that the Italian chickens that make really orange yolks have brown and “shining” feathers and eat mostly dried whole corn and grains. “Even farro when it was not fashionable as it is now,” he said, adding, “I have never seen such chickens in the U.S.”

Harold McGee, in his indispensible book, On Food and Cooking, confirms that the yellow color of egg yolks comes from eating corn, as well as alfalfa. This I could do, but Bugialli had suggested that the real magic might lie in the breeding. Next I emailed  Mario Batali. He chalks the quality of Italian eggs up to their pasture-based lifestyle that allows them to eat all the bugs and grubs they can find. “Homogenized chicken feed is just an accelerant (to make chickens grow faster) and doesn’t add to the flavor of their eggs,” he said.

Dan Barber, the co-owner and executive chef at Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, shed some light on the question of color. “It’s from alfalfa, and often that’s extracted into pellets, he said.” But Dan, who grew up farming, added: “Eggs like that could still be missing out on other nutrients of a pastured diet.” He said that some producers also feed chickens marigolds to add color to egg yolks. But if the rich color comes from a natural, varied diet, Barber believes it does reflect the eggs’ nutrition and flavor.

Bronwen Hanna-Korpi worked on a farm outside Siena and holds a Masters degree from a Slow Food-affiliated university in northern Italy. Talking to her fueled my fear that my chickens were too urban and too American to compete with the best. She said she’d used a standard organic corn mix in Italy, but agreed that pasture living was key.

My birds do eat bugs and worms from our compost, plus lots of greens from the garden and scraps from the kitchen, but it must not be the same as foraging for themselves. Maybe Italian bugs are better. Maybe even Italian weeds are better.

Nina sought chicken feed advice from chef and farmer Dan Barber. “There’s nothing that can replace a pasture,” he told her. “We just don’t know what exactly happens when chickens are able to forage outside.”“Flavor is the synthesis of micronutrients,” Dan Barber told me, attributing the very essence of deliciousness to both science and mystery (as he is prone to doing). “There’s nothing that can replace a pasture,” he told me. “We just don’t know what exactly happens when chickens are able to forage outside, and express their full chicken-ness. Maybe it’s the moon, maybe it’s the attitude of the flock. We’re so far from figuring that out, and that’s what’s so beautiful about nature.”

Oh, Dan Barber, you make so much sense, and yet it’s so inconvenient for me. He tried to reassure me: “I’m not making a statement against raising backyard chickens. I think it’s great, and fun, and important, but if it’s about having the best food, you’d have to put them in a pasture.” I offered that I might grow grass in their run in the spring. “A miniature pasture,” I pleaded, withering. “Sure,” he said, “stick a herd of bison in there and you’re set.” Oy.

Rob Thompson, the herdsperson at Thanksgiving Farm at the Center for Discovery in Harris, N.Y., had some suggestions for recreating the forage experience. “If we don’t supplement the hens during the winter months, the yolk color changes drastically,” he said, suggesting dry grass, legume hay, kelp meal, and fermented hay.  

Danny Williamson, of the heritage poultry farm Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch, in Tampa, Kan., said the best eggs he’d ever eaten were also in Rome. He had a theory about Italian farmers. “They have access to great fish oil and fish meal. Our company would love to be able to use fish meal or fish oil for protein, but so many of our customers object to that.” He explained that people are fearful of animal byproducts and hence the labels on so many egg cartons guaranteeing a vegetarian diet. (This selling point has perplexed me since we got our chickens — it’s undeniable that they eat worms and bugs.)

Fish meal! Fish oil! My customers don’t object to that. I don’t have customers! I was hopeful again. My dinner party friend Justin might have been pushing it when he called chickens carnivores, but he was right: They do naturally eat meat.

Lynn Mordas produces delicious eggs at Dashing Star Farm in Millerton, N.Y. Her 350 chickens roam free on pasture, eating worms and grubs and grass. She doesn’t feed her hens fish or meat because it would attract hawks and vultures to her pastures. But she doesn’t deny that chickens naturally crave some animal protein. In fact, she described their thirst for blood with a combination of admiration and unease. “I have seen them ripping apart live mice and voles in the barn. They will also cannibalize their own eggs and peck at a deceased member of their own flock (killed by a hawk or dying of natural causes), given the opportunity.”

Well, I don’t have vultures or hawks in my pasture! I don’t even have a pasture! But I can satisfy my hens’ carnivorous instincts, which must be connected to their nutritional needs. Mordas warned me not to give the birds more meat or fish than they could consume quickly, so as not to attract rats. Okay! She also suggested I photograph the yolks as I experiment. Done! How could I have doubted urban farming? What I lack in land, I will mimic to the best of my abilities, without threat of predators or the limitations of big business. All I need is a barter deal with a butcher and a fishmonger for scraps, some alfalfa, and a sprinkle of kelp meal.  

The first egg.Photo: Nina Lalli

I scooped up the egg like a precious jewel, wrapped it carefully, and brought it to my sister’s house. Tei, my boyfriend, had left just the day before for two months of touring (he’s a sound designer), and I had to share the experience with someone other than my dogs, who are not great at savoring important moments. My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew greeted the egg with appropriate awe and excitement. Leo, 7, did refuse to eat “something that came out of a chicken’s butt,” but he was nonetheless thrilled.

The next day, there was another egg, and eventually there were two a day. Seeing nature perform as it’s supposed to is amazing to this city girl. I sent Tei pictures. I felt bad that he was missing our monumental success, this magical functioning of the natural world.

Fast forward to mid-September. By the time Tei returned home there were about 30 eggs in the fridge and a half-eaten frittata on the kitchen counter. I was a tad frazzled. I waved a curtain of shampoo-commercial-worthy hair in his face. I had been putting yolks in my locks before showering, because that’s what the internet told me to do with excess eggs. “Isn’t it shiny?” I asked, planting the compliment in Tei’s mouth. His response: “Is it supposed to be shiny?”

Nina’s nephew Leo making the universal “shocked for the camera” look with the first egg.Photo: Nina LalliNeedless to say, he wasn’t incredibly amazed by what the egg white-honey masks did to my pores, either. But I know I look at least two years less tired. The dogs are pretty shiny these days, too.

Within minutes, Tei finished the frittata I’d been slicing away at for three days. If you don’t have an endlessly hungry man around your house, six chickens is way too many. Actually, even if you do, you’re going to have to get creative. We now get five eggs almost every day, and his mother is concerned about cholesterol.

Recently, at brunch with a friend, an unexpected anxiety gripped me while perusing the menu. The eggs sounded good, but there was no way I could order them.  In fact, I should have brought some with me, I thought. Is there a name for this condition? It’s a kind of the flipside of hoarding. I feel great pressure to use up all the eggs!

The frittatas I make now have a dozen eggs in them. Eggs go in pasta dishes, salad dressing, stir-fried rice, soup. We make custard-based ice cream. Sometimes I suspect I’m clumsy on purpose when collecting the eggs from the coop so I’ll drop one and have an excuse to let one of the dogs eat it off the ground in the garden. I’ve given eggs to the neighbors who put up with the coop right outside their window, and to friends who have invited me over, or just friends who I meet at a bar for a beer. Here are some eggs to take home. Naturally.

The first egg, poached.Photo: Nina LalliRemember the scene in the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There when barber Billy Bob Thornton tweaks out about hair that keeps growing, even after he cuts it off? Well, I’m starting to relate.

Luckily, homegrown and homemade foodstuffs are a valuable commodity, especially in artisan-obsessed Brooklyn. I may not have tons of money, but bartering is all the rage, and suddenly I’m doing alright for myself. First, we traded some eggs for our friends’ homemade kombucha (which I believe is curing all my ailments). Then I shyly asked my genius ricotta-making friend if she was interested in eggs. Boom! A sidewalk exchange later I had a tub of Salvatore Ricotta.   

Now I’m working on a fancy granola connection and maybe even a restaurant deal. Eggs for an occasional free meal? It could happen.

Just recently, we started to run out of the organic chicken feed I bought at a farm store upstate. (Having it shipped almost doubles the price). And, since we’re not in love with the idea of processed grains, organic or not, I started looking for alternatives. Tei had an idea: He occasionally brews beer at home, and a by-product of that process is the grain that has been boiled and strained. Rather than toss it, why not feed it to the chickens? My trusty old scavenging instinct kicked in, so I got in touch with the people at Brooklyn Homebrew, and they suggested posting something on their message board. Soon enough, I was picking up some spent grain from a handsome home-brewer in exchange for a dozen eggs! And the chickens were delighted, so it’s possible we will never have to spend another actual dollar on our eggs/kombucha/ricotta/granola again. Maybe bartering could even cover the occasional date night! A girl can dream.

White Butt.Photo: Nina Lalli

Myth: Chickens are a ton of work

After my boyfriend and I had made our selections at the farm — two each of three different chicken breeds — and they’d been packed up in a box and paid for, we lingered, listening to the questions another couple was asking in case we forgot anything. A friend recently told me he and his wife tried to talk the hospital into a third night after their healthy baby was born because they were so afraid of going home and killing him. This was kind of like that, but a lot less important.

Farmer Doreen, who wore cool jeans and boots, was the perfect person to be asking, because all her suggestions came with nonchalant assurances that we would be fine. They were:

• Give them food and clean water every day.
• They don’t like being wet.
• They will eat anything.
• Clean out their coop and run often — or not that often.
• They need enough soil to peck at all day long.
• Hold them upside down by their feet if you have to pick them up. They will calm the hell down once the blood flows to their heads.
• They want to sit on something padded, but it doesn’t really matter what.
• They will flip over their food and water bowls if it’s at all possible. Make it impossible.
• You can’t hard-boil a super fresh egg because the shell will stick to the white, making peeling impossible. Leave it out overnight before boiling.

Fact: I’m not terrified of birds

The news that I had actually gone through with this whole chicken plan was very amusing to my family and oldest friends, because I’ve spent my life quite bird-phobic. I think it began either when Herbert the duck chased and verbally abused me on Long Island, or when I walked into my parents’ New York bedroom to find a pigeon standing on top of the television staring at me. Then again, it might not have started for real until I watched two grown-ass tourists in Venice’s St. Martin’s Square pour bird feed on their daughter’s head and proceed to photograph the pigeon swarm that pecked at her. There were a few bat incidents that I think should count, too. Let’s just say when a pigeon swoops too low, I hit the sidewalk. When a seagull encroaches on a beach blanket, I throw all my food at him and relocate.

Much to my sister’s particular disappointment, my chicken life has only featured a few slapsticky moments that involved pecking (chickens) and squealing (me).

I will say this: When attempting Doreen’s chicken-upside-downing technique, one must be swift and not jumpy. Jumpy hesitation and false starts lead directly to fleeing and pecking, which doesn’t hurt, except your feelings.

Actually, though the chickens’ faces and feet are as unpleasant up close as I expected, their feathers are pretty. Our Black Stars have a glamorous green sheen on their backs, and they all seem to share a dopey, loveable approach to life, which I admire. Most importantly, they are selfless contributors to our delicious, nutritious diet — a fact which fills me with gratitude and love.

Myth: Chickens are like dogs

A lot of people have asked about whether Tei and I are going to name the chickens, with the implication that naming them would make it harder to eat them when they stop laying eggs — if that’s what we decide to do. I said yes every time, assuming neither of us would be able to resist, being chronically prone to nicknaming and general silly talk. I looked forward to getting to know them and giving them idiotic names. (My farm is called Peebottle and my dogs are named Superdog and Roo. I’ll spare you Tei’s many nicknames.)

It’s been disappointing to find that they all have Clueless Chicken Personality. They all say the same thing all the time, which is “Oowaawaa!” and sounds a little bit like Tootie from The Facts of Life saying, “Ooh, somebody’s in trou-ble!” Maybe I should name them all Tootie? At this point, I just greet them with, “hi birds,” though I do call one Rhode Island Red “White Butt.” (She often needs to be spoken to, because she’s very feisty when she’s hungry.)

Fact: Chickens are kind of like dogs

I guess I had expected to relate to them more, but they’re just not like me. My dogs are like me but without autonomy, money problems, or thumbs. Who doesn’t want to nap, feel adored and useful, hang out with friends, and eat all the time? With chickens, it’s not so clear. You want to poke at the ground billions of times per day and then make an egg in a small space? Mmkay.

I worried about whether they were happy. When Tei was out of town and I was working long days, I stopped cooking real food and the compost bin didn’t see much action. So the chickens didn’t get scraps for a couple of weeks — just organic chicken feed and garden trimmings. They got louder. “Trou-ble!” White Butt was particularly pissy; she’d meet me at the door to the run and try to escape, which made me feel awful. I started cooking again, and one afternoon tossed the chickens the end of a red onion. All hell broke loose. One hen grabbed it and another pecked it right out of her mouth and ran away, only to be met by another hen and another swipe.

Aha — so maybe I can relate. I would never snatch my best friend’s sandwich out of her face and run away, but only because of the restrictions of human society.

Now I’m back to providing the ladies with flavorful scraps and they have raucous, joyful dinner parties. Their yolks are richer and the color is a deep orange again.

Fact: Everyone’s an expertologist

You know when you’re walking your dog and some random stranger informs you that he needs water, or what his breed mix absolutely must be? I like to call people who can’t resist offering unsolicited information based on vague personal experience “expertologists.” The internet is the expertologist’s playground, and googling for advice on chicken-care can result in a panic-inducing flood of bossiness. Don’t ever feed your chickens onions, they say. Their eggs will taste like onions, and anyway, they hate them; they will die from eating them.

Barred Rock chickens.Photo: Nina Lalli

Friend: “What’re you doing?”

Me: “Just hangin’ out, drinking the kombucha I bartered some eggs for.”

Friend: “Jesus f***ing Christ. Don’t ever talk about that to me again.”

How did I arrive at this height of clichéd existence, living as a Brooklyn creative type with connections to kombucha brewers and a backyard chicken coop? Easy: It turns out you can just drive to a farm and buy some chickens. I highly recommend it.

After Tei (the boyfriend) and I struggled to not murder each other while constructing a chicken coop in the backyard of our apartment building, we started to look for nearby farms selling pullet hens. Pullets are like teenagers, still young but perfectly capable of laying eggs like so many other pitiable pre-pubescents. They don’t seem to suffer any of the self-loathing I personally remember from those days, nor the acne, nor the CERD (Compulsive Eye-Rolling Disease), but there are some biological similarities (more on that later).

Doreen Weston, chicken wrangler extraordinaire. Photo: Nina LalliMany people who keep backyard hens start with newborn chicks, which cost only a few dollars each and are shipped through the mail (because the world is crazy). I’ve heard that the chicks can often arrive sick or dead and some have even been infected with salmonella. They are also several months away from laying eggs and extremely vulnerable.  

But the main reason we wanted to go to an actual farm to buy hens was a simple one: Tei and I like to know where our food comes from. And, when possible, we like it come from small farms. So it was an obvious excuse for a field trip.

Finding an actual farm turned out to be a little daunting at first. But when in doubt, go to Craigslist. But a friend who grew up on a farm and truly enjoys discussing the pros and cons of various chicken breeds was generous with advice and helped us vet the Craigslist ads we found. We ended up driving just an hour west of Brooklyn to Smoke Hollow Farm, in central New Jersey.

I showed up with the buzzy excitement I’ve always felt when adopting a new pet (which I’ve done way too many times to be normal). And it was nice to see that the farmer, Doreen Weston — while certainly no softy — sees her chickens, goats, sheep, and horses as pets, too. Her main business is actually training show horses; she started keeping chickens just for her own personal egg needs, but she got so much interest in pullet hens from others that she soon started breeding and selling them to neighbors with backyard dreams just like ours.

Doreen showed us the breeds she had: Rhode Island Reds (the common brown backyard hen), Barred Rocks (black-and-white speckled), and Black Stars (black) — all of which lay brown eggs.  These three breeds possess two characteristics that are important to us: they’re considered “winter-hardy” (especially the Rholde Island Reds) and “good layers” (producing four or five eggs a week). Doreen was sold out of Araucanas, which lay the pale green eggs that inspired Martha Stewart’s paint collection (a fact I knew and felt compelled to share, and which was met with an immediate, straight-faced “good for her” from Farmer Doreen.) “They all taste the same,” she chuckled, managing (just barely) not to roll her eyes.

I admit it: I wanted the pretty eggs because they’re special and everyone would say “ooooh” when they saw them, but I got over it. It surprises me that the taste doesn’t vary much among breeds, but I later learned that egg taste is distinguished by various stages of richness rather than distinct flavors.

The girls on the way home.Photo: Nina LalliTei and I had discussed buying three, maybe four chickens. But instead we bought six — two of each breed, for $12 each. When we showed Doreen an iPhone picture of our kooky chicken coop, she said we could probably keep a dozen. (The rule is that they really only need a wingspan’s worth of space each.) A flicker in Tei’s eyes seemed to say, After all that work on the facility, why not go for it? I could relate.

Why not go for it? Because it would be an insane egg factory and we would have to buy most of the food they eat — that’s why. So we held back and stuck with six (which still produces too many eggs for two people to eat, by the way).

A silent man-farmer who worked with Doreen packed up the birds in a cardboard box with air vents, and we drove them home after Doreen assured us a few more times that chickens are easy to care for. They cooed, barely, all the way back –  a little smooshed together but seemingly content.

When we got them home, we placed the box in the fenced-in run outside their coop and I opened it carefully. I stood back, expecting the birds to bust out and do crazy-bird stuff, but nothing happened. For a few minutes I assumed I’d killed them with road rage in the Holland tunnel. But the birds were just scared, like a gaggle of teenage wallflowers who just arrived at the dance. I dumped them out, upending the box completely, and they began to mill around slowly. And then, trend be damned, we were real urban farmers.

Tei’s hen ladderPhoto: Nina Lalli

Almost immediately after my boyfriend, Tei, and I cleaned up the filthy yard behind his apartment building and planted vegetables, I started fantasizing about fresh eggs in the fridge and fertilizer for the compost. He wavered between non-committal and enthusiastic, but I could tell he thought I might get over it.  

I missed the garden during the winter, and I didn’t get over the egg dream. As soon as it got warm enough, Tei and I started bickering about the chicken coop.  The plan was that  ”we” would build it, but we both knew that meant Tei would grumble about it first, and then reluctantly figure out how and do the heavy lifting. (I finally have a boyfriend who can fix machines, build shelves, and sell my old iPhone on eBay, but he performs these duties with the customer service style of a terribly exploited, disgruntled janitor.)

Nina applies “Dragonfruit” paintPhoto: Nina LalliAfter two days of manual labor and agitated vibes, the coop was built. And it was beautiful. Tei found lots of plans online and picked a simple one to copy pretty closely. We bought cheap strand board (for the walls) and plywood (for the floor and roof), plus two-by-fours, two-by-threes, and chicken wire. We spent a total of about $250 to make the coop and an attached, fenced-in run. Our good friend runs a woodshop in the basement and we were lucky to get to use his fancy table saws. We also used an old scrap of fencing to cover the run, and to keep squirrels and rats from the attack landings I imagined them plotting.

Tei was smart enough to raise the whole coop off the ground and make sure the run walls were tall enough, so we wouldn’t have to stoop to feed the hens and clean out their mess. He also built a hilarious little staircase for the hens. Inside, there are four wood dowels that lead to three nesting boxes. All this explains why I was not in charge of planning and construction.

Tei did put me in charge of choosing the color and painting the coop though. I immediately said, “pink!” and he immediately responded with, “no pink.” But by the time we got to Home Depot, I showed him some pinks, adorably antagonizing him, and, to my surprise, he said “whatever.” I had worn down the angry janitor.  I chose “Dragonfruit,” because it reminds me of the brightly painted buildings in Vietnam, where we traveled last fall (and ate dragonfruit).

The finished coop!Photo: Nina LalliSome friends came over to paint and help with the fencing, and then the home was ready for its new inhabitants. I was giddy about final product: an exuberant pink box with little birdy doors and stairs — it was like a deranged person’s dollhouse. Tei was considerably more subdued; he rolled his eyes back in his head while I bounced around taking pictures. “Anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

Of course, in the weeks afterward he showed off those pictures almost as often as I did.

In the next installment: Nina and Tei travel to a small farm outside the city to pick up the chickens.

Plowing the urban land, you find the darndest things.Photo: Nina Lalli

Considering my inclination toward rescuing filthy, abandoned street animals and my love of food, it’s really a wonder it took so long to happen.

Six months into a relationship is not the standard recommended timing for entering into joint pet custody, but that’s when my boyfriend Tei and I found Roo, a six-week-old “potcake” puppy, living outside a convenience store in the Bahamas. (Bahamians call strays “potcakes” after the leftovers they sometimes get from scraped-out rice pots.) We took her home to Brooklyn. On a plane. We didn’t live together (way too early for that!), but our friends politely ignored all the terrific possibilities for heartbreak built into this non-plan.

At nine months, we built a farm. I just lived 10 blocks away.

Tei can’t resist a project and I like to feed things. Tei is confident in his innate knowledge of how to do everything that has ever been done or has yet to be invented, and I am comfortable declaring my utter ignorance, even when it comes to things I do constantly. (What I’m trying to say is that he’s a man and I’m not.)

Just like Roo, our piece of land appeared pitifully at our feet and we would have been assholes to ignore it. Tei had recently convinced his landlord to clear out the basement of his apartment building on DeKalb Avenue and rent it to him to use as a workspace. He and two friends built walls and ceilings and created a music studio (Tei is a sound designer and also makes music he won’t let me listen to) and a woodshop, where our talented friend Luke Fasano makes furniture you’ve probably ogled at the Brooklyn Flea, if you’ve ever been there.  

Toward the back of the basement was a door that miraculously led to a yard. At that point, it was hard to see it through the thick layer of litter on top, but the potential was undeniable. We easily envisioned the lush, healthy Peebottle Farms that now exists.

About that name: Yes, “Peebottle Farms” is exceedingly juvenile and completely repulsive, and yes, it was all me. But before you criticize, let me point out: 1) I’m hilarious, 2) we are not selling the food we grow, and 3) we are not growing food in urine-soaked soil. Once cleared, we set to work on leveling the space and digging pits to fill with new soil for growing vegetables. But the name has great meaning — it’s poignant, even. Let me explain.

Amid the debris we cleared were many entertaining treasures, like a detective’s badge and half a golf club — pieces of a crime scene for which we still haven’t found the body (we assumed the golf club was the murder weapon, naturally). But the darkest of all our discoveries made up the bulk of detritus removed from the yard: many dozens of tightly sealed Arizona Iced Tea bottles full of aged urine. Presumably, some lovely neighbor had been peeing into bottles and chucking them out his window for about one-to-three lifetimes. Each bottle had to be emptied because otherwise, we couldn’t have lifted the trash bags. There was a lot of gagging that day, my friends, and I’m sorry to force you to imagine the horror of it. But what’s a makeover story without a gruesome “before” picture?

Reclaiming the land took a couple of months and the help of many friends, whom we lured with beer and grilled meats, and who stayed long after for the special feeling one gets from a little urban farm work. For some the labor was nostalgic; for others, a novelty. I think we all imagined that we looked pretty hip and rugged. (Urban farming is so cool that it’s probably already over — don’t even get me started on foraging.)

Not that urban farming comes naturally: I grew up in Manhattan and brought a down comforter to sleep-away camp at age 8. I couldn’t imagine the intense satisfaction of gardening back then, but I developed a yearning for physically tiring work and the magical outcome that came after getting one’s hands dirty. I highly recommend it for the neurotic and to-do-list obsessed: You can’t bite your nails when your hands are buried in compost, ya heard?

That’s not to say that the initial stages of the project were so enjoyable. Digging is especially hard when the earth is made up of giant chunks of glass, broken concrete slabs, rocks, and ungodly ancient root systems. We unearthed whole brick patios from some previous lifetime a mere foot below the surface.

Man, do I wish I had had the sense to photograph our male friends at work for a hipster pin-up calendar. The proceeds could have covered the costs of all our materials. (Mostly from Home Depot, conveniently located a few blocks away.) Aside from many bags of dirt (about half organic, which is not ideal, but that shit’s expensive), we bought two-by-fours to make the garden beds and fencing to keep Roo from digging up our imagined rows of fancy black kale.

Then it was finally time to plant. I bought many plants from farmers markets, and we also started many from seed. We made classic rookie mistakes like wasting too much space on herbs because we didn’t understand how big they’d get; guessing at when to plant and snip or where to prune, etc. I wish I were an obsessive overachiever who would have read 100 garden books and blogs and triumphed over the terroir during season one. But alas, I’m the type they must have in mind at those high schools where you learn everything by doing an internship.

Tei and I live together on the fifth floor of the building now, with Roo and my disgruntled elderly mutt, Superdog. Peebottle is in its second season, which has me obsessed with our six chickens. (Tip: That’s too many chickens.) They live in a fluorescent pink coop that I made Tei build.

Every two weeks, I’ll share the joys and disasters of my very low-budget farming efforts. The best news may be that our pee-bottle filler seems to have moved or repulsed himself to death.