Fowl play

Bird is the word as urban chicken coops flap to Toledo

by Matt Cummings

published July 2nd 2008

Most of us who have grown up in urban areas associate the eggs we fry for our breakfasts more with refrigerators and sell-by dates than with chickens. But for urban kids and teenagers in the Glass City, Mike Szuberla, director of Toledo Botanical Garden's community outreach program, Toledo GROWs, is hoping that soon, this will change.

In cooperation with a diverse flock of other community organizations, including the Lucas County Juvenile Justice System's CITE program, and the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo's YAAW program, Toledo GROWs is gearing up to raise and tend chickens—and eventually goats—in the community garden at the Padua Center at Nebraska Avenue and Junction Street in Toledo.

The past several years have seen a nationwide resurgence of keeping chickens and small livestock in cities. The City Chicken Movement, as it is called, promotes the benefits of raising chickens in urban areas — something that is gladly permitted by Toledo's municipal code, as long as the owner obtains a written variance from the health inspector.

"It's just about everywhere," Szuberla said. "New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, LA, Miami, Cleveland. A lot of people are doing it for food quality reasons, which is a really smart thing to do."

But instead of focusing on producing huge harvests of comestibles, Szuberla's project is concerned primarily with the cultivation of young minds.

"When you talk in terms of calories, this is not a significant farming effort. It's an educational initiative. I've been astounded at how many kids don't really know that eggs come from chickens. They think they come from Styrofoam containers. This is about teaching children nurturing values and connecting kids to where their food comes from. But fundamentally this is a parenting project."

Szuberla was inspired by a nationally lauded project at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a Detroit school for pregnant and parenting teenage girls in Detroit, that uses small livestock as a way of teaching parenting skills to their students. In conjunction with the Polly Fox Academy, a charter school for teenage mothers through Toledo Public Schools, Szuberla hopes to provide a similar opportunity for youths in Toledo.

"If you're going to have a being completely dependant on you, you have to have a knowledge of nutrition and be able to provide a consistent routine. The Catherine Ferguson Academy has been phenomenally successful in teaching these values. It's had a really powerful impact on the youth, so we were interested in that regard."

But projects such as these, Szuberla said, have benefits that will likely permeate throughout the entire community.

"The way these initiatives work is we find a big space and a group of people to work on it, so it brings people together into a community. There are pets for the kids, fresh eggs for everyone, goats milk, the manure is good for the soil, and the chickens eat bugs."

The response of neighborhood residents has already been overwhelmingly positive.

"With all the projects I've been involved with, this has been the most warmly received," Szuberla said. "We've never gotten more offers for volunteers."

If you'd like more information or would like to volunteer, contact Mike Szuberla at 419-936-2975.