Lee Rice at the Capital City Market in Boise

Various fingerling potatoes

Rice: Farmers that are doing what typical farmer market farmers do, they like to trial different varieties of fruits and vegetables . . .

Hand: That’s Lee Rice of Rice Family Farms in Kuna

Rice: So we do a lot of trialling and a lot of time you don’t even have enough to sale retail, let alone wholesale.  So it ends up at the farmers’ market and the customer get to try it and they can’t get it anywhere else.

Hand: Rice says a farmers’ market is a literal testing ground for agricultural ideas.

Rice: So we love farmers‘ markets and the customers for that reason.

Hand: Today at the Capital City Public Market in downtown Boise, Rice has several vegetables he’s letting customers test.

Potato varieties Lee Rice tested, with the help of farmers' market customers over a period of seven years

Rice: And right here on the table we’ve got, this is our second year, we’re in trial production of sweet potatoes and we went out and hand dug 30 pounds of sweet potatoes and they’re right there on the table, the early birds going to get the worm on those Covington sweet potatoes.

Hand: Sweet potatoes are usually grown in southern states, but the market gives farmers like Lee Rice the opportunity to try them here, to test new vegetables on a small, affordable scale.  He’s also experimenting with other potato varieties.

Rice: You know, we don’t grow any russetts on our farm, we strictly grow specialty potatoes and we’ve trialled specialty potatoes for a lot of years and we settled on a variety of red potatoes, a yukon yellow potato and a purple majesty purple potato as our favorites and our customer’s favorites and it took us about 7, 8 years of trialling on the farm and at the farmer’s market getting customer feedback to where we’ve settled on those three varieties of specialty potatoes.  But were always open to try a new one when a new one comes along.  A little later this year, we’ll have a purple potato called a purple Viking.  We’ve heard really good things about it.  It’s purple on the outside and white on the inside and I guess it makes one heck of a baker.

Dozens of tomato varieties at the Rice Family Farms market stand

Hand: Lee Rice is also testing a whole bunch of cherry tomatoes.

Rice: There’s orange cherry tomatoes, brown cherry tomatoes, green cherry tomatoes, yellow cherry tomatoes . . .

Hand: You may not know it, but if you shop at a farmers’ market, you’re a guinea pig, a test subject — but in a good way.  By tasting new produce, you partner with farmers in a quiet quest for agricultural innovation and diversity.

Rice: . . . and there’s even some oblong shaped which is a new release.  And those things are absolutely honey when you put ‘em in your mouth.

Hand: For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Peaceful Belly worker Angi Hronek carrying kale plants into garden for fall planting

Clay Erskine prepping plants for planting

Clay: Let’s just finish out this bed and then we’ll move on . . .

Hand: Clay and Josie Erskine of Peaceful Belly Farms are in a field on a warm August day pulling kale starts out of plastic trays.

Clay: We are planting our fall brassicas, which is the family like cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kale, all cool season crops.

Hand: The Erskines say gardening doesn’t have to end in the fall.  For those willing to make the effort, gardening in Southern Idaho can go right through winter.  Josie Erskine:

Josie Erskine planting kale for fall garden

Josie: Well, you can plant food in the fall that you can harvest later like in October or November and December.  And then it will stop growing for a little while and then you can start harvesting it again at the end of January and February.  So you have things that will overwinter here in our climate like kales and spinaches, broccoli and then with just a little bit of protection, either like a row cover or a hoop with some plastic on it, you can get lettuces and frisees and turnips and carrots to overwinter

Hand: The key is putting the plants in the ground early enough to get established — and right now is a great time.

Clay: But it is a challenge ‘cause it’s really hot right now and all these crops like the cool and moist weather.

Hand: So, you need to pamper those new plantings for a few weeks.

Clay: We have overhead sprinklers, so what we can do is cool them down and keep their soil really nice and moist.  With a drip irrigation system, it would be more difficult, they would get kind of stressed out in the heat and the dryness.

Hand: Besides planting kale, cauliflower, and lettuce, Josie Erskine says . . .

Kale starts ready to plant

Josie: . . . you could even plant little potatoes and you would maybe get some little teeny potatoes.  You can plant peas right now as long as you hoop those when the fruit comes on ‘cause the fruit doesn’t like frost but they’ll grow great and you can get fall peas.  You could do beets, like little baby beets that you overwinter.  Mizuna, frisse, radicchio.

Hand: But why bother with the added hassle of cool season crops?

Josie: They’re sweeter.  They have higher sugar content.  You’ll eat some of those vegetables in the winter and they taste completely different.  They’re so much sweeter.  It’s like they have to put so much energy into themselves just to keep alive and you can taste it.  It’s almost like how an apple after the first frost gets sweeter, so do these vegetables.

Hand: So, for those willing to do a little extra work in August, a cool season garden might take a touch of the bitterness out of the coming winter.

(Hand) For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

A ripe, old-variety peach

[HOST INTRO] Red Haven, Fire Bright, and Honey Blaze.  Those are just a few of the names of peaches and nectarines hitting area farmers’ markets over the next few weeks.  In this installment of the Market & Garden Report, correspondent Guy Hand takes a look at these juicy late-summer fruits.

Kelley: It’s peach season for us right now.  This is our first main variety that we just got into this week, this is Red Haven.

Hand: That’s Ron Kelley of Kelley Orchards in Weiser.  Red Haven is an old peach variety, the kind that have fallen out of favor with big producers.

Kelley: Some people love to can it, most people just love to eat it down here.  Hand: So what do they taste like?  Kelley: Taste delicious, juicy and sweet and flavorful.

Hand: Biting into a ripe peach and having juice dribble down your chin is a summertime rite of passage.  But juicy peaches are getting harder to find.  Big producers say consumers prefer newer, firmer peach varieties.  Kelley isn’t so sure.

Kelley: I don’t know that they like firmer peaches, but they get firmer peaches because they have to be shipped longer distances.  And that’s the beauty of this kind of market we have here is we can pick these peaches really ripe and a Red Haven is a really soft variety. If I was going to have to ship those, I would have picked them four, five, six days ago and they would be hard and they wouldn’t have the flavor that they have right now.

Ron Kelley of Kelley Orchards at the Capital City Public Market in Boise

Hand: So if somebody is shopping for peaches or nectarines what do you look for to find one that’s good and one that’s ripe?  Kelley: The main thing to look for is the color in this variety, it’s a nice yellow color in the background.  It’ll have a red blush on one side or the bottom that’s exposed to the sun, but that doesn’t mean much about the maturity of it.  It’s this yellow color.  Hand: Yeah, I’ve read that, that you should look for the background color, that kind of underlying yellow, rather than the red.  I thought that was interesting.  Kelley: Yeah, the red is kind of icing on the cake and also attracts the birds, which isn’t such a good thing.

Peaches and nectarines from Waterwheel Gardens in Emmett

Hand: A little further down the market, Kurtis Williams of Waterwheel Gardens from Emmett says you can also judge a peach or nectarine by the feel.

Williams: When you pick it up it should be slightly firm but where you can just press with maybe your index finger and make just a slight dent in pushing down on the peach skin and then you know that thing is ready to eat.

Hand: Now, nectarines are really just peaches without fuzz.  Genetically, they’re only one gene away from a peach.

Hand: And you have nectarines as well?  Williams: Yeah, our white nectarines called Arctic Glow.  My wife calls them the Idaho mangos because she loves mangoes and they’re as close to a mango as you’re going to grow here in Idaho.  Hand: Oh, really.  That sounds pretty good.

A box of Red Haven peaches

Hand: Numerous varieties of peaches and nectarines will be coming into season at area farmers’ markets from now through September.

Hand: For The Market & Garden Report, I’m Guy Hand.

Peach lore and peach recipes from the New York Times

The elegant Bellini, made famous (and from peaches) at Harry’s Bar in Venice, Italy

Also check out these excellent books: An Epitaph for a Peach by David M. Masumoto and How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons

And, of course, there’s always the great album by the Allman Brothers, Eat a Peach, which has nothing at all to do with peaches.

Lavender flowers at the Silver Fox Lavender Farm's stand at the Capital City Public Market in Boise

[HOST INTRO] There’s a little lavender renaissance going on.  This herb the Romans revered is gaining popularity here in America.  There are lavender festivals, new lavender products and a growing realization that lavender is great to cook with.  In this installment of the Market & Garden report, correspondent Guy Hand looks into this new-found love of lavender.

(Mascall) We’re at the Capital City downtown market and I sell lavender.

(Hand) Amy Mascall stands under a lavender blue sign, she’s surrounded by lavender plants and products, and she’s dressed in lavender-colored cloths.

Amy Mascall at her farm stand

(Mascall) We are the Silver Fox Lavender Farm in Emmett.  (Hand) And how long have you been growing lavender?  (Mascall) I’ve been growing lavender for about 15 years.  We’ve been doing it commercially for about five.  And it’s enjoyable.

(Hand) Lavender is kind of amazing.  A lavender farm in full bloom is stunningly, fragrantly beautiful.  It’s why lavender festivals have become so popular.

(Mascall) I think that’s been the key element for lavender growth is that people get to go out and experience the farm.   You see the plant, you enjoy it, you smell it, you see see the field, you enjoy that, we hang it to dry it, that’s enjoyable to look at.  You can eat it while you’re looking at the plants.  It’s just an enjoyable thing in all areas.

Sachets and other lavender products

(Hand) And do you know a little bit about the history of lavender?  (Mascall): The history of lavender goes back to biblical times.  The Romans used it in everything, in their baths and their linens, actually called the people who did their laundry in ancient Rome, they called them the lavenders.   Anybody that had any money of any value smelled like lavender.  (Hand) Really? I had no idea.

(Hand) Mascall says lavender is used in tons of different ways.

(Mascall) We make about everything you can imagine that has to do with lavender.  We make sachets and soaps and lotions and any culinary item that you can manufacture with lavender.

(Hand) I think a lot of people know of lavender as a fragrance and an oil, but not as something that you can actually cook with.  (Mascall) Lavender is all edible.  However some kinds of lavender have a camphor taste and they aren’t very enjoyable.  A Hidcote or a Munstead, maybe a Royal Velvet, some like that are a very good choice.  And a Munstead is very good because the foliage is also edible.

A lavender wreath at the Silver Fox Lavender Farm stand

(Mascall) My favorite way to use it, which most people do not is that you grind it with a poblano pepper and it has a lot of bite to it, it’s hot, it’s got an interesting taste.  It’s used regularly in chocolate and with lemon and lemon bread and cookies and anything with a sugar.  Lavender lemonade is a big hit on our farm.

(Hand) You can also make lavender margaritas, mojitos and ice cream. At her farmers’ market stand, Amy Mascall has plants, recipes and lots of other lavender products.

(Lavender music fading up) (Hand) For Edible Idaho’s Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

A few lavender links:

Here’s an article on making lavender smoothies and other drinks with herbs.

Cooking with lavender

Lavender margaritas, ice cream and more

Deborah Jantzi of Treasured Sunrise Acres with raw cow milk

Idaho, however, recently changed it’s laws to allow the selling of raw milk.  In this installment of the Market & Garden Report, correspondent Guy Hand  goes to the farmers’ market to talk to Idaho’s first licensed raw milk dairywoman

(Woman at Market) So can you tell me about this? (Jantzi) It’s raw milk.  I have raw cow and goat milk.

(Hand) You know we’ve been living in a processed, pasteurized world a long time when people ask “what’s raw milk.”  In the few weeks that Deborah Jantzi has been selling raw goat and cows milk at the Capital City Public Market, she’s been asked that question many times.

(Jantzi) Raw milk comes straight from the cow or the goat.  We don’t do anything to it except filter it and flash cool it and bottle it.  We don’t do anything else, no processing to it.

(Hand) We humans drank raw milk for millenia.  Only after Louis Pasteur discovered that pasteurization killed pathogens, did raw milk fall out of favor.  But Jantzi says there’s a downside to pasteurization.

(Jantzi) When you pasteurize something you heat it up and it kills all the bacteria in it, good and bad, there’s bacteria on everything and if the milk comes from a healthy animal and handled clean you have no bad bacteria in it.  So you’re killing all the good bacteria that’s beneficial to your gut to help digest your food.  It also has a lot of enzymes in it and when you pasteurize it you kill them.

(Hand)  Not everyone in the raw milk debate would agree with Jantzi, but the State of Idaho says raw milk is safe if it’s produced in impeccably clean conditions.

Raw goat milk

(Jantzi)  To be licensed to sell raw milk, I had to have a grade A dairy to start with.  But then I have to go beyond that. I have to test every batch of my milk before I can bottle it.  The dairy inspector comes to my farm on average of once a month, takes that milk back to the state lab and they run all kinds of tests to make sure that it is healthy and that there is nothing in there that’s going to cause any problems for any body.

Cooler full of raw milk

(Hand) Jantzi sells her raw milk at her own dairy, at several farmers’ markets and the Boise Coop.  She’s got other plans as well.

(Jantzi) I am working on a licensed kitchen in my dairy.  I will then be able to do like chocolate milk, raw milk ice cream, we’re working on putting a cheese plant in and then we’ll be doing soft and possibly hard cheeses.  We will also be doing yogurt.

(Hand) But does raw milk taste different?

(Jantzi) Yeah, there’s a difference in taste.  It tastes a lot fuller, a lot creamier, I think a lot better (laughing).

(Hand) If you’re interested in raw milk, Deborah Jantzi will be at the Capital City Public Market every Saturday.  For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Here are several articles on the raw milk issue:

Some Like It Raw
The Truth About Raw Milk Part 1
The Truth About Raw Milk Part 2
Want raw milk? Lease a farm—and hire a lawyer
Is raw milk becoming too popular for its own good?

Photo by Guy Hand

In this episode of the Market & Garden Report, correspondent Guy Hand talks to Clay and Josie Erskine of Peaceful Belly Farms about the fine art of watering.

(Sounds of sprinklers) (Hand) Watering seems so elemental, so simple.  It’s not.

(Clay) It’s kind of mysterious.  You don’t know if you’re doing it right or if you’re doing too much or not enough.  It’s really difficult to know.

(Hand) Farmer and garden class teacher Clay Erskine says you can’t just look at the ground and tell if it’s time to water — especially in our desert climate.

(Clay) I think people over water a lot because the surface will seem dry in the middle of the day and they go out there and everything looks parched and dry and dusty.  In our climate, unless you’re actively watering something, it’s going to look bone dry.  But it doesn’t necessarily need water.

(Hand) So you can’t look at dirt as an indicator.  Josie Erskine says you can’t even look at a drooping plant and always know it’s time to water.

(Josie) Some of your squashes and stuff will look like they need water, they’ll wilt, their big leaves will wilt or the melons will wilt, but they’ll be wet.  Bean plants sometimes can fool you too.  They’ll droop a little bit at their tops and they don’t need water yet.

(Hand) Over watering can be as bad as under watering.  So how do you know when enough is enough?

(Clay) There’s a whole technology of water that you can totally get into if you want to.  I mean you can get tensometers, where it has two different levels of water probes which tells you exactly when you need to irrigate.  But I believe that the best thing to do is just get out there and grab a bit of dirt.

Photo by Guy Hand

(Hand) By that, Clay means dropping to your knees and getting to know the moisture content of your soil.

(Clay)  Like these strawberries right here, they look dry.  But then once you get down in here and you just scratch just a little bit, I mean, not even a sixteenth of an inch, and there’s nice, dark soil there.

(Hand) Before watering, Josie Erskine says to scoop up some soil and if you squeeze it . . .

Photo by Guy Hand

(Josie) . . . and it kind of makes like a what I’d consider pie crust consistency, so like you can either kind of get it to kind of crumble or you can get it to make a ball if you want it to, you’re doing well with your water.

(Hand) So watering is a complex issue with a simple solution.

(Clay) I think the best advice is to just be in your garden and to notice what’s happening and to dig down and be aware of how your soil holds water.

(Hand) Or, as Josie likes to put it . . .

(Josie) The best fertilizer for you garden is your footprint.

(Hand) For Edible Idaho’s Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

(Hand) Or, as Josie likes to put it . . .

(Josie) For Guy Hand, this is your Market Garden Report (Clay) Let’s go jump in the river.

Courtesy Outdoor Idaho

This Thursday, Outdoor Idaho will air a show on Idaho’s vibrant local food scene.  It’s a story that Idaho Public Television producer Thanh Tan has been working on since last summer — a subject dear to her heart. Here’s what Tan says about the show:

“I always tell people one of the pleasures of working at IdahoPTV is the fact that producers get to pursue projects they are passionate about. In my case, I love food. I cook for myself. I cook for my friends. For me, making a delicious dish from scratch is incredibly therapeutic. I believe the act of sharing food brings people together and sparks great conversations.

So when I got the green light to produce an Outdoor Idaho about the local food scene in Idaho – I was ecstatic! Production began in the summer of 2009. Since then, we’ve traveled all over the state to gather video and sound. We will continue to put the finishing touches on the show right up until the July 15 premiere.”

Courtesy Outdoor Idaho

“Eating Local” will look at the increasing numbers of small farm operations that sell directly to consumers, part of a growing local food movement that supports more than 50 farmers markets statewide.

Courtesy Outdoor Idaho

Thanh Tan says her research for the show reveals that America’s industrial food system brings seasonal goods to grocery stores year around. But it also sends locally grown crops and money out of state with food items traveling an average of 1,500 miles before arriving in stores.

“The opportunity to see how hard some farmers are working to diversify their crops and strengthen our regional food-shed says a lot about how much Idahoans care about each other and our economy,” Tan says. “After watching ‘Eating Local,’ you may never look at your food the same way again! At the very least, I think you’ll be inspired by what Idaho farmers have to offer — and wonder whether we’re capable of producing even more of our own food.”

Here’s a video clip of the upcoming show:

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

“Eating Local” on Idaho Public Television’s Outdoor Idaho will air this Thursday July 15th at 8:00/7:00 p.m. MT/PT and repeats July 18 (Sunday) at 7:00 p.m. MT/PT. See it in HD July 15 (Thursday) at 9:00/8:00 p.m. MT/PT and July 18 (Sunday) at 8:00/7:00 p.m. MT/PT. The discussion continues on a live DIALOGUE on “Local Foods” July 15 (Thursday) at 8:30/7:30 p.m. MT/PT, which repeats July 18 (Sunday) at 5:30/4:30 p.m. MT/PT.

(Mulberry Music) (Hand) It’s not that mulberries aren’t tasty.  They are.  And they’re not rare or hard to grow.  Mulberry trees sprout where ever their seeds fall.  And the resulting 30 to 60 foot high plants are prolific.  What mulberries aren’t are easy to get to market.

(Bart Rayne) The picking is really fragile.  They shatter really easy, they fall off of the tree.

Bart Rayne of Next Generation Organics with boxes of mulberries

(Hand) That’s Bart Rayne.  He and his wife Elayne of Next Generation Organics in Homedale are here at the Capital City Public Market selling delicately picked and packaged mulberries.

(Bart)  You gotta be really careful picking them.  And so they don’t transport, they don’t really travel really well, so we pick ‘em right into these little containers, we can get a lid right on ‘em and then bring ‘em to the market, put them on display and that’s as few steps as we can get in there.

(Hand) Farmers’ markets provide the perfect and often only outlet for short season, fragile and unusual foods — like mulberries.

(Hand) So can you tell me what they look like and what they taste like. (Rayne) We almost equate it to like a Concord grape, they’re just a really mild flavor and not a lot of tartness really like a lot of other berries.  They look a lot like a black berry or like a logan berry, just real mild so they lend to a lot of different preparations it seems like.

Elayne Rayne of Next Generation Organics at the Capital City Public Market in Boise

(Hand) Can I taste one? (Rayne) Yeah, please.  (Hand)  It is really good, it’s very subtle, but tasty.  I can see how it would make great sauces or jams.  (Rayne) Yeah.

(Hand) Mulberries can also be made into wines, syrups or just eaten out of hand.  They make natural food and fabric dies and their leaves are that famous favorite of silkworms.  The Raynes found mulberries just growing on their land.

(Bart) We lived there for probably a couple of years before we even realized we had these trees on the property.  You know, we were back there with some friends and it was just like wow this tree has tons of berries on it.

(Hand)  The Raynes had to do a little research before realizing their mysterious found fruit was mulberry.  Elayne Rayne:

(Elayne)  We just love that the tree was there when we moved in that we didn’t have to plant it, we don’t have to do a whole lot of maintaining.  It’s just kind of a gift that was there.  It’s unusual and people are always really intrigued by it, which is fun.

(Hand) Farmers’ markets give small producers like the Raynes the chance to turn backyard surprises into marketable produce.  But the mulberry season is short.  Tomorrow may be the last Saturday the Raynes have their nursery rhythm berries at Boise’s Capital City Public Market.

(Mulberry music)

(Hand) For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Backyard Chickens

[HOST INTRO] A bird is helping blur the boundary between urban and rural America.  A few years ago, a chicken would have been a reliable sign that you’d crossed into farm country.  No more.  As correspondent Guy Hand reports in this installment of Edible Idaho, chickens are invading many American cities — and helping urbanites connect not only to their food, but to a new kind of community.

(Chicken sounds)  (Blackhurst) Yeah, come on . . . (Gate clicking) Most people come in here and they say “I don’t even know that I’m in the city.”

(Hand) That’s because Jay Blackhurst and his neighbors have turned a hundred foot long, dirt alley into a shared chicken run.  They call it “The Collective Coop” and it’s populated with poultry.

(Blackhurst) In the 50’s I guess when they built this neighborhood, they had never really opened the alley up to cars or anything.  And so when I moved here five ears ago, it was just weeds.

(Hand) Blackhurst decided to clean up this Boise alley, fence it off and put in a few chickens.  He didn’t expect to start a movement.

(Blackhurst) And soon as I put my chickens back here, then Lisa and Keith wanted to put their chickens back here and then Molly said can I put chickens back here and I said lets put ‘em all back here.  So then I had my coop, I got rid of that and we made this one collective coop.  (Hand) So this is a community shared coop?  (Jay) A community shared coop.

(Latimer) It’s amazing how the chickens have transformed the back alleyway so everyone can enjoy it.

(Hand) That’s neighbor and fellow chicken owner Lisa Latimer.

Jay Blackhurst and Lisa Latimer in their neighborhood chicken alley called the "Collective Coop."

(Latimer) We got to know Jay and his family, we know Molly and her family, we know quite a few other neighbors that we’ve met and all the children come back here and play.  There’s hardly an evening that goes by that all of us aren’t out here visiting or enjoying each others company.  So it’s a wonderful thing for our neighborhood.  (Hand) So community sort of brought together by chickens?  (Jay)  Yea, yea, pretty much.

(Hand) So how do people keep their eggs separate?  (Lisa)  Oh, who ever needs eggs get eggs for the day.  (Hand) So there’s no egg accounting or anything? (Jay) No nobody’s. . . (Lisa) We all think it’s wonderful that Jay has a little 2 year old, she has a basket, she gets the eggs and then she distributes them around the neighborhood.  It’s just cute watching the kids out there.

(Latimer) This house on the end just sold, so (laughing) we have to get them involved pretty soon.  (Hand) Do they have documents they have to sign or anything? (Laughing) (Hand) Chicken friendly . . . (Jay) Chicken friendly documents, for sure. . .

(Hand) Now, the community nature of this alleyway chicken scene isn’t typical, but it does illustrate an exploding national interest in raising urban poultry.

Sign on Boise chicken coop

(Ludlow)  It’s actually been about 2 1/2 to 3 years where the trend really started to pick up.

(Hand) California-based Rob Ludlow is owner of Backyard Chickens.com and co-author of the book “Raising Chickens for Dummies.”

(Ludlow) What I’ve seen is that people see that chickens really are a multi-purpose pet.  They’re relatively easy to care for, they eat bugs and weeds in your yard, they generate fantastic fertilizer, they’re fun to watch and interact with.

(Hand) And of course, they lay eggs.  But Ludlow says there’s another, more fundamental reason for the popularity of urban chickens.

(Ludlow)  And I think this is the biggest, especially over the last 2 years.  Many urban, suburbanites really want to join in the movement towards self sufficiency, growing local, being green, etc.  The problem is that most people don’t have the ability or the space to raise cows, pigs, have a huge garden.  Having a handful of egg laying hens in a relatively small yard allows these people to participate in these movements without having to change their zip code or move to another city.

(Hand) A large number of urban areas have written ordinances that allow for chickens.

A white crested black polish backyard chicken

(Ludlow) Berkley, Seattle, Portland, those are some cities that are chicken friendly . . . San Jose, San Francisco, chicken friendly.  On the east coast New York is chicken friendly . . .

(Hand) There are cities that worry about the possible noise, odor and sheer Beverly Hillbilly-esque nature of urban chickens.  Salem, Oregon currently prohibits chickens.  Spokane restricts the building of coops.  But Boise allows three hens per small urban lot and, on larger lots, more.

(Medlin) Chickens!  Come on, come on (laughing)

(Hand) Polls say the number one reason Americans keep chickens is for eggs — meat is a distant third.

(Medlin) . . . That’s Cheeky and that’s Parrot . . .

New backyard chicken enthusiast Shellan Rodriguez and friend

(Hand) . . . but a close second — and this might come as a surprise to some — is companionship.  The birds themselves, and their interesting, sometimes complex behavior is what first attracted Boise’s Susan Medlin to a friend’s chickens.

(Medlin) The more I observed them, the more fascinating I found them to be.  And they were clearly not the bird brains that they’re made out to be.  That’s quite a misnomer actually.

(Hand) Medlin became a backyard chicken expert, raising her own brood and eventually teaching classes on the subject.

(Medlin) The long and short of it is that chickens were really my doorway to avian life.  And I’m amazed and I can understand now why people are such dedicated birders and they’re just incredible.  And so chickens, I have chickens to thank for that and they are a credible members of the whole bird family.

(Hand) Urban chicken owners in a recent survey said they felt that chickens were easier to raise than dogs and nearly as easy as cats.

Reuben Kosche in front of the family coop

(Medlin) I think if the chickens had their way, the chickens would be house chickens, they would be lap chickens, they would be under the covers chickens.

(Hand) This rather cozy relationship with a farm animal is a far cry from the factory-like realities of large poultry plants.  The backyard chicken movement is, at least in part, a reaction to the harsh, some say inhumane treatment of poultry — as revealed in recent books and this scene from the documentary Food Inc.

(Woman) It is nasty in here.  There’s dust flying everywhere.  There’s feces everywhere.  This isn’t farming.  This is just mass production like an assembly line in a factory.

(Hlebechuk) I think if you educate yourself to the whole industrial farming at all by either reading a book or watching a documentary, you kind of get scared.

(Hand) That’s Deanna Hlebechuk.  She and her family raise chickens in downtown Boise’s North End.

(Hlebechuk) It’s really a horrible way for these animals to be treated and I think by having our own chickens and a son, it helps him be educated as to making better choices during his life.

Fresh backyard eggs, the #1 reason people keep chickens

(Hand) Hlebechuk’s husband, Robert Kosche knows just how far an urban chicken farmer will go to save a bird — bird a commercial poultry plant would throw in the bin.

(Kosche) We were brooding a little hatchling that had what’s called splayed leg syndrome where the legs are kind of rubbery and kind of splay out to the sides.  If that’s not fixed the bird will die within a week or two because he can’t get to food or water.  So what we did, was we took duct tape in kind of a McGyver fashion we built a little leg brace for this chicken.  And every day we would do a physical therapy with this little bird, we would pat him on the bottom to make him run, he would run a few feet and then tumble and then he’d run a few feet and he’d tumble.  And after two weeks we took the braces off and the bird could walk on his own.  The bird grew up to be one of the strongest we’ve ever seen.

(Hand) Physical therapy for chickens is not likely to be adopted by commercial agriculture.  Yet this small act illustrates the ethical gap that’s grown between industrial food producers and many consumers.  Raising backyard chickens may not change the poultry industry, but it will bring urbanites closer to their food — and make for better omelets.

(Hand) For Edible Idaho and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Here’s a story on cool backyard chicken coops.

And an unsettling new revelation: Arsenic in chicken feed

Peaceful Belly gardening class at Hidden Springs

[HOST INTRO] For the last two months, the Market & Garden Report has aired tips on vegetable gardening — with the help of Clay and Josie Erskine of Peacefully Belly Farms.  That’s the “how” of gardening.  Today correspondent Guy Hand is going to look at the “why” of gardening — why so many people are suddenly interested in growing their own food.

(Gardening Sounds) (Guy Hand) A recent survey says over a third of U.S. households grew vegetable gardens in 2009.  That’s nearly a 20% increase over the year before — or 7 million new families growing food.  But why?  I recently wandered through a season-long gardening class taught by Clay and Josie Erskine — asking students: “Why do you garden?”

(Adriana Veloza) I was telling my sister I want to get back to our roots.  She said what do you mean your roots?  I’m like human roots when we actually grew our own food and nothing came prepackaged and we were aware of where our food was coming from.

(Michael Rupp) To be able to turn our yard into something that’s fruitful rather than just a plot of grass that looks nice, to actually have it work for us and feed us.

(Dana Doherty Menlove) For me I feel like one of my jobs as a mother is to teach my children how to sustain themselves.  I just wanna have skills to teach them how to grow food and know where the food comes from.

(Deanna Hlebechuk)  I like getting dirty.  It’s fun, it’s lovely.  And you know, you walk away with the fruits of your labor you enjoy all week long.

(Hand) So what are you doing right now? (Mike Wallace) Right now I’m just pulling weeds out of the raspberries.  They’re getting a little big.  (Hand) And do you think it’s worth it with all the manual labor that’s involved? (Mike Wallace) Oh it’s peaceful.  Once you get into a rhythm and just start weeding you can pretty much think about everything else except the weeding.

(Heather Cooper) To me that’s a great thing you can do for family and friends is feed them and to feed them fresh food is even more satisfying.

(Don Pollari) The more work you put into it the commitment grows and the connection to the land grows and the connection to the result grows and by the end the rewards far outweigh what you put into it to me anyways.

(Sara Cohn) It’s a nice opportunity to get outside when you’re in an urban area and connect to blackbirds and the wind.

(Dana Doherty Menlove) Everyone seems to bring so much good energy here, that you leave full.

(Karen Hammond)  And I get to garden with other people which has been kind of fun.  Something Josie said was once you garden in a group it’s kind of hard to go back to gardening alone. And I love that and I keep thinking about that.

(Robert Kosche) But it also allows us the opportunity to come out here by ourselves and just enjoy the garden. So you can be out here with a great group of folks or you can be out here when no one else is out here and it’s all yours.  It’s spectacular.

(Hand) A few answers to the question: Why do you garden?  For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.