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By Sean Howell
Almanac Stafff Writer

When Leslie Ballinger and her family started raising chickens in 1998, they were pretty much on their own.

Upon moving from Menlo Park to Woodside, they decided to fill a small portion of their greatly expanded backyard space with a chicken coop. But the family faced a steep learning curve, primarily because they didn't know anyone else who raised chickens. The family had no one to go to for advice when the hens got sick; no one to warn them about the dangers of predators; no one with whom to swap stories about their chickens' personalities, or the quality of their eggs.

Eleven years later, that has all changed. Ms. Ballinger has friends and neighbors who raise their own domesticated fowls; they share eggs, trade stories and helpful tips.

"It's very much an exchange of information," she said. "People who have just started raising chickens will e-mail me with questions; someone will have too many hens for whatever reason, and will want to give some away. ... It's a very nice community."

Spurred in large part by the "eat local" movement, and perhaps by a rebellious do-it-yourself ethos in this age of big-box retail, suburban Americans are embracing the idea of raising their own chickens. In local towns, it has started to take the shape of a true grassroots movement. Many of the people we interviewed for this story became interested in raising chickens when their kids learned about it in school, or when they saw the coops of neighbors and friends; most of them knew scads of other families who also raised hens.

They don't necessarily raise chickens for the same reasons. Some see the animals as pets, others as a source of delicious eggs, still others as part of a whole ecological backyard system.

But all of them are re-forging a relationship with an animal that for decades has been absent from their everyday lives. And while it's perhaps not surprising that there are plenty of chickens running around backyards in Woodside and Portola Valley, city dwellers take note: They are also making inroads into Menlo Park and Atherton.


Picking up steam
It seems clear that raising chickens is a growing trend locally, though it's harder to put a finger on its origin.

Kathy, the seed store clerk at Portola Valley Feed, said she thinks the "locavore" movement has fueled demand in recent years. She noticed a sharp upswing in customers after Sunset magazine published a short how-to article on raising chickens in April 2009.

"I don't know if it's directly attributable to that, but we did notice an increase," she said. "Also, people start to (buy chickens) as their neighbors get them, too."

About 75 people per week come into the store to buy chicken feed, according to Kathy (who didn't give her last name). She can tell the newcomers from the veterans because they tend to buy the increasingly popular organic chicken feed, though it's "almost twice as expensive as conventional feed."

The chickens in the Menlo Park backyard of Alessandra Costa and Michael Johnston owe their perch in large part to Michael Pollan, whose 2006 book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" has become a sort of sacred text for proponents of the "eat local" movement.

"My husband started reading all of Michael Pollan's books about how we eat, how poorly we eat, how poorly the animals we eat are raised," Ms. Costa said. It took some convincing to get her on board, but she eventually warmed to the idea, and the family purchased four chicks in August.

While Mr. Pollan's book has certainly helped spark a renaissance for backyard chickens, environmental sustainability wasn't the primary motivator for most of the people we talked to.

"Most of the people I know wanted fresh eggs, and had the space to do it," said Woodside resident Lisa York, whose family got their chicks from a neighbor with a surplus, at the urging of her daughter. "As far as just completely starting off doing it because it's environmentally a good thing ... I don't know anybody who started off that way."

"I'm a fan of the environment," but the taste of the eggs played a bigger role in his family's decision to raise chickens, said Atherton resident Bruce Deal (they have eight hens). "If the kids hadn't have thought of this idea, I can guarantee you we wouldn't have chickens."

Woodside resident Amy Freidenrich's daughter convinced the family to get chickens after studying them at Woodside Elementary School. Ms. Freidenrich's husband didn't want anything to do with the chickens, at first.

Now, "I'll find him sitting in the living room with a glass of wine, watching the chickens in the yard like it's TV," she said.


'Perfect convergence'
Leslie Ballinger, the longtime Woodside chicken raiser, said she often brings the strange-shaped, odd-colored, bright-yolked eggs her hens produce as gifts when she visits friends in Atherton or Menlo Park, where they're seen as something of a novelty.

But it wasn't too long ago when backyard chickens were about as common as backyard tomatoes. As Ms. Ballinger points out, it's not a coincidence that "scratching out a living," "hen-pecked," and "pecking order" are some of our most common idioms.

In a recent article in The New Yorker, Susan Orlean traces the disappearing act of chickens from backyards to the newfound availability of supermarket eggs in the 1950s, along with a growing "enchantment with a hygienic, suburbanized life."

"Can you picture the ambitious young couples of Westchester in the fifties wanting chickens pecking around the flagstone patio and the swing set?" she asks. Now, "chickens seem to be a perfect convergence of the economic, environmental, gastronomic, and emotional matters of the moment."

As people in local towns get caught up in chicken fever, they have begun to forge a rich new relationship with an animal we have long known solely through the identically sized white eggs and saran-covered cuts of meat that line supermarket aisles.

Often, the first things people notice when they get their own chickens are the eggs themselves: oddly shaped, varying widely in size, with a rich, foreign flavor.

"We give them away to friends, and they love them," Mr. Deal said. "They're super-tasty. It's not like I was some kind of egg connoisseur before, but once you get used to the taste of fresh eggs, you definitely appreciate it."

"You get spoiled," said Ladera resident Eric Ponteri, whose family has kept three chickens for several years. "Our older son won't eat an omelet if we don't have our own eggs, it's that noticeable."

For some families, chickens have become the centerpiece of the household ecological system. Everyone interviewed for this story learned quickly to feed their hens food scraps from the house.

"I go to friends' houses for lunch and take their compost back home," said Ms. Ballinger. "You almost get obsessive about not wasting stuff; I've packed food scraps in a suitcase and taken them on a plane before."

Chicken poop also makes for potent fertilizer. Ms. Costa and Mr. Johnston, the Menlo Park couple, simply move the coop around to different spots in the garden that need to be fertilized.


Unlikely pets
Hens may not be quite as affectionate as dogs or cats, but many of the people we spoke to were surprised at how attached they've grown to them.

"They're not very smart animals, but they're kind of friendly, and enthusiastic," Mr. Deal said. "They waddle to the fence, they start clucking -- it's kind of like having a dog. ... It's not that they're really great companions, but it's like, 'Oh, someone's happy to see me in the mornings,'" he said with a laugh.

Ms. York's two hens come when she calls them by name. Ms. Costa and Mr. Johnston's 6-year-old daughter, Bianca, carries their hens around under her arm. After pleading for (and getting) a hamster, she has basically lost all interest in it, in favor of the chickens.

Many of the people we interviewed for this story started raising chickens because they thought it would provide a good educational opportunity for their kids. Ms. Costa said the chickens have become a major attraction for Bianca's friends, and sometimes for their parents. Julie Figliozzi's kids raise their own chickens in their Menlo Park backyard, and recently hosted a class on backyard chickens, as part of the San Carlos 4-H club.

But don't get too attached, Ms. Ballinger warns. Her family named its first batch of hens, but stopped after they started getting eaten by predators and occasionally dying of disease. There was one particularly horrific incident involving a possum; three of her hens froze in a cold snap last winter. Early on she took one hen to the vet to be put down, but said she isn't inclined to do it again.

Still, there's "always one in particular that I get quite fond of," she said. "She'll come running to me, let me pet and hold her. And that actually is an amazing little bond there, it's kind of funny."

She also finds herself taking an unusual kind of comfort in the flock after traumatic events.

"I went out there on 9/11," she said. "Everyone was so shocked. And going up to see them, sitting down and petting the chickens, was really therapeutic. I do the same thing if there's a death in the family. ... It's very relaxing, I think it's spiritually good for you."

While the people we spoke to are happy to harvest eggs from their hens, the prospect of putting them on a dinner plate was a little tougher to swallow.

"I'm not a vegetarian, but the idea of raising chickens and then killing and eating them ... I couldn't do that," said Ms. Costa.

Ms. York of Woodside agreed. "If you had a bunch, and they were just out there, you didn't have names for them and they weren't pets..." she said, trailing off.

Mr. Ponteri's son Bixby, 13, stopped eating store-bought chicken meat after the family got chickens. "He became very aware of the life of the animal, and the process that animals go through" in the industrial food system, Mr. Ponteri said.

"The first time I served chicken, my oldest fingered it and said, 'This kind of reminds me of Rosetta,'" said Ms. Ballinger -- referring to the name of one of their hens. "It took a while to disassociate store-bought chickens from the ones they petted and loved."

"I'm not sure the kids would buy into that," Mr. Deal said. "We're avoiding that discussion for the time being ... I'm sure the meat's tasty..."

■ Raising chickens: A few tips.

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