Chickens Threaten to Divide Community

The month-old dispute that has turned neighbor against neighbor in Brooklyn has spawned petitions, door-to-door campaigns and reams of fliers. There have been shouting matches, and even an intervention from a city councilman.

Ahhalia Smith spoke Sunday at a long and heated meeting in Park Slope, Brooklyn, over a community garden’s decision to bring in chickens. And it all started with eight clucking hens. Ten days ago (11 Oct.), members of the Warren-St. Marks Community Garden in Park Slope brought the hens to their temporary home: a wood-and-metal coop, nestled into one side of the garden, that members began building in late September. Although the garden members say they handed out fliers announcing their plans to residents on nearby blocks, many have complained that the garden made its decision without consulting anyone. Since then, a somewhat atypical not-in-my-backyard battle has emerged over the chickens.

The opponents — many of them residents long entrenched in the neighborhood — have pilloried the garden as an “exclusive club” that has trampled on the community’s concerns. The dispute has also prompted some who live near the garden, which has coexisted peacefully with the surrounding blocks since its inception in the 1980s, to re-evaluate how a community garden ought to balance gardening with its community. “There is a pattern here of being untruthful, not really reaching out to the neighbors, not being community-spirited; there is a history of being exclusive,” said Ahhalia Smith, the most prominent of those opposed to the chickens.

Ms. Smith and members of her family dominated a rancorous and sometimes profane meeting on Sunday over the chickens’ future. It was frequently conducted at top volume, prompted much muttering and head-shaking on the sidelines, and featured eloquent speeches about the meaning of community alongside detailed discussions of rat history, coop wiring and composting. (A city rat consultant, whom garden members had invited to inspect the garden, was also on hand to proclaim the chickens rat-free.) Supporters say the chickens, which normally live on Governors Island but winter in various foster homes around the city, have attracted far more visitors than normal, and that they help fulfill the garden’s environmental mission by eating scraps and contributing to the compost pile.

The anti-chicken faction, which has gathered about 160 signatures on a petition protesting the hens, charged that they would bring stink, vermin, flies, lead poisoning and possibly even avian flu into the neighborhood. Garden members say the outcry has taken them by surprise, especially since six Governors Island chickens spent last winter in a private yard on the same block without anyone complaining. They say they tried to pre-empt concerns about rats and noise by building the coop, which is supposed to be rat-proof, next to an empty lot and by consulting chicken experts. But they acknowledge that they should have told their neighbors sooner, and they say they hope the chicken squabble will encourage more open relations between neighborhood and garden in the future. “Community gardening is really just as much about the community as the gardening, and chickens can sometimes point out ways in which that’s the case,” said Siena Chrisman, a garden member. “If people on the block are not feeling like it’s an open space, that’s an issue.”

The people on the block were not shy about sharing their opinions Sunday afternoon, often shouting over one another despite the efforts of the moderator, Lisa Bloodgood, a community liaison from City Councilman Stephen Levin’s office, to keep peace. The chicken farmer whom garden members had invited to speak was silenced by several scolding, finger-wagging women, saying in unison: “You don’t know this neighborhood. Shame on you!”

Still, the opponents’ efforts may come to nothing. Because it is on privately owned land, the garden has a legal right to keep the chickens until April when they will return to Governors Island, according to Mr. Levin’s office. By meeting’s end, however, most attendees appeared to agree that they wanted to honor the spirit, rather than the letter, of the deed to the land, which stipulates that the garden is privately owned but for public use. Garden members said that, because of the community outcry, they would hold a vote on the chickens’ fate and would invite residents to join the garden so they could participate. That seemed to defuse the tension, at least for the afternoon. “I want to get along with my neighbors,” said Ibon Muhammad, who has lived on Warren Street since 1980. “I don’t want a chicken to get between me and my neighbor.”

NY Times

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