On a sunny Sunday morning, peculiar peeping sounds emanate from the garage at the Towson home of Homer Walden and his wife, Dru Peters. Walden opens the door and proudly inspects one hundred 2-week-old chicks hopping in a bin of sawdust. The chicks have come here by mail from Webster City, Iowa. Their next—and last—trip will take them to live on a pristine five-acre pasture in the Greenspring Valley where a generous landowner lets Walden experiment with his novel "portable pens," also known as "chicken tractors." In their state-of-the-art poultry pens, they'll get their first taste of grass and bugs as part of Walden's and Peters' fledgling organic-poultry business called Sunnyside Farm.

Walden, a cabinet-maker, loves to design, build, and grow things. He even built a cold frame (a miniature greenhouse) against the sunny side of his house so his family can brush snow off the glass and eat lettuce year-round. Peters works for Prentice Hall as a publisher's representative and has a keen interest in the biology of their endeavor, or as she puts it, the "interaction between the chicken and the ground."

Arriving at the farm with his newest batch of chicks, Walden drives to a field where fourteen shallow boxes dot the landscape. Immense trees block the noise from the nearby beltway, and swallows swoop overhead. He empties the chicks into their new pens and happy pecking begins.

"They love grass," says Walden, who also feeds them corn, soybeans, and kelp.

Walden's pens are eight feet by ten feet, with a partial roof to shade the chickens from sun and rain. The pens have no bottoms so the chicks can easily eat grass and bugs. Wheels are mounted on two sides so that Walden and Peters (or their son and daughter) can regularly pull each pen to a fresh plot of grass as the chicks walk along.

Walden designed and built this clever vehicle for his chickens and turkeys so they have a constant supply of fresh grass to eat while scratching their manure into the ground to naturally fertilize the land. (Walden estimates his chickens and turkeys drop thirty tons of manure on the field from April to November, resulting in luxuriant green patches of fertilized grass.) Compared to other portable pens, Walden's chicken tractors are larger, more sleekly designed, and easier to move, but the most significant difference between Walden and other farmers who employ this method is that he moves his pens more often (twice daily) to prevent any bacteria or other pathogens from contaminating the birds.

"We think we're a couple of steps above organic," he says.

Champions of small-scale organic-poultry farming have been battling large poultry businesses in recent years to make sure the definition of organic includes "outdoor access." In 2002, the National Organic Standards Board, which advises the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, recommended that "organically managed poultry must have access to outdoors" and that bare surfaces "other than soil" do not meet organic standards. In an article that same year, entitled "Organic Still Means Humane," the Humane Society of the United States reported that large-scale poultry producers unsuccess-fully lobbied the board to label their poultry "organic" when the birds are kept in "factory-style confinement."

Walden and Peters have been experimenting with their brand of responsible poultry farming for three years now. They sell fifty chickens and fifteen dozen eggs a week out of their garage. This year they are also raising fifty turkeys. 

In the pens, the birds are segregated by type. There is a group of Rhode Island Reds, handsome rusty-brown chickens. In another pen are Araucana Americana, a black, brown and tan chicken with green legs, which lays green, blue, and purple eggs. The noisiest birds are the turkeys. They are a bronze-breasted heirloom type.

Though Walden and Peters are optimistic about their business's future, it has not been without setbacks. In early July they lost three hundred chickens that drowned during heavy rains that flooded the field. They lost nearly one hundred turkey chicks at the post office last year when well-meaning postal workers put them near an air conditioner, not knowing the chill would kill them. They have also lost more than one hundred chickens to foxes that come around the pens "looking over the menu," says Walden. He has since built a "fox apron" of wood and metal tubing to deter animals from digging under the pens to get to the birds.

The life of the chickens that survive is brief. In eight weeks they will be ready for slaughter. Walden uses a technique that he believes is the most humane: holding each chicken upside down to quiet it, he puts a "cone" around the neck before cutting two arteries so it will bleed quickly. He acknowledges, "I'm taking a life."

The result of Walden's and Peters' demanding work is a chicken that tastes unmistakably fresh. "You open a bag after it's been frozen and it smells of fresh grass," says Peters. Their eggs are especially tender and make mass-produced eggs literally pale in comparison. (A taste test by this reporter revealed that a scrambled Sunnyside Farm egg had a fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth texture, a robust flavor, and a brilliant orange coloring, while a mass-produced egg was dull in both color and flavor, with a slimy texture.) Walden and Peters also say their eggs make a fantastic crème brulee, which relies heavily on egg yolks.

The "bigger picture" of their poultry experiment, they say, is to be environmentally sensitive and to "contribute to the overall health of consumers," says Peters. Walden dreams of one day convincing Eastern Shore sod farmers to let him build larger versions of his "chicken tractors" on their sod farms, which would eliminate their need for chemical fertilizers.

"We don't want to be land owners, we want to be land users," Walden says. "We want to be good stewards."

—Joan Jacobson is a regular contributor and contributing editor for Urbanite. She also spent twenty-eight years reporting for Baltimore's Sun and Evening Sun.


To inquire about ordering eggs year-round, turkey for Thanksgiving, or chicken starting next June, call 410-823-0170 or e-mail Dru Peters at Drupeters@yahoo.com.



Web Bonus:

Joan Jacobson's Vegetable Timbale with Organic Eggs:

Use oil spray to coat a high-sided baking dish (such as a soufflé dish) with a four-cup capacity. You can also use two small soufflé dishes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Ingredients:

1 – 2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 cups of kale, spinach or other green, washed and finely chopped
1 Tablespoon fresh herbs, such as basil, parsley or rosemary
_ teaspoon salt, fresh ground pepper
4 – 5 organic eggs
_ cup parmesan cheese
_ cup milk
1 cup very thinly sliced zucchini or yellow squash
1 tomato finely sliced, or 1 cup cherry tomatoes cut in half.

In a saucepan sauté onions and garlic in olive oil until soft, about five minutes.
Add greens and cover until wilted, 2-3 minutes
Add herbs, salt and pepper.

Line bottom of baking dish with the green mixture
Wisk eggs, milk and _ cup of cheese and pour over the green mixture
Layer squash slices over eggs, then layer tomatoes, and remaining cheese.

Bake for 30-45 minutes, or until a knife comes out the middle almost clean.
Let sit for 10 minutes before serving.
This dish also reheats in the microwave quite well.