packyderms_wife
Neither here nor there.
By Todd Burras
FEATURE
AMES RESIDENTS GET BACK TO THE LAND
Urban
FARMING
www.iowalivingmagazines.com/ames MAY | 2015 Ames Living 5
When it comes to urban farming,
there are no comprehensive
websites available replete with
maps and bar graphs to quantify how many
Ames residents are growing food, raising
chickens or keeping bees. But make no
mistake. There are a lot of people who are
engaged in some sort of an urban farming
enterprise.
If you look closely while driving through
a neighborhood, chances are you will see a
raised bed, a traditional garden plot or even
a few large containers filled with burgeoning
green vegetables. Look or listen a little more
closely, and you might hear the soft cluck of a
hen or the buzzing of a colony of honeybees.
In the accompanying vignettes on urban
farming, five Ames residents offer a look at
what they grow and raise, why they grow
and raise it, and what they perceive are the
benefits of what they’re doing.
While the stories don’t delve into the
dos and don’ts and pros and cons of various
agricultural practices or the innumerable
challenges posed by growing food, raising
chickens or keeping bees, they’re intended
to simply offer a glimpse of what’s going on
in some of our neighbors’ backyards. Perhaps
they’ll even offer a little nudge and inspiration
to try it yourself.
As gardeners like to say, “Food never
tastes so good as when it’s fresh.”
Take a chicken break
When Deb Cooper’s eyes need a break from
staring at a computer monitor, and when her
mind needs a break from the stresses of her
career, she gets up from the desk in her home
office, walks into her backyard, pulls up her
chair and sits down next to her chickens.
Cooper, who works as a research associate
and cultural landscape historian in the
landscape architecture department of Iowa
State University’s College of Design, is one
of a seemingly growing number of Ames residents
who raise a small flock of chickens in
their yards.
“I love the fact that I can step away from
the computer and go outdoors to see the
hens, to gather some fresh eggs or even to
scoop a little chicken poop,” Cooper says. “It
is a nice way to shift gears. I love to sit and
listen to the hens talk among themselves as
they scratch and peck. A lot of frustration has
drained away while sitting in that chair.”
Even when she’s working, Cooper keeps
an eye on “her girls.”
“I located the coop/run in a northeast
corner of the garden so that I can see it from
the upstairs window where I work at my
drafting table,” she says. “There is a 20-20-20
rule about a change of view away from the
computer screen to help alleviate tired eyes
— 20 seconds of chicken watching at (more
than) 20 feet every 20 minutes.”
Cooper has grown so attached to the
four hens — all named after old farm wives
of her past, including Ida, a barred Plymouth
Rock; Olive, a black Australorp; Cora, a
buff Orpington; and Nettie, a silver-laced
Wyandotte — that in the coop and run she
built she’s even installed video cameras.
“I can call them up on my iPad whenever
I want to see what they’re up to,” she says,
laughing.
Cooper has a history of raising poultry.
She grew up on an 80-acre farm in Cerro
Gordo County where the family of six always
had a large garden and also raised dozens of
broilers to eat. When she and her husband,
Paul, moved to their current home in Ames,
Cooper took her love of farm life and landscaping
and dug in.
“I have a very large backyard and have
enjoyed transforming it into a beautiful space.
But after 20-some years, all the projects were
done,” she says. “And with our kids grown,
the garden seemed flat. I needed a little
something — something to kick it up a notch.
When my neighbor Elizabeth Nelson mentioned
her chickens, I decided chickens would
add another dimension to the garden, and
hoop-dee-doo, it became Chicken World.”
Besides the chickens, Cooper’s backyard
includes an old apple tree, transplanted grape
vines, an asparagus bed and a rhubarb patch.
The vegetable garden typically includes tomatoes,
cucumbers, green beans, Christmas
beans, spring peas, peppers, sweet potatoes,
Finnish blue potatoes (grown in a garbage
can), garlic, green onions, basil and cilantro,
and last year she planted blueberries.
Still, it’s the four hens that are the stars of
Cooper’s backyard.
“Get chickens,” she says with a smile and
a sparkle in her eyes. “They’ll change your
life.”
Rooted in agriculture
Like Cooper, Helen Gunderson has deep
roots in agriculture having grown up on a
farm in Pocahontas County. In the 1970s, she
lived in Fargo, North Dakota, where she had
a large garden, but after moving and living in
California for more than a decade she came
back to Iowa in 1993 and settled into an
apartment in Gilbert where she had a garden
in pots and started to learn about grafting
apple trees. In 2006 Gunderson found a home
in Ames and immediately planted asparagus
and raspberry patches.
Since then, Gunderson’s yard has grown
into an urban farm that includes a beautiful
mosaic of fruit, flower and vegetable gardens.
There’s also a flock of chickens. Her first five
chickens arrived in the spring of 2009, and
since then the flock has grown in size.
What also has evolved is their housing
accommodations. While Gunderson’s yard
includes a series of fences that allows the
chickens to range freely, she’s also come up
with a way to shelter them from weather and
predators during all seasons of the year. Since
she doesn’t own a car and gets around town
primarily by walking or biking, Gunderson had
a creative idea of how to devote a portion of
the garage to her chickens.
“For me, I wanted a run that would be
functional and aesthetically pleasing, and, with
only rudimentary building skills, I decided to
pay my contractor to build my (outdoor)
chicken hotel for spring through fall use and
make a chicken stall in the garage with a wonderful
fenced-in run alongside the garage for
winter use,” she says. “But that has cost me a
pretty penny.”
And worth every cent, she adds.
“It was worth it all, not only in awesome
eggs but in the companionship, novelty and
artful presence of the colorful birds,” she
says. “(Raising chickens is) a great past-time
to observe and tend to them. Also, getting
chickens is not something just for novelty and
to tack onto one’s lifestyle, but I think one has
to think about his or her lifestyle and how it
needs to adapt to have more ‘family members’
— albeit feathered ones — around.”
Part of the family
Chickens are a bit like family members or at
least pets to Kristine Wong, her veterinarian
husband, David, and their three girls, Olivia,
Pip and Telly. The family has three hens — a
barred Plymouth Rock, a Rhode Island red
and Wong’s favorite hen, “Henny,” a buff
Orpington.
“They come running to me when I yell,
‘Girls,’ and they love to be picked up and petted,”
Wong says. “We plan on getting three
more hens this summer because two to three
eggs a day doesn’t cut it in this house.”
Unlike Cooper and Gunderson, Wong’s
parents didn’t garden, but she had family
members and relatives who did near Grand
Rapids, Michigan, where she grew up.
“My mother’s side of the family owned/
operated a large dairy farm in Caledonia,
Michigan, and this was the beginning of my
love for the land,” she says. “I grew up in the
suburbs and would spend my summers at the
farm working hard and loving the smells, the
dirt and the feeling of exhaustion when you
were done with the day. I never got enough
time visiting them, and as I grew older I would
seek out other outlets for helping on farms,
albeit cleaning horse stalls or helping during
hay season.”
In addition to the chickens, Wong has a
large garden. A few years ago, at the urging of
Olivia, she took up beekeeping.
“When she was very young, she would let
bees land on her hand and come and show
me. I was terrified,” Wong says. “I never liked
anything that buzzed around my head and had
the potential to sting me.”
But Olivia started learning about bees
from a family friend who would give the
Wongs honey.
“So, for about three years, she kept asking
for bees,” Wong says. “I told her she
had to learn about them first, and I would
put very unattainable goals in front of her,
so I thought. She met all my demands: book
reports, presentations, working with Martha
Reinertson-Buttrick, etc., so, I had to meet
hers. I took the Iowa Honey Producers
Association Beekeeping class that was offered
at Des Moines Area Community College
in the winter of 2010. It was fantastic. That
spring I ordered two packages of bees and
placed them in our new hives. We were in
love.”
While fresh eggs, honey and garden produce
are all tasty and delicious, Wong has no
illusions that her diverse garden arrangement
is much more than a hobby that only helps
keep the family fed.
“We do this just for fun; by no means am
I feeding my family off our garden every day,”
she says. “But it does cut down on my produce
purchases in the summer and fall. I can
enough tomatoes to make it through most of
the winter.”
The benefits of gardening aren’t measured
only in quart jars full of tomatoes and pint jars
filled with honey, either. They’re also found
in “just being outside and being in tune to
the seasons, the weather, birth and death.”
“Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the
news or by the busyness of life, I can
always escape to my garden and the chickens
will come visit along with the cat and my
Labradors,” Wong says. “I don’t need to fix
any problems for them; we just exist together
in the natural rhythm of life and enjoy the
moment God has given us. It’s truly the best
medicine.”
The joy of chickens
Chickens have proven to be good medicine
for Laurel Scott and her husband, Paul Von
Tersch, as well.
“Our girls are super adorable and bring
so much joy to our lives every day,” says Von
Tersch, a social worker. “If we are ever feeling
down, all we need to do is spend a few
minutes with the chickens.”
But their five chickens are more than
good companions that provide a healthy
source of breakfast protein. They also play an
important role in the couple’s organic gardening
operation by consuming a lot of pests.
“By growing our food without pesticides,
we reduce our exposure to potentially harmful
chemicals, plus we think the food tastes
better when it’s so fresh,” Von Tersch says.
“Also, the eggs are healthier because our
chickens get to forage in the yard eating
worms, grubs and other delicious insects.”
The chickens share the relatively small
yard with tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic,
peas, lettuce, kale, spinach, eggplant, watermelon,
herbs, squash, cucumber, carrots,
blueberries and strawberries.
“Gardening with my mom gave me a good
understanding of what went into gardening,”
Scott says. “The raising chickens part we had
to figure out on our own as we went along.”
And raising chickens has its challenges.
“Most of our challenges are unrelated to
raising them in town,” Von Tersch says. “But
some common obstacles include predators
like hawks, raccoons and neighborhood dogs,
pesky chipmunks that steal our chicken feed,
the initial investment cost and our general
lack of knowledge on chicken health care.”
To be a good steward of the flock, Von
Tersch warns that raising urban chickens
might not be for everyone.
“Chickens are adorable but might need
more attention than some people can give,”
he says. “We recommend only getting chickens
if you are really serious about it and committed
to keeping them for life.”
A satisfying lifestyle
It’s not surprising that Jen Strohm, her husband,
Jake, and two sons, Zak and Quentin,
do a lot of gardening. Strohm grew up in
Perry, and nearly everyone, including her parents,
had a garden and was growing at least
some of their own food.
But raising chickens, that was Quentin’s
idea.
“He has always been concerned with
recycling, reducing our impact, organic methods,
etc.,” Strohm says. “This has been going
on since he was at least as young as 3. He
wanted fresh eggs and to raise his own chickens.”
So three years ago, the Strohms added six
chickens to their “urban farm,” which includes
dwarf apple trees, cherry trees, black raspberry
bushes and a garden that typically supplies
the family with green beans, snap peas, tomatoes,
bell peppers, jalapenos, banana peppers,
zucchini, cucumbers and pie pumpkins.
“But we have tried many other things,
and vary it some,” Strohm says. “Some of the
other things are broccoli, Brussels sprouts,
lettuce, carrots, spinach, herbs, strawberries,
asparagus and rhubarb.”
Having a large garden and raising chickens
may sound a bit romantic to some, but
it requires money, hard work, dedication,
perseverance and sometimes skills in diplomacy.
“While we keep our coop relatively clean
and odor free, the birds do sometimes get
quite noisy, which can create a little bit of
friction in a neighborhood,” Strohm says.
“Also, when starting out, it is quite easy to
accidentally get a rooster in the bunch, whose
crowing at first crack of dawn is not appreciated.”
Then there’s the manure the chickens
create, which, in some instances Strohm says,
can pose a challenge in finding ways of either
composting or disposing of it.
Still, it’s a lifestyle she’s not ready to give
up.
“I believe raising our own food, both in
the garden and in the chickens, helps prepare
our sons for their futures in many ways,”
Strohm says. “They understand that food is
not from the grocery store, and it doesn’t
magically appear there. Meat comes from live
animals, and butchering them is part of the
process.
“It has also increased my children’s willingness
to eat vegetables and try new things.
We have spent many hours working side by
side in the garden, giving us time to talk and to
grow together. My children have developed a
concern for our environment and for keeping
it clean and minimizing our impact on it
so that future generations can also enjoy the
same things we do.”
FEATURE
AMES RESIDENTS GET BACK TO THE LAND
Urban
FARMING
www.iowalivingmagazines.com/ames MAY | 2015 Ames Living 5
When it comes to urban farming,
there are no comprehensive
websites available replete with
maps and bar graphs to quantify how many
Ames residents are growing food, raising
chickens or keeping bees. But make no
mistake. There are a lot of people who are
engaged in some sort of an urban farming
enterprise.
If you look closely while driving through
a neighborhood, chances are you will see a
raised bed, a traditional garden plot or even
a few large containers filled with burgeoning
green vegetables. Look or listen a little more
closely, and you might hear the soft cluck of a
hen or the buzzing of a colony of honeybees.
In the accompanying vignettes on urban
farming, five Ames residents offer a look at
what they grow and raise, why they grow
and raise it, and what they perceive are the
benefits of what they’re doing.
While the stories don’t delve into the
dos and don’ts and pros and cons of various
agricultural practices or the innumerable
challenges posed by growing food, raising
chickens or keeping bees, they’re intended
to simply offer a glimpse of what’s going on
in some of our neighbors’ backyards. Perhaps
they’ll even offer a little nudge and inspiration
to try it yourself.
As gardeners like to say, “Food never
tastes so good as when it’s fresh.”
Take a chicken break
When Deb Cooper’s eyes need a break from
staring at a computer monitor, and when her
mind needs a break from the stresses of her
career, she gets up from the desk in her home
office, walks into her backyard, pulls up her
chair and sits down next to her chickens.
Cooper, who works as a research associate
and cultural landscape historian in the
landscape architecture department of Iowa
State University’s College of Design, is one
of a seemingly growing number of Ames residents
who raise a small flock of chickens in
their yards.
“I love the fact that I can step away from
the computer and go outdoors to see the
hens, to gather some fresh eggs or even to
scoop a little chicken poop,” Cooper says. “It
is a nice way to shift gears. I love to sit and
listen to the hens talk among themselves as
they scratch and peck. A lot of frustration has
drained away while sitting in that chair.”
Even when she’s working, Cooper keeps
an eye on “her girls.”
“I located the coop/run in a northeast
corner of the garden so that I can see it from
the upstairs window where I work at my
drafting table,” she says. “There is a 20-20-20
rule about a change of view away from the
computer screen to help alleviate tired eyes
— 20 seconds of chicken watching at (more
than) 20 feet every 20 minutes.”
Cooper has grown so attached to the
four hens — all named after old farm wives
of her past, including Ida, a barred Plymouth
Rock; Olive, a black Australorp; Cora, a
buff Orpington; and Nettie, a silver-laced
Wyandotte — that in the coop and run she
built she’s even installed video cameras.
“I can call them up on my iPad whenever
I want to see what they’re up to,” she says,
laughing.
Cooper has a history of raising poultry.
She grew up on an 80-acre farm in Cerro
Gordo County where the family of six always
had a large garden and also raised dozens of
broilers to eat. When she and her husband,
Paul, moved to their current home in Ames,
Cooper took her love of farm life and landscaping
and dug in.
“I have a very large backyard and have
enjoyed transforming it into a beautiful space.
But after 20-some years, all the projects were
done,” she says. “And with our kids grown,
the garden seemed flat. I needed a little
something — something to kick it up a notch.
When my neighbor Elizabeth Nelson mentioned
her chickens, I decided chickens would
add another dimension to the garden, and
hoop-dee-doo, it became Chicken World.”
Besides the chickens, Cooper’s backyard
includes an old apple tree, transplanted grape
vines, an asparagus bed and a rhubarb patch.
The vegetable garden typically includes tomatoes,
cucumbers, green beans, Christmas
beans, spring peas, peppers, sweet potatoes,
Finnish blue potatoes (grown in a garbage
can), garlic, green onions, basil and cilantro,
and last year she planted blueberries.
Still, it’s the four hens that are the stars of
Cooper’s backyard.
“Get chickens,” she says with a smile and
a sparkle in her eyes. “They’ll change your
life.”
Rooted in agriculture
Like Cooper, Helen Gunderson has deep
roots in agriculture having grown up on a
farm in Pocahontas County. In the 1970s, she
lived in Fargo, North Dakota, where she had
a large garden, but after moving and living in
California for more than a decade she came
back to Iowa in 1993 and settled into an
apartment in Gilbert where she had a garden
in pots and started to learn about grafting
apple trees. In 2006 Gunderson found a home
in Ames and immediately planted asparagus
and raspberry patches.
Since then, Gunderson’s yard has grown
into an urban farm that includes a beautiful
mosaic of fruit, flower and vegetable gardens.
There’s also a flock of chickens. Her first five
chickens arrived in the spring of 2009, and
since then the flock has grown in size.
What also has evolved is their housing
accommodations. While Gunderson’s yard
includes a series of fences that allows the
chickens to range freely, she’s also come up
with a way to shelter them from weather and
predators during all seasons of the year. Since
she doesn’t own a car and gets around town
primarily by walking or biking, Gunderson had
a creative idea of how to devote a portion of
the garage to her chickens.
“For me, I wanted a run that would be
functional and aesthetically pleasing, and, with
only rudimentary building skills, I decided to
pay my contractor to build my (outdoor)
chicken hotel for spring through fall use and
make a chicken stall in the garage with a wonderful
fenced-in run alongside the garage for
winter use,” she says. “But that has cost me a
pretty penny.”
And worth every cent, she adds.
“It was worth it all, not only in awesome
eggs but in the companionship, novelty and
artful presence of the colorful birds,” she
says. “(Raising chickens is) a great past-time
to observe and tend to them. Also, getting
chickens is not something just for novelty and
to tack onto one’s lifestyle, but I think one has
to think about his or her lifestyle and how it
needs to adapt to have more ‘family members’
— albeit feathered ones — around.”
Part of the family
Chickens are a bit like family members or at
least pets to Kristine Wong, her veterinarian
husband, David, and their three girls, Olivia,
Pip and Telly. The family has three hens — a
barred Plymouth Rock, a Rhode Island red
and Wong’s favorite hen, “Henny,” a buff
Orpington.
“They come running to me when I yell,
‘Girls,’ and they love to be picked up and petted,”
Wong says. “We plan on getting three
more hens this summer because two to three
eggs a day doesn’t cut it in this house.”
Unlike Cooper and Gunderson, Wong’s
parents didn’t garden, but she had family
members and relatives who did near Grand
Rapids, Michigan, where she grew up.
“My mother’s side of the family owned/
operated a large dairy farm in Caledonia,
Michigan, and this was the beginning of my
love for the land,” she says. “I grew up in the
suburbs and would spend my summers at the
farm working hard and loving the smells, the
dirt and the feeling of exhaustion when you
were done with the day. I never got enough
time visiting them, and as I grew older I would
seek out other outlets for helping on farms,
albeit cleaning horse stalls or helping during
hay season.”
In addition to the chickens, Wong has a
large garden. A few years ago, at the urging of
Olivia, she took up beekeeping.
“When she was very young, she would let
bees land on her hand and come and show
me. I was terrified,” Wong says. “I never liked
anything that buzzed around my head and had
the potential to sting me.”
But Olivia started learning about bees
from a family friend who would give the
Wongs honey.
“So, for about three years, she kept asking
for bees,” Wong says. “I told her she
had to learn about them first, and I would
put very unattainable goals in front of her,
so I thought. She met all my demands: book
reports, presentations, working with Martha
Reinertson-Buttrick, etc., so, I had to meet
hers. I took the Iowa Honey Producers
Association Beekeeping class that was offered
at Des Moines Area Community College
in the winter of 2010. It was fantastic. That
spring I ordered two packages of bees and
placed them in our new hives. We were in
love.”
While fresh eggs, honey and garden produce
are all tasty and delicious, Wong has no
illusions that her diverse garden arrangement
is much more than a hobby that only helps
keep the family fed.
“We do this just for fun; by no means am
I feeding my family off our garden every day,”
she says. “But it does cut down on my produce
purchases in the summer and fall. I can
enough tomatoes to make it through most of
the winter.”
The benefits of gardening aren’t measured
only in quart jars full of tomatoes and pint jars
filled with honey, either. They’re also found
in “just being outside and being in tune to
the seasons, the weather, birth and death.”
“Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the
news or by the busyness of life, I can
always escape to my garden and the chickens
will come visit along with the cat and my
Labradors,” Wong says. “I don’t need to fix
any problems for them; we just exist together
in the natural rhythm of life and enjoy the
moment God has given us. It’s truly the best
medicine.”
The joy of chickens
Chickens have proven to be good medicine
for Laurel Scott and her husband, Paul Von
Tersch, as well.
“Our girls are super adorable and bring
so much joy to our lives every day,” says Von
Tersch, a social worker. “If we are ever feeling
down, all we need to do is spend a few
minutes with the chickens.”
But their five chickens are more than
good companions that provide a healthy
source of breakfast protein. They also play an
important role in the couple’s organic gardening
operation by consuming a lot of pests.
“By growing our food without pesticides,
we reduce our exposure to potentially harmful
chemicals, plus we think the food tastes
better when it’s so fresh,” Von Tersch says.
“Also, the eggs are healthier because our
chickens get to forage in the yard eating
worms, grubs and other delicious insects.”
The chickens share the relatively small
yard with tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic,
peas, lettuce, kale, spinach, eggplant, watermelon,
herbs, squash, cucumber, carrots,
blueberries and strawberries.
“Gardening with my mom gave me a good
understanding of what went into gardening,”
Scott says. “The raising chickens part we had
to figure out on our own as we went along.”
And raising chickens has its challenges.
“Most of our challenges are unrelated to
raising them in town,” Von Tersch says. “But
some common obstacles include predators
like hawks, raccoons and neighborhood dogs,
pesky chipmunks that steal our chicken feed,
the initial investment cost and our general
lack of knowledge on chicken health care.”
To be a good steward of the flock, Von
Tersch warns that raising urban chickens
might not be for everyone.
“Chickens are adorable but might need
more attention than some people can give,”
he says. “We recommend only getting chickens
if you are really serious about it and committed
to keeping them for life.”
A satisfying lifestyle
It’s not surprising that Jen Strohm, her husband,
Jake, and two sons, Zak and Quentin,
do a lot of gardening. Strohm grew up in
Perry, and nearly everyone, including her parents,
had a garden and was growing at least
some of their own food.
But raising chickens, that was Quentin’s
idea.
“He has always been concerned with
recycling, reducing our impact, organic methods,
etc.,” Strohm says. “This has been going
on since he was at least as young as 3. He
wanted fresh eggs and to raise his own chickens.”
So three years ago, the Strohms added six
chickens to their “urban farm,” which includes
dwarf apple trees, cherry trees, black raspberry
bushes and a garden that typically supplies
the family with green beans, snap peas, tomatoes,
bell peppers, jalapenos, banana peppers,
zucchini, cucumbers and pie pumpkins.
“But we have tried many other things,
and vary it some,” Strohm says. “Some of the
other things are broccoli, Brussels sprouts,
lettuce, carrots, spinach, herbs, strawberries,
asparagus and rhubarb.”
Having a large garden and raising chickens
may sound a bit romantic to some, but
it requires money, hard work, dedication,
perseverance and sometimes skills in diplomacy.
“While we keep our coop relatively clean
and odor free, the birds do sometimes get
quite noisy, which can create a little bit of
friction in a neighborhood,” Strohm says.
“Also, when starting out, it is quite easy to
accidentally get a rooster in the bunch, whose
crowing at first crack of dawn is not appreciated.”
Then there’s the manure the chickens
create, which, in some instances Strohm says,
can pose a challenge in finding ways of either
composting or disposing of it.
Still, it’s a lifestyle she’s not ready to give
up.
“I believe raising our own food, both in
the garden and in the chickens, helps prepare
our sons for their futures in many ways,”
Strohm says. “They understand that food is
not from the grocery store, and it doesn’t
magically appear there. Meat comes from live
animals, and butchering them is part of the
process.
“It has also increased my children’s willingness
to eat vegetables and try new things.
We have spent many hours working side by
side in the garden, giving us time to talk and to
grow together. My children have developed a
concern for our environment and for keeping
it clean and minimizing our impact on it
so that future generations can also enjoy the
same things we do.”
