community gardens, cull chickens

What's really lacking for the backyard gardeners of our nearby town of Steubenville, Ohio, is soil. How to build it? It is a question that moved up in our minds when we were asked to serve as consultants for two acres of former railyard recently purchased by our local Urban Mission.

Having dealt with the same problem ourselves over many years, we did have some suggestions to make, mostly having to do with accumulating organic matter in windrows. One of our favorite methods of building soil where there is none has to do with chickens: quartered on long windrows of compostable materials, chickens can build a fertile garden bed as fast as anything we know. So, after determining that, yes, the Rhode Island Reds and Black Australorps DO out-lay the Wyandottes of whatever color, we sent the latter members of our home flock to become city birds. We expect great things from them.