City Farm invites aspiring urban farmers to meet local chicks -- and ducks

It wasn't long ago that a vacant, one-acre lot in Glassell Park was home to little more than weeds, black walnut trees and sumac. Now it's the home of five dozen chickens and a couple dozen ducks, all of which roam the open land and lay eggs on the City Farm, which bills itself as "a little bit of country in Glassell Park."

This Sunday, the City Farm is welcoming visitors to its hillside perch to show how it's managed to keep its flock not only alive but thriving.

"We definitely had some speed bumps," said Reies Flores, who runs the City Farm with his wife and sells his truly free-range eggs for $5 per dozen.

Flores, 33, has been raising chickens since 2005, when he leased the land from a neighbor and purchased 25 chicks from a hatchery. All but one of those chicks were eaten by a coyote who "literally broke down the back fence and came in and ate them all," Flores said.

With one depressed chicken left, Flores purchased half a dozen more from a local pet shop. Then the original surviving chicken was picked off by a raccoon.   

Slowly Reies learned how to keep his flock safe, which he does through a combination of fencing and corraling his birds into a predator-proof coop each night. He's hoping through his open house that aspiring chicken farmers can learn from his mistakes.

"Every once in a while, we'll get a bird nabbed," said Reies, a substitute high school teacher who also works as an urban agriculture consultant. "But it's 1,000 times better than when we first started."

What: City Farm open house

Where: City Farm, east end of Loma Lada Drive, Los Angeles 90065

When: Sunday, May 1, 10 a.m.-noon

Cost: Free

Info: (323) 919-6518 or thecityfarm@hotmail.com

 -- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Free-range chickens scratching on a Mt. Washington hillside. Credit: Reies Flores

Comments

[krvonl]

$5 per dozen eggs is pretty expensive.

[Angel]

I would rather support an independent vendor any day over a super market chain. $5 is a small amount to support a good cause. So awesome and proud that this is going on in my community!!

[Elizabeth]

I think it is amazing and a great eyeopener for us. This is happening in the city I grew up in. $5 seems a small price for fresh eggs, whose chickens are cared for by a family. How is a small farm suppose to compete with suppliers for feed? After all, you are what you eat.

[Bee Gomez]

He's an consultant? Who would hire this guy--he's lost every chicken he bought! All he did was replace them.

[Monica]

$5 is a deal for getting free range eggs that were laid that very same day, right in our neighborhood. We are very pleased with the eggs we get from the City Farm and we think the Flores family is great!

[roodyRed]

Part of the reason we have lost jobs to overseas manufacturing is because we won't pay a little more for local fare. But in buying cheap chinese crap at Walmart, we often have to replace it anyway at least once, if not more. I have vowed to buy locally as much as possible, pay more and reap the benefits of quality and community.

[Marcos El Malo]

They sell Chinese eggs at Walmart now?

If you can afford to pay $5 for fresh eggs and don't want the hassle of keeping your own chickens, go for it. It's not so much buying local products and supporting local businesses (although those are good things) as it is eating as healthily as one can afford. The alternative for those of us with more time than money is to keep our own chickens. Unless you insist on "free range", keeping a few chickens securely in a small yard or on the roof is not difficult.