The Story of the Eggery and Tanama Gardens
The Eggery was established by Alex Haung and began as an effort to transform a blighted empty lot attracting unsavory visitors, into a little patch of urban agriculture that gave back to the community.
“Chicken scratching replaced drug deals.”
Weeks of work went into scrubbing the site of trash and debris left from years of vacancy, neglect, and misuse. Where there had once been drug deals and abandoned vehicles, there was now a small flock of hens, quietly scratching among wood chips in the shade.
The new urban ag space now provides a place for neighborhood families, delighted by the transformation to their community, to bring their children to feed the chickens table scraps and watch the birds. The space represents a unique opportunity for children, growing up in an otherwise urban environment, to learn first hand about food systems and the origins of what we eat.
Since that first flock of hens, the site has grown and now produces as many as 30 eggs a day. Compost and fertilizer from the Eggery are delivered to the adjacent Tanama Community Garden to be worked into the soil. The space grows pounds of vegetables each year, all of which, like the eggs, go directly back into the community for free.
In the future, we hope to expand our up-cycling capabilities, working to integrate additional high quality waste streams and increasing our recycling and composting capacity. In order to do that we need more chickens which increases egg production while the subsequent increase in fertilizer boosts food yields feed more people.
Want to learn more? Get in touch!