As Jonathan Proctor sips his afternoon tea, he watches a handful of chickens wander around making tsk-tsk sounds like a flock of old gossips. The scene is a familiar one at innumerable small farms, but Proctor isn't waiting for grain price information or adjusting his John Deere cap--he's in the heart of a St. Paul neighborhood, taking a break from paperwork.

"It's my little taste of country life," he says, with a smile. "I have an illusion of being on the prairie, and it's the best stress reliever I know."

Proctor got the animals two years ago, after telling his wife that it was either chickens or a sports car for his 50th birthday. After initially rolling her eyes, she discovered that the birds could eat food scraps, bring together the neighbors, provide fertilizer for the garden, and give their 9-year-old an outdoor activity, all for a fairly low amount of maintenance.

In becoming flock-keepers, the Proctors have joined a growing cohort of urbanites around the country who are finding their inner farmer and discovering the charms of the chicken.

Coop Control

To keep the chickens cozy for the winter and to minimize noise, Proctor converted part of the family garage to a coop. As he points out the space's details--a floor with just the right amount of sawdust, a slanted shelf under the roosting bar, a cozy egg-laying space--he glances at his "girls" with obvious affection. "They're like little church ladies, always fussing and complaining," he says. "They're amusing to watch, and they bring so many benefits for so little work."

Although he feels too attached to them to contemplate a chicken dinner arising from the coop, Proctor notes that the eggs are enthusiastically eaten often, and that they taste far better than those from the store.

Theresa Rooney, a chicken owner in Minneapolis, also believes that the eggs from her flock are vastly superior, especially because the taste can change according to their diet. For example, if the chickens are fed garlic or onion in their kitchen scraps, the eggs will have that flavor. That might be good for an omelet, but not exactly ideal if she's baking a cake.

Rooney began raising chickens almost three years ago, and bought an old playhouse on Craigslist to use as a coop. She's divided her yard in half, and the chickens roam freely through shrubs and trees, leading neighbors to call her "the chicken lady," she says, with a laugh. "They've been far more fun than I thought they'd be, they're such characters," she says. "I feel like having them helps me to think more sustainably, and they even take care of bugs."

The experience can be educational as well, adds Nikki Gibbs, a chicken owner in West St. Paul. She got chickens more than two years ago, when her young daughters asked for a new puppy: "I said no, and that we could only get a pet if it lived outside. They thought about it and came up with chickens, and it's been a great experience for all of us."

Her  coop is along a stretch of yard fence, and Gibbs runs heat lamps in the winter to keep the half-dozen birds cozy. She used to think she didn't like eggs, but now she's become a huge fan, she says: "The color, the texture, the flavor of these eggs are so different than what I've had before, it's almost like they're not the same food."

Bullish on Chickens

The urban chicken movement is booming, and the Twin Cities is no exception, as seen by the formidable growth in the number of permits. For 2010, St. Paul handed out 71 chicken permits, and Minneapolis gave out 182 permits. By comparison, in 2001, there were only 26 chicken permits in Minneapolis.

In both cities, a homeowner needs to get the permission of 80 percent of neighbors within a certain distance of where the flock will be kept--150 feet for St. Paul, and 100 feet for Minneapolis. According to Minneapolis Animal Care & Control, a resident can have as many chickens as their neighbors allow.

Although the urban chicken movement is likely to keep gaining momentum, there's a dark side to the back-to-roots movement too, believes Mary Britton Clouse, who runs Chicken Run Rescue, an organization that finds homes for unwanted poultry. One major issue is the prevalence of roosters, she notes.

When chicks arrive, they're usually female, but numerous males make it into the mix as well. When a flock owner discovers that there's a rooster on site, usually at about four months, they can either go back around to neighbors and plead for more signatures if they're in Minneapolis, or simply find another home for it outside of St. Paul, where roosters aren't allowed.

Clouse notes that sometimes people simply change their minds about chicken ownership. In the past 18 months, she's had nearly 500 requests to place birds with adopters willing to take them.

The Cluck Goes On

Despite the larger challenges that come with more chicken ownership, it's likely that more people in the Metro will tap into their farmer instincts.

As Proctor and his fellow flock keepers demonstrate, the method of tending chickens might vary from person to person, but the motivations tend to be the same: fresher eggs, more connection to the land, and a sense of peacefulness about creating a mini-farm in the city.

"I think it all ties into the growing interest in local food and sustainability," says Audrey Matson, owner of Egg/Plant, an urban farm supply store in St. Paul. She started the store last spring when she grew tired of driving to far-flung feed stores to feed her own small flock. Now, the store is as much a community center--with classes on chickens and other topics--as it is a supply station.

"People are more interested in growing their own food, and that's why the past few years have seen such a rise in seed sales and canning supplies," she says. "Chickens are part of that, especially as concerns about food safety are in the news more often."

Then, too, there's the nostalgia element, she notes. People are keen to live as their grandparents, or even their great-grandparents might have done, creating sustainable systems where nothing goes to waste. Vegetables grown in the garden feed the chickens, and they provide the fertilizer for the garden. It's a closed-loop system that's compelling, and as many urban farmers have discovered, it's surprisingly easy once someone gets the hang of it.

Every year, chicken owners in both cities put on The Parade of Coops, and Matson notes that it seems to be getting more popular every year, and inspire many visitors into joining the flock-tending trend. "Our yards can be part of this great sustainable system," she says. "The more people who see their neighbors implementing something like that, the more they want to try it themselves."

Elizabeth Millard's most recent article for The Line was a first-person account of the phenomenon of coworking (August 3).


Photos, top to bottom:

Chicken-focused signage in Theresa Rooney's coop.

Rooney with one of her charges

A formal portrait of April, one of Jonathan Proctor's hens

Proctor with Stella

A hen's-eye-view of Proctor's coop

All photos by Bill Kelley