Chicks in the Hood!

On Sunday, June 9, I participated in the 3rd Annual Chicks in the Hood tour of some of the city's backyard chicken coops. The tour was of the East End and North Side, which have the highest concentration of coops in the city. I recruited my parents, Christina and Ellis, to join me, and we decided to tackle the tour on bicycles. After picking up our maps at the Quiet Storm on Penn Avenue,we checked out some of the Highland Park spots, where we ended up seeing four coops.

I was somewhat familiar with the regulations pertaining to keeping chickens in the city (no roosters allowed!) before the tour, but was surprised to see the variety of the set-ups. Some chickens had permanent enclosures, while others were portable, so the birds could be moved to new grass to forage for grubs. Yard sizes ranged as well from a pretty small city plot to a sprawling expanse on the Allegheny riverfront.

Chicks in the Hood 2013

The common thread between them all was the affection owners had for their birds.The chickens had names and their owners talked eagerly about personality differences and quirks. All the chickens we saw were used for eggs, rather than meat, and even older birds which were no longer star layers, were allowed to roam around in peace.

This event has a lot to offer for varied audiences. It satisfies the curiosity of those who are totally unfamiliar with keeping urban chickens (and it doubles as a stellar garden tour!), or it can provide some practical options and answers for those looking to start their own backyard flock. For me, this event was an education in the practice of keeping backyard chickens in the city; you don't need a massive yard and you don't need fancy, ultra-expensive equipment. Seeing the chicks in person, raised by my Pittsburgh neighbors, made owning birds in the future seem not only highly rewarding but also more feasible than I'd thought.

Sorry you missed out? This year's tour benefited Just Harvest, so if you want to make a belated donation to us (always welcome!) you can do so here. And if you want to learn more about urban chicken farming, you don't have to wait 'til next year's tour. If you're on Facebook check out the Chicks in the Hood page – their ongoing posts are full of fun facts and humorous pictures, and they would be happy to help get you started! Or you can contact the folks at P4 who organized the tour.

-- Emily Schmidlapp, Fresh Access Coordinator (Learn more about our Fresh Access program.)

1 in 6 low-income children missing out on free summer meals

How is it that food stamp numbers continue to rise, yet only one in six low-income children participates in the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) to receive free meals throughout the summer?

According to a recent FRAC report, it is harder to reach our children in the summer months, and Congressional measures over the years have resulted in reducing the number of communities eligible to participate, eliminating start-up and expansion funding, and lowering reimbursement rates. These critical cuts decreased both the number of sponsors and Summer Food sites.

In 2008, only 10 states reached at least one quarter of their low-income children through the SFSP. And although PA has the 13^th highest participation in the program in 2008, we still only served 24.8 children through Summer Food out of every 100 children enrolled in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) during the school year.

“Not only are states with low Summer Nutrition participation rates failing to provide for their low-income children, they are missing out on the millions of dollars in federal funds that exist to provide healthy foods for these children.” (page 2) Pennsylvania could receive over $4.9 million if they serve 40 children in Summer Food to every 100 children enrolled in the NSLP.

Advocates must reach out to communities with low participation rates, and Congress must pass child nutrition reauthorization bills to make the SFSP more effective and restore the cuts previously made —now, when the need and numbers are at an all time high, we must get all children fed in the summer.

To read the full report, click Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation.

To view a map of Summer Food sites throughout Allegheny County, click here.

Social safety net fails to support full-time minimum wage workers

Imagine working 40 hours a week every week and bringing home less than $1,000 a month. Then imagine trying to live off of that for all of your utilities, rent, food, gas, car payment, etc. You would assume anyone working full-time wouldn’t find themselves in this situation, but that’s the lot for low-income workers.

I discovered this when interviewing a young man for his food stamp application. I asked him how many hours a week he works and how much he makes an hour. Then I get out the calculator and do the math. 40 hours a week x $7.25 an hour x 4 weeks a month = $1,160 a month. Subtract taxes, and he was right: his take home pay for full-time work was less than a grand a month.

This is where the safety net system comes along and fails to support low-income workers, because the income guidelines for food stamps don’t account for taxes for the first income test: the gross income test. For a single person feeding themselves, their gross income has to be less than $1,126/month. Our full-time worker living on less than a thou a month grosses $1,160. No food stamps for this fellow.

Which, well, is not fair. For starters, had taxes been taken into account, he would have been eligible. And eligible for quite a bit due to his rent and utility costs. An extra $95 a month to pay for food would have really been a hand up in his situation.

Secondly, had he received $1,000 in any other source of income every month instead of working for it and paying taxes, he would have been eligible for assistance. But since taxes aren’t subtracted when considering eligibility, the system is letting this young man still go hungry.

So, for any of you contacting legislators next time the Farm Bill is up: tell them to change the rules so that the gross income guidelines are gross income minus taxes.

-Ann Sanders, Food Stamp Specialist

Obama on food policy, plus chili recipe

In this article, writer and chef Ari LeVaux interviewed Democratic candidate Barack Obama on food policy issues for The North Coast Journal (Clinton and McCain have not yet responded to LeVaux's interview requests). And his chili recipe sounds passable (non-vegetarian, but still likely to be inferior to Nic's recipe below).

Highlights include:

As president, I would implement USDA policies that promote local and regional food systems, including assisting states to develop programs aimed at community supported farms. I also support a national farm-to-school program and am pleased that the Farm Bill provides more than $1 billion to expand healthy snacks in our schools.

And

As president, I would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to strictly monitor and regulate pollution from large factory farms, with tough fines for those that violate environmental standards. I also support efforts to provide more meaningful local control over these factory farms.