Meet the Flockers: Indy's Urban Chicken Farmers

1) SoBro Egg Factory

Farmer: Christie Wahlert
“We are in egg overload at the moment and have even
begun selling them to friends and giving them away. My hairstylist got a six-pack of eggs along with her normal tip the last time I went in.”

2) First Ladies of Willard Park

Farmers: Zach Adamson and Christian Mosburg
“We named all of our chickens after first ladies—specifically, after the early first ladies, because they all had names that sounded like chickens anyway,” Adamson says. “We’ve got a Martha. We’ve got an Abigail. We’ve got a Mary Todd. But we did sort of dip into modern times with a Jackie O.”

3) Westmore Heights Golden Eggs

Farmer: Jo Ann Klooz
“We gather our own eggs, but this is not a money-saving thing. The setup can be expensive, and you can go to the store and buy a dozen eggs for what—$1.50? When we got our first egg—I was breathless. I came inside with it, and my boyfriend said, “It’s a $1,500 egg!”

4) Lockerbie Squawk

Farmers: The Lapkas: Joe, Amy, Aiden, 9, and Lucy, 1
“Being able to teach our son where food comes from—that’s important to us,” Amy says. “The chickens are a bit of therapy, too. When Lucy is fussy, we take her out to the chickens, and she calms down right away.”

5) Emerson Coop

Farmers: Jessica Leck and Avery, 3
“My husband drew up blueprints and built our coop. He is very handy. We looked at a bunch of coops in books that we got from the library and kind of combined them into what fit our space. We put it next to our garage for wind protection and so we could run electricity to it.”

Photos by Tony Valainis

This article appeared in the April 2013 issue.