Become a Member

Steep Hollow Farm, Ithaca, New York

Sustainable Chicken Project

Do you eat eggs?

Do you cook at home?

Do you wish you could turn your food scraps into productive compost but don’t have the space, permission, or inclination to make a compost pile in your urban neighborhood?

Do you live in Ithaca, on “the flats”? Southside, Northside, Fall Creek, Downtown areas?

Your food scraps could turn into eggs….

How does this happen?

Steep Hollow Farm is raising “sustainable” chickens for egg production. We are doing this by trying to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions to the extent possible. Reduction in the use of commercial grain crops is one way to accomplish these goals. One technique that has been proven to work as a way to reduce traditional grain inputs is to generate compost from household food scraps and use the “critters” in the active compost—insects, worms and other decomposing organisms—as chicken feed.

How can you participate?

• Donate your table scraps. We will provide you with a five-gallon container with a lid for storage of your food scraps and provide instructions for preparing your food scraps.
• We’ll pick up your container and supply you with a clean container.
• As the hens start laying in July and August you’ll get some eggs back as a thank-you, and be able to purchase additional eggs, at a reasonable price, which could be delivered when we pick up your compost.

Membership Fees

We are asking for a $35 per year membership fee from each participating household to cover some of the associated costs of food scrap pickup.  This fee could be less per unit for multiple units in one building.  The average contributing household could easily see more than a $35 per year drop in the cost of City of Ithaca trash tags.  Ideally we need 40 participants to optimize our production.  We are a small scale project and we are now only taking memberships from the downtown Ithaca area as it is not sustainable for us to collect food scraps from the outlying areas at this time.

We need a name for our project!

All of those persons or households who contribute food scraps to our compost system are eligible to provide an entry to name the “sustainable chicken project.” The winner will receive a dozen eggs.

For more information contact Tom Shelley at tjs1@cornell.edu or 342-0864.