Detroit eyes adding livestock to urban farms

Daniel Bethencourt | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Urban farming ordinance in Detroit Mark Covington talks about looking forward to having the livestock ordinance pass at the Georgia Street Community Collective on Detroit's east side.

At an urban farm on Detroit’s east side, Mark Covington tends to more than the conventional collards, broccoli and spinach.

There are also four beehives, pens with nearly 30 chickens and a separate, larger pen for five goats. He even had turkeys until recently and plans to bring back more in April.

In Detroit, city laws technically don’t allow for the raising of livestock. But Covington said his neighbors have never complained since he started raising some animals six years ago. It's complaints from neighbors that usually bring law enforcement.

“I’m not here to disrespect my neighbors,” he said Friday at his farm, the Georgia Street Community Collective, while behind him goats munched on sweet corn and hay.

But he also said, “I don’t want to continue being illegal.”

Covington and others may get their chance in the coming months. Detroit city officials are working on at least one ordinance that would allow some residents and urban farmers to raise egg-laying chickens, ducks, rabbits and goats legally.

“These animals provide the community (with) the chance to know clearly where their food is coming from,” said Detroit City Councilman James Tate, who would be the ordinance’s sponsor.

Few details about the effort are finalized — Tate said the council may vote on the issue by March. But the goal is to allow homeowners and urban farmers to raise their own livestock safely while also making sure that neighbors aren't upset.

Detroit's livestock rules have led to some disputes, like when Idyll Farms in Brightmoor was told to remove its 18 goats less than two days after launching, at the risk of facing a $500 fine per goat. The dispute garnered national attention.

"We were hoping the city's ordinance would be flexible, but (officials) told me it was completely inflexible," Idyll Farms consultant Leonard Pollara told the Free Press at the time.

That may now be changing.

Melvin (Butch) Hollowell, the city’s top lawyer, is open to the idea of allowing livestock and said a pilot program might be a good first step.

“There’s a demand for it,” he added, “It’s just gotta be done right.”

At the Wednesday public meeting with Tate and other leaders, like Kathryn Underwood of the City Planning Commission, residents expressed their hopes and some fears for livestock in the city.

Tate said the biggest challenge will be convincing the public that this won’t involve “farm animals running rampant,” nor will it involve commercial slaughterhouses.

“This is not about jobs,” he told the Free Press. “This is about community building ... and giving people the power to determine the future of their neighborhoods.”

Most at the meeting were in favor of some livestock, but not all were excited.

“When I purchased my house over 20 years ago, we did not expect it would turn into farmland,” Angela Peavy, an east-side resident near Outer Drive and Chalmers, said in an interview. “I get wanting to know where your food comes from … I just don’t feel it necessarily has to be on my block.”

And yet across the city, many urban farmers are already raising livestock, despite the city’s current regulations.

At her west-side home, originally a farmhouse built in 1925, Lynn Hausch said she has been raising two small goats so that she can use their milk for cheese. Over the last couple years, she has also kept between four and five chickens.

But she has also sparred with the city’s Animal Control, who have confiscated her goats on more than one occasion. She said there was a period when they would drive by her house on a monthly basis, trying to see if she was going to bring more goats back. Hausch isn’t giving up yet — she has an attorney and is headed to court on Dec. 10 to contest the latest goat-related charge.

“I’m fighting for the right to have goats,” she said. “I’m fighting for all the other people who can’t afford to fight.”

On the opposite side of the city, in the area of Grosse Pointe Park, there is Lorenzo Herron and his wife Atieno Nyarkasagam, who have continued to hang on to their 10 or so chickens at their home despite visits from the authorities.

“Doesn’t matter to me, ordinance or not,” Herron said. “I’m just going to do my thing.”

Yet Nyarkasagam said the threat of more harassment over their animals is exhausting.

“How could you be the urban agriculture capital of the world and still be struggling over chickens and rabbits?” she said.

With a formalized rule, efforts such as these could become fully legal. Covington, of the Georgia Street Community Collective, said he’s negotiating with Detroit Public Schools to host field trips, and hopes a change in the rules make it easier for visits like those. (He's also been providing input to city officials as they craft new livestock rules.)

Yet Covington added that his setup works well because the few neighbors that still live near him appreciate his efforts. He even gives them them some of the 15 or so eggs his chickens have produced each day.

“If they told me they didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it,” he said.

Contact Daniel Bethencourt: dbethencourt@freepress.com, 313-223-4531 or on Twitter @_dbethencourt