Burlington Township: The chickens and the eggs, the bread and the neighbor
When I was growing up in the 1950s, Raphael, the man across the street, began baking bread in a basement oven and selling it to friends and neighbors.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, Raphael, the man across the street, began baking bread in a basement oven and selling it to friends and neighbors.
Every time the oven was lit, our street in Waterbury, Conn., filled with smoke, and my mother called the fire department. The firefighters cited Raphael for running a business in a residential area without a license and zoning variance, then left.
Raphael continued to bake; my mother to call the fire department, which continued to cite him. It became the cycle of neighborhood life that ended only when we moved.
Since we were related by marriage to the baker, I asked my mother why she ratted on him.
"Nonna [my grandmother] raised pigs and baked bread for neighbors who brought her the dough, to earn money after my father died, and Raphael kept reporting her to the city," my mother replied.
I bring up my brush with the code of honor as practiced among people from Benevento only because of a recent call from Sandi Lichtman, of Lichtman Associates Real Estate in Burlington Township, who is listing an 11-year-old house on 1.25 acres that she says might accommodate someone interested in raising a few chickens.
"More people seem to be going natural," she said, referring to the movement away from factory-farm products. She often sees signs advertising fresh eggs along roads with older houses, less so in newer areas.
I interviewed a couple dairy farmers in Montgomery Township in the mid-1990s who said they were phoned regularly by neighbors in adjacent developments complaining of the smell.
"Where do you think your milk comes from?" one farmer would reply.
Before she even considered such a marketing effort, Lichtman began calling towns to see whether raising chickens violated local ordinances.
Burlington Township has an ordinance that, in effect, lets homeowners with large lots have coops but limits the number of chickens, she said.
In Voorhees, where she lives and, coincidentally, buys free-range eggs from a local on Evesham Road, chicken-raising is permitted in rural areas, on minimum-two-acre lots.
In Cherry Hill, the matter is being addressed, she said, while Burlington City has no ordinance - yet.
Woodbury has a two-year pilot program, begun March 1, requiring backyard chicken farmers to take a course, and it limits the number of permits and the number of chickens (goo.gl/jhBfZm). Its ordinance considers raising chickens an aspect of "sustainability."
Philadelphia requires a three-acre minimum for animal husbandry (goo.gl/0EsLo5).
I made some calls to real estate agents in the Pennsylvania suburbs, and although no one reported a major rush in demand for houses that accommodate chicken-raising, they did suggest checking with the municipality before doing anything.
My family once rented a house from a former municipal judge who had an egg business in our backyard, which abutted a wooded area. The feed attracted rodents. The judge paid his grandson and me 25 cents for every rat we caught.
My mother grimaced and spent as little time as she could in the backyard until the judge got rid of the chickens. It was too bad, too, because those brown eggs cost less and were better than the supermarket's.
But back to Raphael: I should tell you that my mother had been buying his bread all along, but stopped when he sold her stale loaves to accommodate "new custooms," as he called them.
Code of honor, indeed.
215-854-2472@alheavens