Baltimore County and the Maryland Agricultural Resource Council are starting a "Poultry for the People" campaign to help the homeless and educate the public about food sources.
The county announced Thursday that the council has launched an online, 30-day Kickstarter campaign through May 8 to raise $8,000 for startup costs. If that goal is reached, the council will begin offering subscriptions to the public to participate in Poultry for the People, by purchasing two free-range, organic chickens per month from the county's 149-acre Center for Maryland Agriculture and Farm Park at Shawan and Cuba roads in Hunt Valley, which would raise the chickens.
Each subscriber would keep one of the pre-packaged chickens and the center would donate the other chicken to county-supported homeless shelters, including the Community Action Network's west side men's shelter in Catonsville and east side shelter in Rosedale for families and single women.
Subscriptions would be sold in increments of one month, three months, six months and 12 months.
Money raised from the sale of the chickens would be used to fund educational programs at the farm and homeless shelters.
The goal is partly to educate the non-farming public, including shelter residents, about how to eat healthier and more affordably, by making their meals stretch and lowering their monthly food bills, according to county, center and shelter officials.
"There's a lot of people who have no clue how their food gets to the table," said Chris McCollum, director of the center.
Chefs at homeless shelters would teach residents how to cook a chicken and use its various parts for purposes such as making stock. Shelter residents and their children will be invited out to the farm to learn how chickens are harvested, and farm officials will bring baby chicks to the shelters and teach children how to care for them by keeping them warm and draft-free, McCollum said.
The program dovetails with the goal of the shelters to help residents find housing and jobs, so they can live independently.
"It's all about building the tools that they need when they do move out," said Megan Goffney, director of the east and west side shelters.
The program would also help shelters supplement their budgets by lowering their costs for buying chicken, so the money can be used to buy other meats and vegetables, Goffney said.
"We spend a couple of thousand dollars a month on food," Goffney said. "We do buy a lot of chicken," mostly from the Maryland Food Bank.
The immediate goal is to raise money for startup equipment, including a 4-ton feeder bin, McCollum said. As of Thursday afternoon, the second day of the Kickstarter campaign, the public had pledged $750.
"We're 24 hours in and we've basically got 10 percent of our goal. That's not bad," McCollum said.
For more information, including a link to a Kickstarter video about the campaign, go to http://www.marylandagriculture.org.