Chicken flap nest egg builds

Greg Colello labels photos of the Eldorado Nine, Eldorado citizens being sued by their homeowners’ association for keeping hens on their land. A fundraising event was held Friday night at the La Tienda Performance Space in the community southeast of Santa Fe. (Eddie Moore/Albuquerque Journal)

Some came offering plates of deviled eggs, others sported decorative feathers, but most carried a gullet-full of indignation.

Defenders of the Eldorado Nine – the label stuck on the residents being sued by the Eldorado Community Improvement Association for keeping chickens on their property – turned out in force at La Tienda Performance Space Friday evening.

Scott Kasper, one of the aforementioned Nine, was gratified to see them.

“I think it’s awesome,” he said. “The way of old in America was to have neighbors helping one another, backing each other up – it ain’t what it used to be. This is about some good neighborly stuff.”

The “stuff” included cash donations, live music, donated food (including a chicken-shaped cake or paté – it was hard to tell which) that had lines of hungry people stretching outside the building, bids in a silent auction on donated items, and sales of T-shirts. Wording in the designs included “The Trojan Chicken,” “The Long Night of the Chicken” and “The Great Eldorado Funky Chicken Fuster Cluck.”

Jan Deligans of Hensforth, a nonprofit organization formed to raise money for the defendants’ attorney fees, said, “We were hoping to raise about $4,000… Our biggest dream would be $10,000, but that’s probably too much.”

The event asked for a $20 donation. Of the first 50 people who came, only one paid less, and many paid more, she said. “One lady walked in and gave me $50. A couple of others gave more,” Deligans said.

The nine not only are being sued, but they have filed a countersuit against the ECIA, contending it is being unfair and inconsistent in implementing the covenants, she said.

Deligans even envisions the possibility of this becoming a national issue, raising questions about the powers of homeowners associations.

As it is, she estimates the Eldorado Nine will need about $30,000 to cover their legal costs.

Kasper is flummoxed at how he could have ended up in court.

He, his wife, their two children and seven chickens live on a little less than two acres. Under the covenants, he said, a lot with more than 3.5 acres can have two horses – but not his hens.

“We got the chickens primarily as a way to teach my children about food,” Kasper said, noting that his son is 8 and his daughter is 13. “It’s an education. They get to raise them as chicks, feed them, water them, and see the whole cycle of how food arrives.

“We get the most amazing eggs.”

A Santa Fe city firefighter, Kasper said of his work, “We are up all night dealing with the very best and the very worst humanity has to offer.”

When he comes home, he likes to garden, feed the chickens, raise his children – “the things of humanity to allow us to decompress.

“Home is supposed to be a sanctuary, and I’m getting threatening letters from the ECIA. I’m not hurting anybody.”

Alan Hutner, a co-host of Transitions Radio Magazine on 98.1 Radio Free Santa Fe and Eldorado resident, emceed Friday’s event. Taking a break to talk with the Journal, he expressed his frustration with the chicken fight.

“If you have them (chickens) in the city of Santa Fe, why can’t you have them out here?” he asked, noting that the ECIA was using his and the defendants’ own association fees to pay for the fight. He contended the issue was sparked by a few board members incited by “some residents who would like this to be a manicured community” like Pleasantville.

In one of the poems he composed for the event, Hutner wrote: “I mean/Some covenants are OK/But for God’s sake/Just let them hens lay/Is a little mother clucking/Too much to pay/To have organic neighbors/Living more in nature’s way?”

Chickens had been allowed in Eldorado for years, Deligans said, noting that one defendant had been keeping some on her property for 23 years. While some received variances from the covenants, others argue their chickens are pets allowed under the covenants.

“What’s really sad to me is that this is not the way Eldorado has been,” she said, adding that she has lived there for 11 years, but now is moving to Chimayó. “We want to get back to where it was neighbor to neighbor… eyeball to eyeball. We should be able to work things out among ourselves.”