• City Chicken Workshop

  87-91 Schenectady Ave., Crown Heights, no phone; bkfarmyards.com

  Any city food obsessive with a fire escape or terrace can pot up a couple of tomato plants and some basil, but getting into the poultry game is an entirely different matter. Fortunately for the hard-core locavore, the series of workshops run by the urban-farming collective bk farmyards is, essentially, a master’s program in hen-ology, covering every last detail (and potential pratfall) of raising fowl in the five boroughs. Held at the Imani Garden in Crown Heights on the second Thursday of each month, starting in April, City Chicken starts with the basics (designing a coop, feeding your hens) and moves on to more advanced topics like how to handle health inspections, harvest the chickens’ waste for garden fertilizer, and prepare for winter. Students who get super-serious can even apply for a more intensive chicken apprenticeship, working alongside the farmers on a regular basis to become certified urban hen experts. Sure, your friends may laugh at you at first. They’ll shut up when they’re presented with a half-dozen implausibly fresh eggs.

From the 2012 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine