Leslie Nowinski and Alison Simko are friends who live in Battery Park City. Three years ago they came to Earth Matter to assist in our animal care, and are now the regular chicken caregivers every Thursday. During the growing season they also maintain their Soil Start Farm community garden bed, adjacent to Earth Matter’s Compost Learning Center.
These friends relish a vigorous jaunt in the fresh air, riding their bikes to beautiful Governors Island—their “back yard”. The animal care shift, from beginning to end, takes them 1½ hours to complete. Alison is a freelance writer who works for Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra and the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, and Leslie owns her own company that is involved in the media/entertainment field. They see their weekly volunteer stint at Earth Matter as a very welcome break from the intense work and time spent in front of their computers.
Both women are active environmentalists, interested in waste management, recycling and the health of the New York Harbor. They save their kitchen scraps to feed to our chickens on their Thursday shifts.
Leslie and Alison are always cheerful, positive, concerned and creative in the ways they volunteer for our organization. They generously offer us seedlings and plants, and we received our gorgeous blue garden tool chest thanks to their facilitation from the Battery Park City’s community garden when that project got its own brand new shed. They are astute observers of animal behavior, and Earth Matter benefits from the “field notes” that they pass on at the end of their shifts.
We asked them what their favorite animal care activities are. They enjoy “getting greeted by the chickens every Thursday morning, hunting for eggs and wheel barrowing and chopping the frozen food in winter for the chickens. We love the physical work!”. Leslie enjoys “doing her part for the larger process of composting.” Alison says she learned “that the chickens are very funny, run fast” and says that “the feather-footed hens (cochins) look like they have Ugg boots on as they run across the snow.”
By Marisa DeDominicis