The farm — which is just that, despite its sharp contrast with open fields nearby — sits outside Gumboro, carved out of a patch of woods formerly dominated by ticks and other insects that once roamed freely there.
Coastal Point • JONATHAN STARKEY:
Bill Stevenson with one of his guinea hens. Stevenson will be selling his guinea fowl eggs at the Bethany Beach Farmers Market, which will be held in the Mercantile Peninsula Bank parking lot starting July 1.
Beyond the entrance of the unique farm, marked only by a recently-tampered Good Flocking Way road sign, “works-in-progress” cars and buses sit, mostly rusty and without tires, along a dirt road that does not hint at the haven that lies just ahead.
There, Bill Stevenson, a 60-year-old bearded man whose adolescence in the 1960s is likely not lost on anyone who meets him, serves as the leader of the flock, presiding over more than 100 chickens, guineas and ducks. On Wednesday, the part-time mechanic and avid art-car collector toured the grounds, checking on the hens’ eggs and explaining how the roosters need some discipline every now and then.
“You got to go at them slow and gentle, with confidence that they’re not intimidating you,” Stevenson said Tuesday, explaining how, when a rooster attacked him upon arrival, he put “JW’s” head between his legs and folded the bird’s legs to his chest in an act of discipline that has kept the rooster mostly in check since. “That’s the non-injurious type of training that says you’re way too big a rooster to start messing with. You’ve got to spend time with them to understand their traits and behaviors.”
Stevenson, who said his interest in guineas extends to his high school years, runs the free-range flock with a perhaps unusual sense of camaraderie that is undoubtedly sincere. At the farm, he raises guineas — chicken-like creatures with rounded backs, tucked tails and distinct head shape — to sell. He also sells the colored eggs that the chickens and guineas produce for $5 a dozen.
Stevenson is one of nine farmers already registered to sell his product at the Bethany Beach Farmers Market, which will open from 8 a.m. to noon on Sunday, July 1, and run for eight straight Sundays in the Mercantile Peninsula Bank parking lot at the corner of Garfield Parkway and Pennsylvania Avenue.
There he will sell guinea eggs — which he claims are more richly-flavored and denser than chicken eggs, with lower cholesterol levels — and chicken eggs ranging in color from a blue or green tint to brown. Stevenson said this flock produces roughly three dozen eggs daily, but his is a non-profit operation. The money from the eggs is only just enough to buy the feed to keep the flock happy.
Early Wednesday, he checked the eggs underneath his hens without much resistance — only the occasional peck to the hand or forearm — and remembered his mother telling him years ago that only “poor people” raise guineas.
“I guess that makes me poor,” Stevenson said with a laugh, pointing to the trailer on the property that is his home. “I live in a trailer, too. I guess that makes me trailer trash.”
One white chicken, named “Little Sweetie” — one member of a trio of “Sweeties” that ranges from little to “Big Sweetie” to “Sweetie the Guinea” — joined another more “outgoing” and noisy hen perched on Stevenson’s shoulder early Wednesday afternoon to request some seed he had in his hand. Guineas chased each other around the property in a sign of courtship and a couple of apparently-readied hens advertised with loud calls their intentions to lay an egg.
A couple of the roughly dozen roosters on the property scooped up seed Stevenson tossed in their direction, only to call to hens nearby and surrender it for their consumption in what is apparently normal behavior. And despite blindness in one eye, one rooster — named Daryl — boasted an entourage of 12 hens that followed his every step Wednesday as Stevenson mumbled something jokily about asking the bird for advice.
On the other side of the Frankford-area property, inside a wooded box protected by fencing, a hen he named “Top Cappy” due to her unusual hair pattern, took care of 17 baby guineas.
Stevenson said he first invested in the guineas and chickens as a way of insect control in an area where he could once spend an hour and pick up three ticks. Now, each night, the flock — which roams freely throughout the day and returns, usually without much trouble, into the coops at night — has become a community, in which the leader is undoubtedly a willing member, despite being human.
“They’re just cool,” Stevenson said.