Farming chicken above Arctic Circle
Qikiqtarjuaq couple wants to teach others about local food production
Myles Dolphin
Northern News Services
Published Monday, March 24, 2014
QIKIQTARJUAQ/BROUGHTON ISLAND
Food insecurity has been at the forefront of many conversations in Nunavut this past year and one Qikiqtarjuaq resident is doing her part to give others in her community more access to fresh, organic food.
Celine Jaccard and her husband, Yves Christen, a transplanted Swiss couple who now call Qikiqtarjuaq home, are the proud owners of eight young chicks and will soon be offering farm-fresh eggs to other residents.
Jaccard, who worked as a medic at a nearby DEW Line cleanup site last summer, is raising the chicks
in a makeshift incubator her husband built out of an abandoned refrigerator they keep in their garage.
She's hoping the community's - and likely Baffin Island's - only chicken farm can benefit a lot of residents, by teaching youth how to care for the chicks to provide extra food to families who need it the most.
"I really want this to be a community project," she said.
"We used to have chickens in Quebec and we know how easy it is to raise them. So we thought, why not try it here? It would be interesting for kids at school to learn about how chickens grow and also it's fresh meat and healthy eggs for the community."
Jaccard said she already got permission and support from the hamlet to raise the chicks and eventually move them to a larger building.
By using leftover food such as bread, corn and other vegetables, the couple is able to feed the chicks and reduce waste.
Jaccard brought the eggs back to Qikiqtarjuaq a few months ago after a trip down south. She put them in the heated incubator and they hatched after 21 days.
"We're going to wait about five months until they've grown up and then the females will start making eggs," she said.
"We'll keep all the females so they can make eggs, and we'll keep one rooster, so we can take the eggs and put them back into the incubator."
Jaccard said a number of children have stopped by her house to visit the chicks, so there's a lot of interest in them already.
She reached out to the school and hopes to set a project up to teach youth about raising chickens.
Once the couple has enough eggs, they will meet with hamlet officials to find the best way of distributing them among people in the community.
"We're not going to feed everyone," Jaccard said. "But our main goal is that it's a community project and we want to get people involved."
This isn't Nunavut's first chicken farm, however.
In the 1970s, following the closure of a mine near Rankin Inlet, some residents unsuccessfully turned to alternative sources of income that included a pig ranch and chicken farming.
"These animals were fed a locally made fishmeal that, unfortunately, gave the meat an unpleasant flavour," according to Nunavut Tourism's website.
"Plus, it was far too common an occurrence for the animals to freeze to death in winter or be eaten by polar bears, so both of these animal farm ventures were abandoned."
Also, chickens and pigs were raised in Chesterfield Inlet years ago.
