Cloonshee Farm RIP, Indeed

Today, in a report about a new breed of pricey heritage chicken, Grub Street mentioned that the end may have come for Cloonshee Farm, the Catskills Farm with the most popular local chickens in town (and especially Brooklyn).

Indeed, it's true. The farm's owner, Marni Hurwitz, is retiring, leaving many restaurants at a loss as to where to find their birds, and organic-loving Park Slopers debating who's to blame on Chowhound.

An excerpt from iCi's latest newsletter:

Looking for chickens

This newsletter is usually full of fun & exciting news, well, this month we have some bad news…

Before opening iCi, we took some time selecting the farmers we want to work with, and we had found the perfect chicken farm: Marni from Cloonshee farm worried about earthworms and would not use a plow; she wouldn’t use pesticides or antibiotics and let chickens sleep in the sun!

But after 20 years of hard work, Marni has decided to retire. She bought a motor home and is off to Costa Rica. All she wants to do is relax on the beach and drink lots of Margaritas...

We can’t blame her, it’s hard work. Well, good for you Marni, but we’ll miss you and your chickens. So now we are on the look out for a new farm that could supply us with beautiful free range chickens. We know how much stress this will generate for the fans of iCi’s juicy, tender chicken, so we will keep you updated in our next newsletter.