Take BreAnda Northcutt.

The West Sacramento resident was a self-described workaholic with a successful career in media and communications. She had served as director of communications for Cal-EPA under former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger before taking a senior position with Cater Communications, and by her mid-30s was doing pretty much everything she wanted to be doing as a single career woman.

Everything, that is, except giving back to the community. She wanted to be doing more of that, she said, and she had a pretty good idea how.

The idea stemmed from one of those childhood memories that stuck with Northcutt into adulthood. The seed was planted when she was a teenager helping out at her grandparents’ auto shop and encountered a mother with a lot of children and not a lot of kindness for them.

“She was so mean to them,” Northcutt recalled. “That’s when I knew I would care for (unwanted) children some day.”

Now that that day had arrived, and Northcutt had decided she wanted to become a foster parent, she realized she would need some serious back-up support to pull it off. After all, she would be a single parent with a full-time job.

So Northcutt approached her parents, Karen and Brian Fitzgerald of West Sacramento, and asked, “Would you support me?”

Supporting her would mean more than just helping out here and there and baby-sitting occasionally. If they were going to help Northcutt care for a foster child, the Fitzgeralds would have to become licensed foster parents themselves.

They agreed without hesitation, and all three began taking classes through the Foster & Kinship Care Education Program at Woodland Community College, eventually becoming trained, licensed foster parents.

In Yolo County, foster parents are so in demand that newly licensed foster parents start receiving phone calls immediately, sometimes the very day they become licensed, asking if they can take a child.

Northcutt said she started getting phone calls weekly, but held off at first, not entirely ready to take the plunge. Finally, in the summer of 2011, she did.

That’s when the call came about Murphy, a baby boy born a month early and addicted to drugs. He would be in the neonatal intensive care unit for a while, so Northcutt’s early weeks as his foster mom would involve visiting him at the hospital every morning before work and every evening afterward.

The nurses, she said, “taught me how to do everything” — feeding him, dressing him, changing his diapers.

And when Murphy was finally ready to go home with Northcutt, she was more than ready: She had fallen in love with this baby.

Still, Northcutt didn’t expect to be Murphy’s forever home. She figured she would love and nurture him for as long as she had him, and then he would go back to his birth parents.

The social workers seemed to know better, Northcutt said.

“It didn’t take long for them to say, ‘He’s probably on the path to adoption,’ ” Northcutt recalled.

His birth parents were simply unable to care for him.

That’s when the social workers asked Northcutt, “Are you interested?”

Taking the plunge

Looking back, Northcutt said she had never really given adoption much thought until that point. She went into foster parenting purely to give back, she said, to make life better for a child in need.

But by then her whole family had fallen for this child and they were willing to sacrifice for him, too.

Karen Fitzgerald, an artist, had set aside her kiln for more than a year to care for Murphy every day while Northcutt worked, taking him to his many appointments with doctors and specialists, and with her husband, bonding completely with this little boy. As much as Northcutt had become Murphy’s mom, the Fitzgeralds had become grandma and grandpa.

The adoption became final last fall.

Not long after, Northcutt welcomed a second foster child — another baby — into her home and she is on the path toward adoption with him as well. The Fitzgeralds have since moved in with Northcutt to help care for both boys, and Northcutt describes her home life as a “circus,” complete with two children under the age of 2, as well as two dogs.

“It’s hardly ever quiet, and it’s rarely neat,” she said.

And it’s nothing like she imagined her life would be — or anything like it was two years ago.

“It’s a very big change,” she acknowledged. “Not one I ever would have imagined.

“I was never that teenager dreaming of having babies and raising a family,” she said.

And she thought when she did have a family, she’d follow the “traditional” route of marriage first, then having kids.

“I’m doing it backwards,” Northcutt laughed, adding that she hopes when the right guy comes along, he’s ready for the whole package.

Lobbying effort

On Tuesday, Northcutt and her parents, as well as Murphy, were in Woodland for the Yolo County Board of Supervisors meeting. While Murphy was charming the socks off everyone in attendance with his energy and infectious smile, Northcutt was urging supervisors to do whatever they can to ensure that foster youths in Yolo County have the homes they need.

As of March, there were 351 children in foster care in the county. Of those, 26 were in foster family homes, 95 were with relatives or in non-relative guardian homes, 20 were in group homes and 21 were in older youth supportive transitional placements. Another 93 children were in their own homes under court-ordered family maintenance and 96 were with foster family agencies — places like EMQ Families First.

The ideal, said Cherie Schroeder, director of foster and kinship care education at Woodland Community College, is placement with a foster family if a child cannot go home or to a relative. But the reality is that there are currently 78 licensed foster homes in Yolo County and not all are able to take in a child at any given time, so many kids end up with agencies.

“We always need more foster homes,” Schroeder said.

The greatest need, as always, is for foster families willing to take older children.

“We’ve done a good job taking care of babies and young children,” Northcutt said, “but we’ve failed the teens.”

And the consequence is evident in Murphy’s case, she said: Murphy’s birth mother was a foster child as well.

“If we don’t fix the cycle,” Northcutt said, “we don’t fix the problem.”

“These are kids that just want to be wanted,” she added, “to have someone believe in them. People say to me, ‘I couldn’t do what you’re doing.’ But you could do it. If we all did something, maybe we wouldn’t have so many kids in need.”

And while Northcutt said it’s hard to imagine doing what she’s done on her own — without the support of her parents — she knows people do it all the time.

A bit of everything

Yolo County is indeed home to all kinds of foster parents, Schroeder said.

“Older, younger, single, married, gay, straight,” she said. “We have a little bit of everything.”

Regardless of how they ended up there — or how their lives have changed because of it — many likely share Northcutt’s view of her life.

One of her favorite words, she said, has always been “serendipity,” what she thinks of as unexpected blessings.

“That’s the very definition of my life right now,” she said.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday proclaimed May National Foster Care Month in Yolo County to urge community members to do more to assist foster children and families.

Many in the community already do a great deal. Schroeder thanked First 5 Yolo and the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation in particular for their support, as well as county supervisors and other agencies.

The Foster & Kinship Care Education Program will offer presentations in June for those interested in becoming foster parents. An “Introduction to Foster Care” will be provided at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 5, at the Stephens Branch Library, 315 E. 14th St. in Davis, and at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 25, at the West Sacramento Library, 1212 Merkley Ave. A full foster care pre-service series will get underway in July. For more information, visit www.yolofostercare.com.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at aternus@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8051. Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy

That verdant trail, however, can be followed beyond the confines of the market pavilion and on into the downtown, where any “green” leftover in wallets and purses — after the week’s supply of avocados or strawberries has been had — is often spent.

A 2008 Davis Downtown economic study showed that the average marketgoer spent an additional $21 in the Core Area after purchasing whatever he picked up at the market that day, a number that market manager Randii MacNear says has grown over the past half-decade.

With 500,000 people descending upon the park at Fourth and C streets every year to experience one of the top 10 farmers markets in the country, according to US News Travel, local establishments stand to receive quite a bit of residual business.

“There is no doubt that the Farmers Market is a huge boost to our economy on those two days (Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings),” said Davis Downtown co-president Michael Bisch.

“It’s a fantastic community amenity, if not a regional amenity, and along with the community pools, the Farmers’ Market is my kids’ favorite thing to do here in Davis. I’m sure a lot of families feel that way about it.”

It’s for that economic boon, among many other benefits the market offers, that the Davis Farmers Market was named the 17th winner of the Bill Streng Business of the Year Award earlier this month by the Davis Chamber of Commerce.

The honor is bestowed on those businesses in town that “exemplify qualities of excellence, service, innovation and creativity in business, industry or the community.”

MacNear was humbled by the news.

“We have worked really hard to strengthen Davis,” MacNear said last week. “(And) because people like us: the news and the media and organizations … it brings attention to Davis, and it brings tourism to Davis, and it puts Davis in Sunset Magazine and on the national news and we are just thrilled to be able to give that back to the community.”

Aside from the economic benefits that filter out into the downtown and the rest of the city, the Farmers Market lifts up the community from its home in Central Park as well. Supporting and promoting the community were among the criteria the Chamber’s nomination committee had to consider when choosing a winner.

In recent decades,the downtown has been transformed into the city’s undeniable commercial and social center, with the addition of new restaurants, the construction and restoration of movie theaters and a revamped art scene with galleries and regular streetside events.

But there may not be an event in town more social than the Farmers Market, with crowds numbering in the thousands filling up the park twice each week. MacNear said that more than two-thirds of those who attend are from Davis, making it a truly community-oriented event.

“We want to help create community; we take that really seriously,” she said. “Davis values are very community-oriented, they’re very family-oriented, they’re outdoors, they’re healthy, they’re very aware of agriculture … small local businesses, and spending time with each other in the community and (that’s) what keeps them at the market.”

But fostering a sense of community doesn’t end with simply providing a place for residents to meet up and socialize.

In addition to the bustling food and craft stands that line the park, the Farmers Market also carves out space for community organizations to reach out to their neighbors and promote whatever their cause happens to be.

Scattered within those 500 community groups that stake out space at the market each year are organizations like the Yolo County Visitors Bureau and Davis Downtown, whose responsibility it is to further promote Davis and the surrounding cities.

MacNear said she’s thrilled to provide a public outlet for such organizations for the betterment of the community and added that the market does its share of Davis promotion as well.

“When (visitors) come in, we have visitor services available for them at the market, we have maps of Davis, we have bike maps … we have business directories, we have restaurant guides,” MacNear said. “We want them, by them coming to the market, to translate into making the rest of the Davis more successful also.”

The Business of the Year Award is named after Bill Streng, a longtime Davis resident and retired home builder and developer who served as a Chamber board president.

Past recipients include Yolo Federal Credit Union, 2011; Brooks Painting, 2010; Carbahal & Company, 2009; Fleet Feet Sports, 2008; Davis Ace, 2007; First Northern Bank, 2006; University Honda, 2005; Coldwell Banker-Doug Arnold Real Estate, 2004; Nugget Markets, 2003; The Davis Enterprise, 2002; Pyramid Construction, 2001; Davis Waste Removal, 2000; Novo Nordisk Biotech, 1999; Mortgage Resource Network Team at Comstock Mortgage, 1998; Cunningham Engineering, 1997; and AgraQuest, 1996.

MacNear will receive the award on behalf of the Davis Farmers Market at the Chamber’s community luncheon, Tuesday, June 4, at 11:45 a.m. at the Odd Fellows Hall, 415 Second St.

Tickets are $18 for Chamber members and $25 for nonmembers. Register for the event and buy tickets either on the Chamber’s website at www.davischamber.com or by calling 530-756-5160.

— Reach Tom Sakash at tsakash@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8057. Follow him on Twitter at @TomSakash

The Blue Devils, competitive all night, finished third with 69.5 points.

The spectacular final event saw DHS’ Ellie Eaton run the anchor leg of her life — closing a large last-lap gap, but losing literally by an eye lash. St. Francis went 3:53.65 to Davis’ 3:53.66.

Eaton’s charge made nervous wrecks of the three schools’ faithful.

Another two inches forward, Eaton would have won and relegated St. Francis to two fewer points, giving Vacaville the crown. The Bulldogs finished third in the race.

“I am so proud of how everyone performed,” Devil head coach Spencer Elliott told The Enterprise. “Our girls competed as hard as the always do. Ellie, Laney Teaford, Sophie Meads … at this meet (coaches) ask so much of them. I’m really proud.”

Eaton — who ran in both relays, the 200- and 400-meter outings — was battling a sore throat and fever. Still the senior dynamo saved her best-equalling split for last. Eaton’s 56.2 duplicated her personal best for the leg.

With DHS running in third halfway through the race, Han-ah Sumner began to close the gap on the third leg. As Eaton took the baton, the Blue Devils were 15 meters in arrears. By the home stretch, the senior Eaton had engaged St. Francis sprinter Sydney Hunter and the two battled shoulder-to-shoulder for the final strides.

Timers looked at each other at the finish line and there was a long pause before the results were announced. Troubadours, one. Devils, two. Another few minutes passed before the crowd got the sense what it all meant … St. Francis’ second SJS title.

Then, once the times of the race sank in, Davis had some rejoicing to do. The local quartet of Eaton, Teaford, Sumner and Rose Stephens had erased a week-old school record in the event. Smashed it, actually, after lowering their own previous mark to 3:55.04 in the May 10 Delta Valley Conference meet.

Eaton’s third-place finish (56.62) in the 400 and her 25.54 (fifth) in the 200, combined with helping the Blue Devils to sixth-place standing in the 4×100, meant she had her hand in 21 DHS points.

Teaford, in her three events, went a couple better in helping post 23 points.

Her 2:15.46 held off Faith Makau of Enochs (2:15.56) in the 800. Teaford led most of the way, briefly relinquishing her lead late before sealing the deal.

The senior also went 5:02.86 for fourth place in the 1,600 — an event that saw Meads take second in 5:02.21.

Speaking of Meads, the junior also did triple duty on the night: taking eighth in the 800 (2:28.16) and finishing 11th in the late-night 3,200.

Stephens, meanwhile, found herself in both relays and taking seventh and 12th in the 300 and 100 hurdles, respectively.

Sumner’s fourth-place finish in the 800 (2:17.77) and her solid work in the relays helped keep Davis in the championship mix.

“Teaford was terrific for us. There were just so many good performances by the girls,” Elliott continued, noting Teaford’s 1,600 time was a personal best.

Freshman Fiona O’Keeffe’s brilliant 10:55.72 in the 3,200 gave her a third-place medal and her 5:03.75 in the 1,600 was good for sixth and more points.

Despite performances  that would make most schools jump for joy, the Blue Devil girls already are looking at the Thursday and Friday SJS Masters meet as redemption.

“We left some points out there,” Elliott admitted. “As coaches, we’ll try to make some intelligent decisions on where everyone will race. The main thing is we all want to run as fast as we can.”

By rule, the eight top-tier qualifiers join the top four from the consolation heats to qualify for the all-divisions Masters. DHS has 11 girls who move on. Both relay teams go, Meads, Teaford and O’Keeffe (1,600), Eaton (400 and 200), Teaford, Sumner and seventh-place Jeanne-Marie McPherson (800) and Stephens (300 hurdles) advance, as do O’Keeffe and Meads from the 3,200.

In field events, Devil pole vaulters Courtney Meyer (10-11) and Lilly Wolfe (9-11) finished fourth and seventh, respectively, to earn Masters spots. High jumper Caitlin Mazzoleni went 4-11 and qualified as the event’s 10th-place finisher, while Zoe Hunt-Murray comes back Thursday after going 34-11 in the triple jump (ninth).

Notes: Finishers are awarded 10 points for a win, eight for second, six for third and down to one point for an eighth-place effort. … Elliott said the section’s season-ending meets will continue to be conducted at Elk Grove, which he said had a “good, fast track.” But he added the ambiance of Hughes Stadium always added to these meets. The newly refurbished facility at Sacramento City College “just costs too much (to host the prep finals) anymore,” Elliott explained. … Talk about competitive: Tokay’s Janell Hadnot was the girls’ only double winner at the D-I meet, taking the long jump (18-05.75) and the triple jump (41-02).

— Reach Bruce Gallaudet at bgallaudet@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8047.

Thousands of people flocked to Community Park to enjoy more than 100 vendor and food booths, a family fun zone, raffle prizes, live music and, of course, an aerial fireworks display.

This was the 10th annual event.

Check it out

What: Fourth annual Tour de Cluck, a bicycle chicken coop crawl

When: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, May 25

Where: Starting at the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame, 303 Third St.

Tickets: $15 general, $10 students/seniors, free for kids under 12; some tickets still may be available at the Davis Food Co-op, Ken’s Bike & Ski, Hibbert Lumber and The Avid Reader in Davis, and The Clayground in Winters

Info: www.tourdecluck.org

With a peck and a scratch, Sunshine, a white leghorn chicken with a bright-red comb jiggling on top her head, rustles and jabs through freshly laid bark in Ron and Gloria Purnell’s back yard.

Just a few feet away, Sunshine’s comrades follow suit — strolling out of their open coop door to the new bark.

With every step, each chicken’s head bobs and pivots in sync, with their feet in search of grubs. Their scaly legs and claws extend forward and briskly fling the bark a few feet behind them onto the lawn to expose the moist soil beneath.

The Purnells’ oldest chicken, a brown araucana named Chirps, stands up straight with her neck extended upward and erect in aggression, sending Cheeps, a shy, red Welsummer, running back to the Purnells’ homemade coop.

“One friend of mine referred to them as dinosaurs with feathers,” said Ron Purnell, whose pen is one of 17 chicken coops featured on this year’s fourth annual Tour de Cluck Bicycle Chicken Coop Crawl on Saturday, May 25. The bicycle tour gives chicken owners and admirers an opportunity to see some of Davis’ most inventive and practical coops.

The Tour de Cluck is much more now than a one-day coop tour; it’s a monthlong celebration of all things chicken. Several Chicken Skool educational events are planned, including a talk Monday evening by a UC Davis expert on the humble chicken’s important role in battling global malnutrition and poverty.

“The education portion of it is something that has been pretty successful for us,” said Neil Ruud, this year’s Tour de Cluck coordinator. “We’ve had a lot of people who are curious about keeping chickens who end up coming to the tour, finding out the best ways of doing it and getting ideas from the chicken coops they see to incorporate them at home.”

The Purnells — along with their sons Zack, 11, and Joe, 6 — decided to raise chickens as pets in their back yard five years ago as a way to supplement their family’s egg purchases.

“It was kind of a nice, entry-level experience to learn more about taking care of animals,” said Gloria Purnell. “We’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed it the most.”

Several coop designs

The Purnells’ coop underwent several incarnations before arriving at its current configuration three years ago. The family experimented with a small portable coop, known as a chicken tractor, that allowed them to let their chickens graze and fertilize a small section of the yard at a time.

After deciding the coop was too confining, they tried different stationary coop configurations before Gloria’s husband built a larger run and covered perching area.

“Coop design is something that’s really become some kind of an art form, especially with the burgeoning of urban poultry,” said Richard Blatchford, a post-doctoral scholar in the UC Davis department of animal science, who specializes in animal behavior and avian husbandry.

Theorized to have descended from dinosaurs and reptiles, chickens have been domesticated for more than 10,000 years, Blatchford said, and have only a few essential requirements.

“Their behavioral repertoire is still almost identical to their wild ancestor,” said Blatchford who, with others from UCD, will be answering questions at the Farmers Market next Saturday during the Coop Tour. “Being highly preyed upon, terrestrial animals, … they are highly driven to go somewhere high at night.”

According to Blatchford, perches or ramps can fulfill this requirement.

Meet their needs

Since chickens are accustomed to perching in trees and bushes to sleep and preen, the coop should be partially covered for shelter — which also keeps their food dry.

Coops also serve as a shelter from unwanted pest that may harm flocks. Blatchford said securing the perimeter of the coop below ground from burrowing animals and providing a netting or roof of some kind will stave off dogs, cats, raccoons, opossums, hawks and other animals interested in chickens or their eggs.

As the Purnells’ mother hen, or bully, Chirps demonstrated that poultry have a rigid social hierarchy enforced by pecking — hence the term “pecking order.”

Blatchford said the dominant hen would peck the head of the subordinate individuals to establish order initially, and rarely have encounters afterwards.

“Generally some aggression is OK,” Blatchford said, “There is very little aggression once that hierarchy has been worked out.”

Even with more than 200 coop owners in town, Davis Assistant Police Chief Darren Pytel said chicken-related noise complaints are not a significant problem. Coop applications are available at the front desk of the Davis Police Department, 2600 Fifth St., and require a $2 application fee.

Garden partners

The Purnells and other chicken lovers have discovered that raising urban chickens can be of help in the garden.

“They have completely decimated the snail population in the yard,” Gloria Purnell said.

Chickens often seek insects for their high protein.

“They are opportunistic carnivores,” Blatchford said. “They are very good at fulfilling dietary requirements, so they will pick at lots of different stuff to fulfill whatever they are looking for.

“A lot of people will get them as gardening partners for weeding or for pest control,” he added. “If you have a wide variety of plants, they probably won’t do too much damage, but they will also pick at your vegetable plants.”

Amelia Naim-Hansen, a second-year veteran of the Tour de Cluck, has changed the way she gardens to appease her feathered friends.

“It’s kind of like baby-proofing your house,” said Naim-Hansen, who owns four chickens. “I’ve gotten pretty clever at finding ways to prevent them from destroying the yard.”

Naim-Hansen said she and her partner recently installed raised beds for their vegetables, which worked until the chickens discovered the bounty growing in them. They constructed small cages that fit over the raised beds out of PVC pipe and mesh, which also can be used as pens when Naim-Hansen wants to take the chickens into the front yard to graze.

“They are happier when they have their freedom,” she said.

Naim-Hansen also grows plants for both her family and the chickens to eat. Among the chickens’ favorites are fava beans, which do not seem to be harmed by their pecking, she said.

“I plant that for me and for them,” Naim-Hansen said.

Find those eggs

Chickens’ reproductive systems respond to light, Blatchford said, meaning they typically lay one egg per day in the summer and slow down their egg production in the winter.

According to Blatchford, if you don’t provide chickens with an actual nesting area, they’ll find the next closest thing.

“If you want them to lay in a particular area, it’s better to give them something they are looking for,” said Blatchford, who recommended a secluded, shaded place for hens to lay.

“If you let them out, they will find a better place to lay than in your coop,” he said, “You will have to do an Easter egg hunt every day looking for eggs.”

A hen can harbor salmonella in her gut and can shed the bacteria in feces. For this reason, Blatchford said chicken owners should always practice good food-handling techniques around fowl — wash your hands.

“People should be aware that could be an issue,” Blatchford said, “but they shouldn’t be scared.”

Blatchford attributes Davis’ interest in backyard chickens to the local food movement and their relatively low maintenance.

“I wasn’t entirely happy with how factory farm chickens were kept,” said Naim-Hansen, who grows much of her own food. “I wanted high-quality eggs.”