In Choi Chatterjee and Omer Sayeed’s Altadena backyard, beehives produced pounds of honey, copious amounts of fruit and vegetables were harvested, and hens laid plenty of fresh eggs. A couple of pygmy goats and a pair of 100-pound tortoises, Layla and Manju, roamed the urban farm, keeping the weeds trimmed, the compost turned and the soil alive with microbes, much to the delight of the hundreds of visitors who have enjoyed free tours and home-cooked meals since the couple began offering them in 2020.
Passersby were often drawn to the Chatterjee-Sayeed residence since the lush butterfly-filled parkway next to their home has served as a free communal garden for more than a decade. Neighbors were welcome to stop by for persimmons, guavas, nopal pads, herbs and varieties of citrus. “We’d get 100 to 200 pomegranates and just hand them out to whoever was walking by,” said Chatterjee, who is co-director of the Urban Ecology Center at Cal State LA. “It was just bustling with life.”
That all changed when the Los Angeles wildfires, supercharged by high winds and the effects of climate change, broke out on 7 January and the couple lost their 102-year-old home and beloved backyard farm. Although their goats, tortoises and some fish from their pond were saved from the blaze, it wasn’t possible to evacuate their chickens, rare pigeons or the chatty Amazon parrot they rescued nine years ago.
