The last couple of months
have been full of the hustle and bustle of searching for a house of our own.
While patiently searching for the right home, I took a stab at my first chicken
coop. I say first because I began with the intention of giving it a new home once complete. It was one of those things that you do, just to see if you can do it.
While the finished product
wasn’t all that attractive, it was a good springboard for similar undertakings
in the future. In the end, the finished product was just what a kind Chapel Hill
police officer needed to house her bullied pullets.
To see how others in the area
house their chickens Liz and I happily took part in the Bull City Coop Tour this weekend – a self-guided tour of chicken coops in, and around,
Downtown Durham. We started with our regular trip to the farmer’s market, but
this time with an added purpose. We wanted to add to our OKC emblazoned bag –
already half full of squash, tomatoes, peppers and beans – a treasure map. It
might as well been a treasure map as it held the locations of the 9 coops on
the tour.
While we didn’t make it to
each of the 9 locations, we did enjoy seeing how others approached housing
their hens. We were surprised to find ourselves visiting a coop at the historic Duke
Homestead. Another location, just blocks from the house we moved from two weeks ago, housed a pair of very social/humorous hens, raised by a young girl as a
school project.
At one stop we even got an education on aquaponics, which couples plants and fish in a
re-circulating system to cultivate the crops. In this particular case the
result was an excellent mint tea provided by the owner. It was a nice way to spend the morning.
Now to check with the HOA to
make sure we can have chickens of our own in our new neighborhood. If all goes
well maybe we'll be a stop on next year’s tour.
