Tacoma Urban Chicken Coop Tour 2011

In the paper the other day there was a picture that caught my eye.  It was a story about an upcoming chicken coop tour in Tacoma.  2 things immediately caught my eye.  Chickens & FREE Admission.   🙂

In order to get the map for the tour we first had to drive to the Garden Sphere in Tacoma.  I thought this was a very clever idea on the part of the store owners.  If they had simply put the addresses online we would have never gone into the über cute store and seen all they had to offer. Plants, baby chicks, garden seeds, super cute garden boots… you name it… they had it.  It’s exactly the type of store I’d be willing to part my money with (and that’s saying a lot).  Small, local and friendly.

The thing I liked most about the colored coop map (besides the awesome directions) were the pictures of the individual coops.  Since we were short on time it was nice to be able to pick out the ones we were really interested in rather than having to drive all over town and hope for the best.

My hands down favorite was the first one we visited.  It looked like it was right off of the pages of a magazine. The owners were friendly and it obvious they had put a lot of time and effort into the upkeep of their yard and chicken house.

The living roof was pretty cool too.

Next on the list was the red barn looking coop on Visscher Street.

I think what I liked best about this tour stop (besides the coop) was their property was situated right in the middle of a typical city neighborhood.  If you were driving by… you’d have no idea this family had chickens…

Or a garden in their backyard.

As I was walking up to their raised garden beds I noticed something a little peculiar about their vegetables…

THEY.WERE.ENOURMOUS… And one thing immediately came to mind.  Tagro.  So I complimented the homeowner on his bountiful crop and asked if he used Tagro.  He said he used “mostly Tagro” to grow his vegetables.  Wowza!  If you don’t know what Tagro is… it’s basically bio-solid waste from the city of Tacoma that has been treated.  Humanure at it’s finest.  And it’s FREE if you’re willing to shovel it yourself! 🙂  Holy Garden Crack… I gotta get me some of that!

After the giant vegetable/chicken tour The Girl and I headed to our last stop of the day…

This guy had built his coop out of 90% recycled and repurposed materials.

He had built two of them in fact.  Pretty neat-o if you ask me.  If I was a chicken I’d totally want to live in one of these.  Even though this property didn’t have a ton of landscaping or giant vegetables growing in the back yard… The chicken owner was very friendly.  He happily answered people’s questions… and I thought that was pretty cool in itself.  If people came into my backyard to look at my Eglu I’d probably just head inside and lock the door until they left.  So to stand out there for 6 hours and talk to people is pretty amazing if you ask me.

As we were leaving the recycled materials coop… The Girl pointed out his neighbor’s yard (how did I miss that?).  It was an edible front yard… and the first of its kind I had ever seen up close and in person.  Besides the standard herbs I spotted raspberries, strawberries, squash, lettuce and peas.

It totally makes me want to dig up my front yard and open a u-pick farm… Although I’m sure The Handsome Husband would have something to say about that. 🙂

All in all… a great event!