2nd Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza!

“A chicken in every pot, a car in every garage”
--Herbert Hoover, 1928

Gallus gallus, the Red Junglefowl of Southeast Asia, is the ancestor of the modern chicken, having first been domesticated well over 5,000 years ago.  By a curious coincidence, that may be how long ago Herbert Hoover’s economic philosophy was calcified, but that is a subject for a whole other line of inquiry.

Gallus gallus domesticus, the domesticated chicken, can be found in increasing numbers in backyards in virtually every community in the United States these days, and in large measure, the newfound popularity of backyard chickens owes to increasing economic insecurity and a desire to distance our families from the possibility of hunger of the sort evoked by the mere name “Hoover”.  We consider the chicken in every backyard to be far more important than the car on every driveway, and we aim to do something about it.

Enter an annual event of which the proprietors of Big Myrtle’s place are proud participants:

The 2nd Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza.

This upcoming December the 4th, from 2-5 pm, several backyard chicken coops will be on display in Bryan and College Station.  As of the first week of November, we have had four coops confirmed on the tour, and a fifth is a tentative yes.  A sixth coop had to back out due to scheduling conflicts, but we are hoping for more participants to appear over the next few weeks.

This is quite a jump from last year’s showing, where we had a grand total of two coops on the tour.

Details will be forthcoming as we get closer to the event, but it promises to be quite a show.  We have asked participating families to do very little beyond showing their coops, but the emphasis we are making is pretty straightforward:

• Promote backyard chicken-raising and encourage people to build their own coops
• Explain the health benefits of home-raised eggs
• Explain how chickens fit into the life of the home garden

These are pretty simple goals.  And we talk about them… a lot… to anyone who will listen, and to many people who won’t listen.

Pulletpalooza is different, though.  Now, we are asking folk to come and see for themselves, and not just at Myrtle’s place, but in other folks’ backyards, too.  It turns out there are many, many different ways to raise a family-sized flock of birds, and we invite everyone to come see.

If you already have chickens, and would like to be part of the tour, please email us at motheromercy@yahoo.com; if you don’t have chickens, but are curious how raising birds in the middle of the city works, be looking for maps to the coops of Bryan-College Station on the Pulletpalooza website and come on out on Dec. 4th.

See you then!  And

Happy farming!