Greetings from the Austin, Texas outpost of the Urban Dacha! It's been a whirlwind couple of days reconnecting with friends and family, eating piles of delicious tex-mex and remembering the great things about this city. Speaking of great things about Austin, yesterday we went on the 2nd annual Funky Chicken Coop Tour http://fccooptour.blogspot.com/ with our friends Len and Trenn (these pseudonyms may or may not rhyme with the actual names of said friends).
17 chicken keepers from all around the city volunteered to open their backyards and farmyards to the public for the day so that we could see the incredibly variety of coops and chickens that already exist around town.
Some participants are in suburban neighborhoods and keep a few chickens for home egg use and for the joy of keeping chickens.
Others, like Green Gate Farms, keep chickens as well as pigs and goats as livestock and use their eggs as well as their meat as a source of farm income.
Also on our tour, though not on the official route, was Boggy Creek Farm - an gorgeous urban farm that I had never visited before, despite having grown up in Austin.
It was a beautiful, if hot(!) April day in central Texas and it was a joy to be outside, driving around town, soaking in the sun, and talking about agriculture with dear, like-minded friends. It was motivating to see how much can be grown and raised on just a few acres of land inside the city limits of one of my very favorite cities on the planet!
