With a cluck-click here, and a cluck-cluck there

This year’s Tour De Coops is going countywide thanks to the collaborative efforts of The Lyons Farmette and Yummy Yards. Bookending this year’s EAT LOCAL! Week, The Lyons Tour de Coops happens August 28, with Boulder’s coop tour happening at the rooster tail-end on September 4.

The tour is FREE! For four hours on August 28 and September 4 local chicken enthusiasts will have an open house—er, open coop—so you can poke around and see what all the cluckin’ is about. Learn how easy and fun it is to raise chickens, and meet your local homesteaders.

For the past three years, Betsy Burton of The Lyons Farmette has organized the Tour in her neck of the woods. Laura Ruby of Yummy Yards has organized the Boulder tour for the past two years. After Laura went to the first Lyons Tour, she was inspired to get her first coop.

“This year I had my first chicken-sitting job and have noticed all the coop co-ops cropping up,” she said. “Coops that have seven families, each taking a day to care for the chickens and share eggs.”

Last year when her coop was on the tour, she estimated she had close to 200 visitors. Laura noted:

“When I was buying chicken feed at Boulder Horse and Rider a few weeks back, I commented about how much chicken feed she had stocked. The storeowner replied that it’s flying off the shelves and that she’s even had requests for goat feed. There’s definitely a movement happening, people taking greater and greater steps at increasing their self-sufficiency and knowledge of where their food comes from. I’ve had at least five people come up to me to let me know they were inspired by last year’s Tour and that they received their first chicks this past spring.”

Come check out what local homesteaders are doing. Get inspired to start raising your own chickens, goats, bees, pigs, or culinary garden. You can download and print a map of the Tour De Coops, as well as a flyer featuring the Barnyard Couture art of local artist John Lace, here.

EAT LOCAL! Week

The Tour de Coop dates hug Transition Colorado’s EAT LOCAL! Week, set for August 27 through September 4, which is bringing Joel Salatin, BALLE‘s Michael Shuman and Slow Money’s Woody Tasch to town to chat it up about the beauty and benefits of fostering local food production.

In addition to the Tour de Coops, EAT LOCAL! Week features a number of special events, including “The Great GMO Debate,” Bicycle Tour de Farms and lunchtime brown bag panel discussions on various challenges and opportunities within our local foodshed.

For more on EAT LOCAL! Week’s events, check out EatLocalGuide.com under the “EAT LOCAL! Campaign” section

“Did you know there are more chickens living on earth than people?” and other fun chicken facts:

1. So that the yoke does not stick to the egg shell, a mother hen turns her egg about 50 times each day.

2. A hen can lay about 300 eggs each year.

3. In the chicken capital of the world, Gainesville, Georgia, it is illegal to eat chicken with a fork.

4. Chickens can run at a speed of nine miles per hour.

5. There are over 150 varieties of domestic chickens.

6. Chickens were domesticated about 8,000 years ago.

7. A hen can live up to 20 years. She will lay eggs her entire life, with the number decreasing every year from year one.

8. It takes a hen 24 to 26 hours to lay an egg.

• More chicken facts here and here!

The Tour is sponsored by Boulder Valley Homesteading, Transition Colorado‘s EAT LOCAL! Week, Mile High Organics, The Lyons Farmette,  YummyYards, elephant journal, and Visionary Values.