Nash Farm to expand with 'new' buildings from the 1890s and 1930s

Nash Farm will be getting some important additions, possibly before the end of the year, when the city moves two historic buildings to the property.

The additions to the city's tribute to its agricultural heritage will provide a new entryway to the 5.2-acre property. It also would provide room for educational presentations, according to David Klempin, the city's historic preservation officer.

With those two structures in place and a proposed wrought-iron perimeter fence around the property, Klempin said Nash Farm could host more programs and events.

Other changes could include the hiring of a farm manager.

The last remnant of the historic farm, which Thomas Nash started in 1859 eventually growing to about 640 acres, was bought by the Grapevine Heritage Foundation in 1997 and dedicated in 2008 after it was restored.

Besides the house, the farmstead includes an original barn, a modern barn, a reproduced chicken coop and smokehouse and areas for crops and an orchard.

The complex is dedicated to providing educational experiences, according to Curtis Ratliff, foundation chairman.

Ratliff said having an entry point is important for the farm, which is surrounded by Ball and College streets, and Homestead Lane.

"In order to have programs in the future, we will need to control the access," he said, adding that he is opposed to changing to a system that would require paid access everyday.

"The plan is to have [the farm] open to the public five days a week," Klempin said.

The most noticeable building to be moved to the farm will be the Estill Cottage.

The Estill family was prominent in the Grapevine area for many generations as builders. Klempin said there is speculation, though unconfirmed, that the Estills' built the Nash Farm house. Though it does not look like it now, the small, 732-square-foot Estill Cottage is a smaller, one-story version of the original farm house. Klempin refers to the cottage as "a petite Nash house."

The cottage is estimated to have been built in the 1890s, he said.

"We will be saving a building that is period appropriate" for the farm, Klempin said.

Originally, the cottage sat where Grapevine Lake is now, but was moved closer to town to 708 E. Worth St. Additions were added over decades.

Joseph Teakell, the owner, was planning to tear it down until Klempin realized its historical value. Teakell offered to donate the house to the city, provided it was moved.

Plans are to place the cottage, stripped of its additions, at the corner of Ball Street and Homestead Lane, the southeast corner of Nash Farm, Klempin said.

After the fence is constructed, visitors will enter the farm property by going through the cottage. The property currently has limited fencing.

The cottage also could have a small gift shop and possibly an historical display, he said.

Ratliff said the building "would give a focal point for people to enter and exit" the farm complex.

The other building is not as old as the cottage, but still has a close tie to the area's agricultural past, Klempin said. The building housed the Soil Conservation Office when that office was at 600 S. Main St.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Ratliff said, Texas and much of the mid-portion of the country were in a severe, prolonged drought, an area often called the Dust Bowl.

The federal Soil Conservation Service set up centers in many farming communities "to teach farmers how to better manage their planting methods."

For Klempin, although the building, which he called a "non-contributing structure," does not fit the pre-World War I era of the Nash Farm, its educational nature fits with the farm's missionto educate the public.

"It still is able to tell a story," he said.

Like the cottage, the office was moved and now sits at 409 E. Hudgins St.

It also had additions tacked onto it, which will be stripped away to reveal the original 760-square-foot building. The city has owned the building for some time.

It will be placed in the back of the farm among trees and possibly painted brown to help it blend in.

"It will be oriented to not interfere with the historical nature of the Nash buildings," Klempin said.

The office can be used as a classroom setting for groups visiting the farm, he said. That will free up space in the Nash farm house for historical exhibits.

Life is sunnyside up for Indianapolis chicken owners

Indianapolis may be behind other cities in new trends, but sometimes we catch up.

Food trucks, bike paths -- they took a while, but . . . check.

Now Indy's neighborhoods are becoming hamlets for urban chickens, flocks of a half-dozen or so birds that hunt and peck within the city limits, in areas with sidewalks and stoplights.

It's like "Green Acres" -- only inverted.

One would be hard-pressed to find a greener hobby: The backyard chicken is the pet equivalent of the Toyota Prius.

The chickens sleep on "roosts" in "coops" built in backyards, next to driveways; they give up uneven, all-natural eggs to their sustainability-happy owners.

It's impossible to say how many such folk there are here, but their numbers clearly are growing. On Sunday, Indianapolis will host its first organized tour of backyard chicken coops, a sort of benchmark. More than 100 people have signed up.

Backyard chickens -- mail-order chicks can be obtained in small quantities for the price of a decent hamburger -- are free to walk around and take dust baths at will, as opposed to enduring the caged-up squalor of industrial chicken farms. Their manure makes for great composting; and their eggs couldn't possibly be any more local -- zero fossil fuel is required to transport them from backyard through kitchen door.

Besides, "chickens are fun," says Maggie Goeglein, who has an NPR sticker on the rear window of her subcompact Honda and is working on a degree in Earth literacy from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. "They're not the brightest animals, but they have personality."

Goeglein has four, and as she enters her backyard in the Rocky Ripple neighborhood, they rush her. She smiles. She gives the chickens a fresh tomato and greets them by name.

"If I had a meat flock, I wouldn't name them," she says.

Betty, Roxanne, Ramona and Fern, like most backyard chickens, are being kept for their eggs, which, unlike the uniform supermarket eggs, come in various sizes and shades. Hens lay about one a day. Goeglein and her fiance, Jason Hanna, either eat the eggs or give them away to impressed friends and neighbors.

"The yokes are orange, not yellow," Goeglein notes, "and the egg white has more consistency. They just taste really eggy."

Backyard chickens go back to the Great Depression but petered out with prosperity. The current trend surfaced, as part of the global sustainability movement, five or six years ago, said Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society of the United States.

Today there are backyard chickens even in New York. (Had urban chickens been in vogue in the 1960s, is it possible Oliver Wendell Douglas would have elected not to drag that dingbat wife of his out to the country? Discuss.)

World chaos may have something to do with the backyard chicken escalation. "Whenever the economy is bad, people look more to self-reliance," says Elaine Belanger, editor of Backyard Poultry Magazine. (When Belanger's father-in-law discontinued the bi-monthly journal, in 1982, it had 4,000 subscribers; Belanger re-launched it in 2006, and today its circulation is 85,000).

Madison, Wis., was an early hotbed. Madison, the college town's college town, may have hosted the first Chicken Coop Tour, which is like a garden tour except for chicken coops. That was in 2005.

A coop tour is a sign a city has arrived, backyard chicken-wise. Seattle has one, as does Bend, Ore., and Portland.

But so do Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh and many other not-that-cool cities.

Sun-Kissed Goodness

Picking strawberries was at the top of our “fun” list this weekend.  Friday marked the season opening at Hall Family Farm in Ballantyne.  My 5 and 6-year-olds couldn’t wait to get there and were “yahoo-ing” in the car when they saw signs that it was (finally!) open.

The fun doesn’t stop at picking your own delicious, ripe and ready sun-kissed strawberries.  In fact, that’s just the beginning.  We started out our little adventure by checking out the new colorful chicken coop that houses the birds that are pegged for farm-fresh egg production later this summer.  Next, the kids ran over to the water pump duck-races.  Yikes - watch those fingers!  From there, they raced through the “maze” set up with posts and string.  It was fun for them to run around for a few minutes, but they gave up pretty quickly and ducked between the ropes to get out.

I was eventually able to convince them that we should get going if we wanted to get our hands on some of those strawberries.  The Hall Farm is luckier than some of the others to the south – their damage from the recent hail storms was relatively minor.  We grabbed a cardboard basket and picked a row that looked good.  We made it about halfway down the row before we had several pounds of juicy red strawberries.

We cooled off with a strawberry smoothie and waited for the “Sing-a-Long” hayride to start, a downright adorable addition to the farm’s fun activities.  Farmer Kevin Hall put an ancient tractor to work, pulling kids around in a wagon while a recording (narrated by their daughter) gave a little tour in between classics like “Old MacDonald.”

If I have one regret, it was that I left my 16-month old behind.  He would have loved the hay ride and I would have loved a picture of him on the farm.  I can’t wait to go back to grab more strawberries and a great family photo!