Chickens and more to see during Tour de Coop

They're good for your garden, eat unwanted insects, and make a pretty good omelet. They are chickens, raised in your own back yard.

Hundreds of Valley residents will rise before the rooster this Saturday to join the third annual Tour De Coops, "A tour of the chicken coops in the City of Phoenix and surrounding areas," says Elaine Berlinger. She plans to join the tour to make a final decision on whether to set up a coop in her own backyard. "I am taking my time making sure that, not only myself, my husband, my children, they all need to participate."

Not everyone is as cautious about buying chickens as Berlinger, says Bryan White, a co-coordinator of this year's tour, "We have some people who go to the State Fair and have a few too many beers and end up with goats!" He says those who take the tour can visit 21 different coop locations across the Valley to see what it's like raising chickens in just about every scenario, "whether it's in a rental situation, someone who's been in the business for years, a school setting, or an upscale home in the center of Phoenix."

Caroline Van Slyke has a plush half acre in the Arcadia neighborhood where she raises French Poulet Rouge chickens direct from Pennsylvania Amish country. "They are prized by restaurants, but we're not selling any. We're keeping them in the freezer." For her toddler, David, it means no hormones, just fresh chicken at the end of the month. At the other end of their lot, the family collects fresh eggs from eight hens housed in a stylish, recycled barn. "I'm a commercial and residential interior designer, so form and function go through everything," says Van Slyke, who says the crystal chandelier and a brightly colored painting inside the hens' barn help set the mood, "Happy chickens lay better eggs."

Not only do they lay fresh eggs, White says the chickens, "Control insects, till the soil and deposit poop releasing rich minerals in the Arizona dirt for a healthy garden."

A job that's for the birds

Like that revelatory moment when martinis start to taste good or summer turns with one chill breeze to fall, that's how chicken farming entered my synapses -- synap, crackle, pop.

Our friends Mitch and Teresa were taking the kids on vacation for a few weeks, leaving their pre-pubescent hens in the hands of several neighbors, who tag-teamed the task. One neighbor one week, another the next. I found our stint with the chickens just long enough to fall in love with the whole concept.

"I want chickens too," said the little guy. So there you go.

Reminds me of disco, the senseless way raising your own chickens has swept the country, except that I think there is something deeper to it, more symptomatic of our current neuroses over the economy. Being self-sustaining seems suddenly very appealing.

All I know for sure is that organic is good, but nonorganic is far cheaper. And a chicken is really a beautiful and impressive bird, particularly when properly seasoned and roasted. In Mitch and Teresa's case, they were simply seeking some fresh eggs in the morning, along with a little hobby for their two boys.

When I first visited, I'd expected something like that yard in "The Wizard of Oz," with chickens running everywhere and gingham-wearing movie stars falling into hog pens, but Teresa and Mitch's backyard was remarkably normal. Nice pool. Cabana. Chicken hut.

There were tomatoes reddening in the garden, and loads of lettuce, which we were told we could feed to the chickens because they love greens. There was also a tub of chicken feed.

Basically, like me, a chicken will eat anything.

Mitch had built the 10-foot-by-10-foot coop. Before the California real estate crash, it alone would've fetched $450,000. Now far less. Because the schools are decent, probably in the $200,000-$300,000 range. Like I said, they have a pool.

Anyway, the first thing a backyard chicken farmer does is acquire some chicks, which apparently -- like Canadian Viagra -- can be bought through the mail.

"As long as the birds are properly packaged and can reach their destination within 72 hours of hatching, the U.S. Postal Service will accept live birds for delivery," a National Geographic article explains.

Foolishly obsessive over all new activities, I picked up a copy of "Recipe for Raising Chickens" by Minnie Rose Lovgreen, who is to chickens what Shakespeare was to broken hearts. "You can test a hen to see if she's laying," Lovgreen writes. "There are two bones (on) either side of a hen's rectum. You see, a hen only has one vent for everything. If you can fit two of your folded knuckles ... ."

OK, let's move on.

Lovgreen advises that it's good to clean the henhouse once a year with lime, and the thought of all these suburban moms and dads spending a Saturday brushing lime paste onto nesting boxes makes me think this chicken-raising phenomenon might last about one more week.

"Another kind of mite gets on the chickens' legs, and their legs get scaly," Lovgreen writes. "Rubbing carbolated Vaseline on their legs at night should help this problem."

There's another activity that will be hugely popular with our suburb's Chardonnay Moms.

Meanwhile, Lovgreen says roosters are necessary if you want fertile eggs, and "it's perfectly all right to eat fertile eggs, or non-fertile eggs. They taste the same. Sometimes people wonder about that." Other things people might have wondered about:

"If two roosters get to fighting hard, the only (thing) I can do is take a board and slap one of them in the face," Lovgreen writes. "I did that one time and the rooster never did know what hit him, so he gave up fighting."

"And the flies," confesses our friend Teresa. "That's another thing.

"The first three weeks of school, I was overwhelmed," she says of caring for the new chickens. "I do hear them more than I thought. I smell them more than I thought.

"But would I do it again? Absolutely."

"I would definitely do it over," says Patti Ann Miles of suburban Chicago, another friend. She has kept chickens since 2004. "We keep a very small garden, but we don't eat from it; we give it to the hens. So it's a nice cycle. And the eggs are truly delicious."

So I'm all ready to order some chickens, though given today's economy, I'm thinking it might be better just to lease a flock: three years with no money down, because you never want to put money upfront on a lease.

Rubber chickens are another option. There's nothing funnier at a retirement party. Presumably, they lay rubber eggs, which I would then use to make my own car tires.

Or a herd of hogs might be good. More vents. Higher yield.

And bacon goes with just about everything.

Leaving the clothes on the line

It’s been raining at night lately, kind of like in Camelot. After a long day at work, in the garden, swimming or doing all of the Important Summer Things, it’s lovely to lie in bed and listen to water pouring from the sky.

Until we start the mental survey: Is the hay covered? Did the boy put his birthday bike in the barn? Did we leave tools, and coffee cups and badminton racquets and hats lying around outside?

“Is the chicken coop door closed?” my husband asks. It is.

“Is the laundry still on the line?” I ask. Yep. It is, too.

We are committed to our clothes line. There’s no reason to use energy to dry clothes when we have the sun to do it for us. It saves money and electricity, reduces pollution and it’s easy.

By most estimates, you’ll save about $100 a year in energy costs by line-drying your laundry. Electric dryers contribute to CO2 emissions in a big way, around 5 pounds per load. There’s no such thing as an Energy Star dryer because they all use about the same amount of energy — too much. Line drying also will make your clothes last longer, they’ll smell nice, and you won’t need to buy dryer sheets.

And you can make your kids hang out the wash.

It’s getting them to take it in that’s the problem.

This time of year, when I get home from work I head straight to the garden. That is, after dropping off my lunch box and changing my shoes, and accepting the ecstatic greetings of the dogs, the mooed hello of the ox and possibly a hug from a kid.

There are generally beans to pick, and broccoli, corn and tomatoes, and plants to check for ripening or for bugs. I like to look around and pick what we’ll eat for dinner. My husband likes to show me what he’s transplanted where — the new greens, the fall potatoes.

By the time I actually get into the house and we get dinner onto the table, it’s getting near dark. That’s about when I think to ask if anyone brought the laundry in.

Too late. What had been dry at 4 is damp with dew at 7, and we might as well leave it out overnight.

“It’s going to be a dry day, low humidity tomorrow,” my husband assures me, sounding positive.

“It won’t matter if no one brings the clothes in again,” I say, because I am negative. And experienced. At my house, clothes have been left on the line for a week, through numerous showers and dryings, so long that they have to be washed again. Is that any way to save money, or the planet?

My children, of course, are extremely busy on the long summer days while I’m at work and my husband is in the garden or the hay fields. The kids have to have picnics, and explore the woods, wade in the stream, and play chess, draw or read in the flower garden. The teen has dance classes and a visiting beau, and the boy has forts and hideouts that need to be built, and a bike he can ride in the woods. They might have to go swimming.

It’s a wonder they have time to hang out the wash, and no wonder at all that they don’t have time to remember to bring it in.

I’ve taken to calling midday from work to remind them, and leaving notes on the kitchen table. One day last week, they took half the clothes off the line and put them into the laundry basket. The other half they left on the line, towels and socks, which they said were still damp.

They were damper still after the midnight downpour. The clothes they had managed to take off the line were also damp, because they left the basket outside.

The next day I left another note, with a list of chores. “Do these things or Risk Certain DEATH!” I wrote. My husband thought it was excessive. I drew a few little hearts around the last word.

But it didn’t matter. It rained twice during the day, a lovely rainwater rinse for the clothes. And another reason to leave them out for another night.