Totally Texas -- A peep at the coops

East Dallas Urban Coop Tour

Stonewall Jackson Elementary School

5828 E. Mockingbird Lane,

Dallas, TX 75206

#

For a city known more for big business, big oil and big hair, Dallas has become “a hot bed of chicken keeping.” That’s from Mariana Greene, Dallas Morning News Garden and Home editor, who brought her “Tales from the Hen House” to the Dallas Arboretum earlier this year.

At this weekend’s East Dallas Urban Coop Tour -- A Peep at the Coops -- those of us who keep chickens, who are thinking of keeping them, or just remember the joys of hunting fresh eggs with our grandmothers, can get an inside look at what it takes to have farm-fresh eggs in our own backyards.

This year’s annual tour of 13 East Dallas chicken raisers is this Sunday, May 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., rain or shine. (After all, hens don’t take days off for rain.)

Headquarters for the tour is at the Gardens and Outdoor Science Lab of Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, 5828 E. Mockingbird Lane, just east of Central Expressway. The only charge is $5 for maps of the sites, available the day of the tour. Cash and credit cards accepted, and the maps can be shared by members of the same tour group.

The tour’s site, ww.apeepatthecoops.org/, states the first 750 people to buy maps also receive a reusable bag from Central Market with magazine, coupons, chicken info, and more.

Proceeds from maps, as well as from a raffle for a mobile chicken coop and sale of T-shirts, benefit the Stonewall Gardens. I first got to know these wonderful teaching gardens as a volunteer tutor at Stonewall more than a decade ago. The local Stonewall community values them so highly that when the Dallas ISD cut funding for the garden instructor position, volunteers established a non-profit organization for their support.

Also at the gardens, local chicken expert Dan Probst and Custom Coop Company owner Bob Richie, will present seminars on the hows of raising backyard chickens.

Food trucks from Easy Slider and Rock and Roll Bake Shop will be at Stonewall, so you won’t need to miss Sunday dinner to take the tour.

I haven’t seen a list of sites, but I hope one of them will be Ms. Greene’s own backyard chicken coop, whose bantam hen residents Thelma and Louise posed for the picture accompanying this post.

Please see the Peep at the Coops website for additional information, including parking, sponsors, and the etiquette of visiting the coop sites.

Paging Dr. Seuss

Joe from the Writers Garret asked for readers, as in people willing to read their own writing OUT LOUD in front of the crowd of Saturday window shoppers at a local upscale mall.  No, don't let me go all weaselly about this -- it wasn't any old shopping mall.  It was NorthPark Center in Dallas, Texas.  True confession:  I love NorthPark.  It may be the only shopping mall that houses a collection of stupendous art, right there by the food court, the escalators, everywhere.  It has an indoor duck pond and a children's library.  My family hangs out there when the weather won't let the kids play outside.  It's way, way cooler than your usual shopping venue.  So of course I told Joe I'd read.  I begged him to let me read.  He said yes.  Then I remembered that reading my own words in public makes me want to throw up.

The Garret, a gathering place in East Dallas that offers writing classes and workshops, was one of dozens of  organizations invited to an arts fair at NorthPark that day.  Our booth was next to those for book reviewers and oral storytellers.  Costumed actors from the local Shakespearean theater strolled the halls, with more actors dressed as characters from the books of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss.  You know him, the cat  from Whoville who stole Christmas.  The stage area where those of us who accepted the challenge of Garret writer in residence Joe Milazzo would read was between a Starbucks and the restrooms at that end of the mall.  It was busy with a capital biz.

Fellow writer Gigi asked me to videotape her reading.  Maybe she just took pity on me looking greenish, hoping to distract me from the awful moment when I would look at the paper in my trembling hand and realize the words printed on it made no sense whatsoever.  I concentrated on keeping her in the viewfinder, forgetting that photography rule about keeping track of the background so your subject doesn't end up with telephone poles appearing to sprout from her head or any such nonsense.  She read, I read, others read.  At least our lips moved.  The noise of the crowd overwhelmed the PA system, the shoppers not even slowing to gawk.  Joe said it was good experience, we'd be better for it the next time.

I asked Gigi later whether the video helped her critique her performance.  She said yes.  Except that when she viewed it she couldn't take her eyes off the guy with the Cat in the Hat costume posing behind her.  Dr. Seuss would have had a moral for that.