Letter from Hen Waller » The Chickens.

Eastside Egg is ready to roll . . . finally!

Patrick — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:23:33 +0000

It was almost a year ago that our chicken co-op, the Eastside Egg Co-operative at Zenger Farm, began its volunteer operations. A lot has happened since then, and the general consensus is that co-operatively tended chickens are a heck of a great idea. But there’s one thing that hasn’t happened, or it hadn’t until this [...]

Eastside Egg in the news

Patrick — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:11:10 +0000

We’re pleased to announce that our egg co-operative has been featured in Edible Portland, a local food and culture magazine that is available for free in groceries and farmers markets in the Portland area. If you can’t see the actual magazine, you can read the story on Edible Portland’s web site.

In conjunction with this [...]

Greener Pastures

site admin — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:45:16 +0000

Photo by Laleña Dolby

A couple weeks ago, we gathered at the farm on a rainy morning to move the chickens to a new field. Since the coop still does not have its wheels, this involves a large-ish group of people doing some heavy lifting. In this case we picked up the coop with the chickens [...]

Eastside Egg

Patrick — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:19:12 +0000

Our co-operative egg farm, now known as Eastside Egg Co-operative, has been up and running for about a month now. We took delivery of 50 fine yearling Barred Rocks the day before summer Solstice, and the rest is hen-story.

The coop seems to be working just fine. There are some kinks to work out, some [...]

Coop Raisin’

Patrick — Mon, 28 May 2007 02:53:05 +0000

We built a chicken coop today. It’s part of the volunteer-run egg farm that we are starting. We had a fun and hugely productive work party out at Zenger Farm and framed out our coop in about four hours. There are a lot of little things to finish on it, but even so– it’s amazing [...]

Chicken Herders Wanted

Holly and Patrick — Sat, 05 May 2007 04:13:36 +0000

Our steering committee

Things have been pretty quiet on this blog lately, but we’ve been keeping busy, and we have some urban-agriculture-related news that some of our Portland-area readers may find of interest.

We’re starting a co-operative egg farm here in Portland.

The farm will take place in co-operation with the 47th Avenue Farm CSA [...]

Bye Bye, Birdie.

Holly and Patrick — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:49:00 +0000

Our apologies for taking so long to make this follow-up post. We are so grateful for all of the supportive comments we received in response to our chicken dilemma. We did not respond to most of them individually because we were embroiled in the rapidly evolving events, but we read and appreciated them all.

Since [...]

Flying the Coop?

Holly — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:05:36 +0000

Our initial reaction was to give up. Our goal is not to prove a point, not to make people unhappy, nor, even, to win. Our goal was to nurture animals, to nurture ourselves, and hopefully to add some of that good experience to others' [...]

Gettin’ laid

Patrick — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 23:46:15 +0000

oo! oo! the first egg from our new hens!

for comparison, the new egg is above. Our first egg from our last batch of hens (which egg was delivered unto us in February, 2004) is shown below.

Ready, set . . . lay!

Holly — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 23:18:44 +0000

High summer, indeed. Here we are in the longest days of the year, and apparently they aim to be the hottest, as well. Yesterday hit 105°, and currently it is 85° inside. The house is gloomy with our passive cooling measures — blinds and windows shut this morning, after the night spent wide open. It’s [...]