By popular demand, I’ll be posting freelance reporter Tad Sooter’s stories from the Bainbridge Islander on this blog. His Islander stuff is currently found nowhere else but on the printed page.
This week, Tad explores a new book about Bainbridge’s chicken enthusiasts.
What Came First – Chickens or Their
Stories?
By Tad Sooter
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – Two friends met by chance downtown this summer
and ― as often happens when imaginative minds come together ― a
plan was hatched.
“Many of the creative things I’ve done in my life have
originated from things I’ve talked about on Winslow Way,” said
Nancy Rekow.
Rekow is an island publisher, poet and writing consultant. The
friend she bumped into that day was Jo Ann Trick, organizer of the
yearly Tour de Coup, who floated the idea for an anthology of
stories by chicken owners.
Their collaboration became “Chicken Raising Tales,” a collection of 23 stories by chicken enthusiasts featured in the first three years of the Bainbridge Tour de Coop. The stories were compiled by Trick and Rekow and published by NW Trillium Press, which Rekow owns with her partner Everett Thompson. The book will debut with a reading and signing event on Nov. 27.
In “Chicken Raising Tales” contributors tell of the joys and trials of backyard farming, of eccentric chicken abodes built and lessons learned from chicken husbandry. In 56 pages there are enough heartfelt stories to satisfy peckish readers.
