Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Out With The Old, In With The New: 4th Annual Pulletpalooza!

The 3rd installment of Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza is now over, and by all reasonable measures, it was a rousing success.  We had ten coops on the tour this year – five from Bryan, and five from College Station and surrounding areas.  Attendance ranged from just one or two folks at some of our furthest-out locations to almost fifty visitors at our central locations.

At a rough guess, about 2/3rds of our visitors were already chicken owners, either from surrounding areas (Calvert, Hearne, etc.) or were new chicken owners from Bryan and College Station and had not felt comfortable approaching us to be on the tour this year – newsflash for you folks in this category, we’re going to be inundating you with requests to join next year, so you may as well save yourself some time and energy by just agreeing to be hosts next year.

And speaking of next year, we discovered that we were receiving a lot of advertising via word-of-mouth this year; we will be doubling down on this kind of marketing effort next year, and will be pursuing some other possibilities, as well.

We have decided that the timing this year was just about perfect, so from now on, the Sunday before Thanksgiving will be our permanently scheduled date.  After an embarrassing back-and-forth on the time, we have discovered that 1-5 pm is the best possible time of day to hold the event, as well.  So, let there be no more confusion (particularly on our own part) about when the event is going to be.

4th Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza:  Sunday, November 24th, 2013 from 1-5 p.m.
A few key changes are in the works for next year:
  • As soon as we get commitments from a family to host, we will also be giving them a sign-in roster, a handful of advertising flyers, and a very brief outline of expectations.  We’re still all about talking to folk and being friendly, but we want to also make sure everybody is communicating with each other, too.
  • We plan on having at least one meet-up of host families in the months preceding next year’s event.  Most of us know each other – but not all of us do, and in future years, it will be even less likely that we will know each other (think 30+ coops on the tour – it is becoming a real possibility).
  • This year for sure:  bumper stickers and t-shirts.
  • More intentional and widespread media efforts – we love KEOS,  but we’d like to hit some of the other media outlets a little harder next time.
  • Music?  Refreshments?  Standardized signage?  Somehow get the San Diego Chicken involved?  Any other ideas or suggestions will be entertained regardless of merit.

Otherwise, we’re still just Big Myrtle’s place, and a bunch of other fine feathered friends and folk.

Friday, November 16, 2012

3rd Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza!

3rd Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza!

Sunday, November 18th from 2-6 pm! 

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO VISITED!

And thanks to all the host families!

We'll be putting a "best of tour" survey out on this site tomorrow night, so you can vote for your favorite.

Thanks again, everybody!



Special thanks to Brazos Feed & Supply for their continued advocacy and support.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

3rd Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza!

The 3rd Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza has been scheduled for Sunday, November 18th, 2012, and we couldn’t be more excited.  TEN COOPS are on the tour this year!

We have gone from an exceptionally modest tour a couple of years ago to a legitimate Brazos Valley happening.

This year, we have moved the date from early December to the middle of November for a couple of reasons – first and foremost, it seemed that no matter how hard we tried to avoid it, we seemed in previous years to unavoidably run into scheduling conflicts with Christmas festivities, and this simply will not do.  Second, we would like to have this event occur when many of the coops on our tour will also be able to feature elements of the fall garden to help demonstrate how seamlessly chickens fit into the typical homescape.  If any frost hits local pumpkins, it likely won’t happen before we get a chance to show off our hens.

More information, particularly about possible sponsor discounts and planned Pulletpalooza merchandise/advertising gimmicks will be forthcoming.

3rd Annual Brazos Valley Pulletpalooza:  A Great Place to Meet Chicks!