Hay River community garden hosts its first ‘open coop’

Hay River’s community garden is hosting a special open house this weekend to showcase recent upgrades and introduce locals to its new chicken coop.

Rhiannon Kuzmin, vice-president of the Hay River Community Garden Society, said this is the first event of its kind the group has organized. She said there has been an “overwhelming” amount of interest from people wanting to care for the chickens.

“We have been doing a lot of improvements to our physical location,” she told Cabin Radio. “We just wanted to have an open house – or we’re calling it an ‘open coop’ – for people to come down and see the chickens, because that’s something that not a lot of people have up here in Hay River.

“We’ve never had chickens before. We’ve never done anything like this. This was the first year we’ve had them, since May. We didn’t really know how it was going to go – if the public was going to be interested or if there would be an uptick in that – but we ended up doing a callout to everyone the community.”

A poster for the weekend event.

During the open house, which runs from 12-2pm on Sunday, September 7, people can learn about sustainable gardening practices and ways to care for chickens.

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Over the past year, the garden has undergone significant changes: additional raised beds, an enhanced greenhouse and a newly constructed fence, which Kuzmin said was a “big thing” for the society. The garden has 20 greenhouse beds and 30 outdoor beds.

A chicken coop featuring 14 Leghorn hens was built with a $12,000 contribution from the Albert and Gladys Eggenberger fund, while Arcan Construction provided materials and helped build it through the Yellowknife Community Foundation.

The Hay River Sunrise Rotary Club donated $1,000 to cover the costs of chicken feed for the season.

Inside the chicken coop at Hay River’s community garden. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio

Since May, 24 residents have signed up by donation to care for the chickens one day each week, handling tasks like feeding, watering, cleaning and collecting eggs. Volunteers receive eggs as a reward for their efforts. So far, 10 people are on a waitlist to register.

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“Any money coming in is immediately going out for the improvements,” Kuzmin said, adding the society continues to look for funding options through potential grants and fundraising. A 2022 duck race raised a pool of money that helped revamp the garden.

“We’ve been doing a lot of improvements and we’ve been working really hard to make our grounds nicer,” she said, noting another reason to hold an open house is to shed the impression that the garden is “kind-of hidden in the industrial area of Hay River.”

“There’s a lot of people that don’t even know we have a community garden,” said Kuzmin, “don’t even know where we are, or how it works.”