Acadia Coombs, 11, holds one of her 30 chickens in their new home in North Harpswell. Acadia sells their output under the name Chipper Chickens Farm Fresh Eggs. Robin Casey photo Imagine you had 30 pet chickens.
Could you tell them apart and call each by name? Acadia Coombs can. The pint-sized 11-year-old powerhouse sells organic eggs from her family’s backyard farm along Harpswell Neck Road. She’s been an excited egg entrepreneur since she was 6 years old, even though she doesn’t like to eat eggs.
This spring, her father, Bob Coombs, owner of builder R.L. Coombs Inc.
, was constructing what passing motorists speculated was either a garage or a small house. Turns out it’s the Taj Mahal of chicken coops. Acadia’s pets now have a spacious 14-by-48-foot area enclosed by chicken wire with an attached modern “barn” that’s not like an old-fashioned red barn.
This one, with its mono-slope roof, is adjacent to the entrance to Barnes Point Road, and Acadia can ride her bike from her home on nearby Walini Way to feed her fowl. Joining the chicken menagerie is Henry, a portly New Zealand rabbit who was raised with the chickens and snuggles with them at night. Three Rouen ducks are happy paddling in a pond with a fountain on the 1-acre roadside property.
On Mother’s Day, the family added twin Nigerian dwarf goats, Ruby and Emerald. Acadia is named after Maine’s national park, of course, and like any diligent poultry farmer, she has compiled spreadsheets with informatio.