It was supposed to be a chicken-to-egg education, meant to offer a better understanding of where food comes from.
But in May, Sommerfeld's family received a letter from their Southall homeowners association, saying she was breaking the rules, even though the city of Raleigh allows backyard chickens.
Sommerfeld appealed the ruling. After all, her grade was riding on it.
She even got a majority of the homeowners to sign a petition, saying they'd be willing to change the association's covenants to allow chickens in the neighborhood.
But when Sommerfeld presented the petition to the HOA, the board disqualified it, saying the amendment wasn't listed on each page - even though requirement is not stated in the HOA manual.
"The covenants don't say a lot of things," said Dick Stevens, Southall HOA's property manager from Talis Management Group. "Anyone can take a petition around and say they want ice cream every day."
The board has turned the matter over to its attorney, Stevens said. He then requested all further questions from me in writing.
Interest in food science
Sommerfeld wants to study food science in college.
That's because she suffers from celiac disease, which interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. People who have celiac disease cannot tolerate gluten or wheat, so eggs are a staple of Sommerfeld's diet.
That led her to raising chickens for her project. She researched Raleigh's laws, which allow residents to have hens, but not roosters.
In January 2010, she and her father built a wooden chicken coop in their backyard, which is not visible from their street.
She then bought two silver wyandottes and two golden comets and named them after Peanuts characters - Lucy, Sally, Peppermint Pattie and Woodstock. Last summer, they started laying eggs.
Then the HOA letter arrived.
Sommerfeld said she hadn't thought to check the HOA's rules on chickens because the city allowed them.
She pulled out the HOA manual and found that rule along with a provision allowing homeowners to change the covenants.
Sommerfeld spent the entire month of June - three to four hours a night - going door to door in her neighborhood, asking homeowners to sign a petition to change the covenants to allow "up to six hens ... provided hens are kept in a fenced coop, not visible from the front street and are kept for hobby, not commercial purposes."
She showed each neighbor a cover letter, listing the current HOA article and her proposed article. She even had color pictures of her coop and her chickens on the letter, a copy of which she provided me. Of the 400 homeowners, 220 signed her petition - enough to change the covenants.
In July, Sommerfeld showed a PowerPoint presentation on her project to the HOA board, asking to keep the chickens.
The board decided to allow her to keep the chickens until October when her paper was due - then they had to go. Then they disqualified her petition, rather than recording it.
Some of the reasons cited by board member Peggy Koehler were:
The board's lawyer told members to.
The covenants require 85 percent of homeowners to agree to change rules.
Koehler admitted, however, she hasn't read the covenants in a while. The covenants, in fact say "not less than a majority," under Article XIII, General Provisions.
Blocked from speaking
Lawyer Rob Fields, a church friend of the Sommerfelds', is now representing her for free because he can't believe the board's behavior.
"Two hundred twenty people in that neighborhood agreed to a change, and the HOA is ignoring that fact," said Fields.
Sommerfeld said she went to the annual HOA meeting last week to address the board and share Fields' letter stating that she followed the HOA rules for amending the covenants. But board president Keith Randleman wouldn't let her speak, she said, because she was not a homeowner.
Randleman did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
As for Sommerfeld's project, she got a perfect score - 100. She included the HOA drama in her paper.
Sommerfeld says she's not sure she wants her chickens back, but she still wants the covenants changed.
"I feel like it's my duty to follow up on this because the neighbors agreed it should be changed," she said.
