Backyard chickens - trend or no trend?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 7:38am.
The Web is all atwitter about backyard chickens, which The Economist says constitute a growing trend in urban areas all across the U.S. Judith Haller of Austin, Tx., for example said she was watching Martha Stewart one day and became envious of Martha's little flock. She bought some of her own chickens, and now has 13 hens keeping her garden both weed-free and fertilized.
And she gets eggs, too. In April, as part of Austin’s first Funky Chicken Coop Tour, she hosted 637 visitors. And Ms Haller is just one of many, many, many people who have joined the backyard flock movement, according to The Economist article, which is here: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=478044&story_id=13856313
Oh, please! says Jack Shafer, posting on Slate.com. Backyard chickens are a "trend" cooked up by the media. Stop it already with the chickens. They're time-consuming, they're filthy and they don't cuddle, according to Shafer.
He quotes experienced chicken-owner Jean Moore, who told the Albuquerque Journal in July of 2003, "On the warmth and entertainment scale a chicken is better than a snake, but not as good as a cat." Shafer"s passion is for outing "trends" which he believes are media-manufactured pap. His backyard chicken expose is here: http://www.slate.com/id/2218390/
It was bit surreal Tuesday in Harrisburg when a group of tobacco farmers and their supporters gathered in the Capitol rotunda to protest a new tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars. There were Amish growers facing squarely into the media's cameras while their English counterparts told the gathered reporters that a tax increase would cut tobacco consumption, which would hurt their farming operations. Republican legislators railed against the imposition of any new tax, even a state tax on smokeless tobacco products, and even though Pennsylvania is the only one of the 50 states to not tax chewing tobacco, snuff and loose tobacco. A story about the rally is in tomorrow's edition of Lancaster Farming.
