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July 02, 2008 02:17 PM UTC
25 Comments
That article would have worked great in The Onion. That’s really depressing that this isn’t a joke.
and de-centralizing our food and distribution systems is a good thing, actually. I get the snark and all that, but a highly centralized food system is more vulnerable to disease (i.e. how many billions of tomatoes were just tossed, now the FDA doesn’t even know if tomatoes were the culprit) and to intentional mischief.
Similarly, more people and more communities producing energy at a local level, recycling and reusing water (rather than feeding it from hundreds of miles away–from my end of the state–to feed your thirsty cities) etc. is the way we have to move in the future if we don’t want all the wheels to fall off the apple cart–or the chicken shit wagon–as it were.
Seems like this post is a tad bit over-reactive. Save the vitriol for other issues, please.
…and then there are those like the Gazette, and you appranetly, who figure whatever happens, happens.
Personally, I’d prefer we don’t revert to a 3rd world lifestyle. Having each person raise their own food is incredibly inefficient and that inefficiency leads to a less productive economy.
This is promoting the regression of society.
I wasn’t really proposing anything of the kind, and I find the term pejorative. There are certainly other ways to move toward a more decentralized system than having everyone produce their own food. I just think that many people who immediately attack any attempt to do so as “Third World” are over-reacting.
Being able to take care of our needs as close to where we live as possible, especially for essentials like food, water, and energy, enhances our security.
It does in that it reduces risk of massive destruction from things like disease at large central farms, but it doesn’t in that it makes local food supplies vulnerable to natural disaster. So in addition to losing your house to that flood, you also lose your ability to eat.
But still, the editorial was talking specifically about things like raising chickens in the middle of the city, and that’s an exceedingly bad idea. Asians raise chickens in the middle of their cities, and they have avian flu crossing over to humans. We don’t.
When I lived in a city, I was glad that there weren’t a bunch of ‘farm’ animals around. Now that I live in a rural area, there are cows across the street and I’m OK with it. I raise a lot of my own fruit and vegetables, and I buy most of my meat, cheese, diary (and wine and beer) locally. I help my neighbors and the quality far surpasses what I would by able to buy at King Soopers or Whole Foods. Its actually cheaper than the later, for good naturally-raised meat and diary, etc.
But I stand by the wisdom of more local production. Clearly the idea would be to secure the vulnerabilities on either end–from both overly centralized and decentralized, which is why I think its entirely wrong to call the effort to do this as ‘regressive’ and ‘Third World.’ I think that figuring some of this out (and again, I’m not really supporting a chicken hutch behind every city brownstone–more like community garden models, local CSAs, etc.) is a step forward, not backwards. That was my point that I attempted but apparently failed to make.
Sorry, but there’s no logical reason to believe that allowing a few hens is going to lead to avian flu. And believing that this is somehow going backward is nonsense too – are we going to take down our fences, live with scores of people on each suburban lot, get rid of running water and not employ veterinary medicine too?
That said, I don’t think most backyards will make for good minifarms with goats, sheep and roosters, what with all those chemical Stepford lawns and some seriously small plots. My yard would be okay for that but I don’t see it working in any subdivision that’s less than 30 years old.
doesn’t mean everyone will. My guess is that only a small percentage of people would add chickens to their backyard.
But then I have a barn bigger than most houses and live on a small suburban ranch.
Fresh eggs are great. I have actually had Green eggs and Ham. Sam was wrong, they taste like any other egg.
The green eggs come from our auraconas.
When my wife first got the auraconas, and brought the green eggs into the house and started to cook them I asked her what it was. She said they’re eggs from the new auracona’s I got at the auction.
I thought she said Anaconda’s , and I informed her in no uncertain terms that I not only wouldn’t eat them, I vowed never to go into the barn again until she got rid of them.
About 5 minutes later when she stopped holding her sides and gasping for air from laughing, she explained that auracona are a type of chicken, and she had bought 3 new laying hens.
Well of course I knew that, but I didn’t want to spoil the joke.
That’s hilarious. Do you harvest the goose and duck eggs too? My mom grew up on a ranch in east Texas, so we had a revolving cast of chickens, ducks and rabbits in our suburban Denver backyard. Even for a few years a pair of chinchillas, picked from hundreds rescued by the Humane Society from an unscrupulous suburban furrier.
Just saw that on the History Channel last week.
channel, I could have saved myself the embarrassment, but I was blogging on Pol’s with you guys.
while the do there best “fly away home” goose call impressions, and the ducks are residents of our pond.
Don’t we already all grow our own marijuana?
What’s wrong with extending the theory to the occasional tomato?
it’s not just allowed here, it’s required.
At least we’re not at the point where the Gazette is getting nostalgic over the Donner Party.
Or the incident celebrated by Colorado Pols in their signature graphic:
that quote is about Alferd Packer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A…
The Donner Party were the first of trend setting dieters from California.
that’s why I said “or,” it’s another example of self-sufficient Westerners dealing with adversity when times get tough.
When I lived in LA in one particular house, our neighbors were Middle Easterners. Can’t remember the origin. Anyway, they kept a couple of sheep for slaughter at the back property line. The Sepulved area used to be large lots and a lot of suburban farming after the war. (Think Bing Crosby and “San Fernando Valley”, 1944.)
We complained to zoning. Turns out the law had a bit about said critters being, I think, 100 feet from any dwelling. The sheep were at about 110, IIRC.
NOT good neighbors.
Denver allows a few hens (no roosters) in backyards, too.
http://calendar.botanicgardens…
And Ft. Collins is about to join the party as well.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9…
So, while we sophisticates in Denver may like to look upon our El Paso County brethren as bumpkins, in this case we are just as bumpkinish 🙂
Nothing wrong with the law as is. It’s the Gazette’s call to expand backyard ranching to include, at a minimum, roosters, pigs and goats — and damn the effects on neighbors or property values — while lauding the urban barnyards as an effective response to trying times as county services shut down left and right. No one’s arguing with fresh eggs or tomatoes ripe on the vine. But if the Gazette cheers the appearance of streetcorner apple vendors, you can expect more comparisons with the policies of Herbert Hoover.
and Oliver