Two Sides of the Same Coin
Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, Washington Post
Two items out of Sustainorgania are making the rounds on the food sites today. The first, more attention-grabbing one, on The Atlantic Food Channel, has Bill and Nicolette Hahn Niman (of Niman Ranch fame) calling on the Obamas to become chicken farmers. "The idea may sound far fetched, but is it, really? At the dawn of the 20th century, chickens were literally everywhere." The Bay Area ranchers would like to see "a flock of egg-laying hens for the White House grounds."
This comes, of course, on the heels of the news about the new White House vegetable garden.
As Eater cleverly put it, "Give those locavores an inch and they'll take a mile.... Also everywhere at the dawn of the 20th century? Typhoid and steamboats."
The collective eye-rolling in the food blogosphere at the Nimans' expense neatly illustrates the point of the second story, a profile of food activist Dave Murphy in the Washington Post:
Three years ago, he left a good job in Washington to return home to Iowa, where a Minnesota corporation was threatening to build a nearly 5,000-head hog farm near his sister's home. "This is not something abstract," he said. "This is about people I know. People I went to high school with. When you speak to people from Berkeley or Manhattan, people on the coasts, it's a really different ballgame."
While Murphy shares the same goals as coastal folks like the Nimans, the Post says, "Iowans aren't vulnerable to the same charges of elitism as chefs in Berkeley or New York's Hudson Valley, and they have seen firsthand the consequences of factory farms."
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5 Comments:
Livestock is just too much hassle for 99% of people, you have to feed on a schedule, clean up excrement, and have a butcher to do the dirty work for you (could be you, I guess, but I doubt you would want to). And what would happen if your chickens catch a disease?
Veggies on the other hand, for many of them you can just plant and forget, pick them when they are ready to be picked and cook away...
claypot at 1:15AM on 03/26/09
Oh for Christ's sake, can the food elite please lay off on the First Family for awhile. Alice and The Gang got their garden, although they failed in their rather dogged attempts to oust Cristeta Comerford from the chef's position in the White House kitchen. (A fact decried by Marian Burros in February's Gourmet. Her exact wording "the Obamas have not accepted (Waters') offer of “kitchen cabinet” advisory services and are not getting rid of their current executive chef" but the installation of the Obama's chef from Chicago, Sam Kass, in a lesser role is seen as "an accomplishment.") I don't want to see chickens or goats or cattle feeding on the White House lawn, and I'm one of those Berkeley nutjobs referenced above.
maered at 1:58AM on 03/26/09
It's not a terrible idea. Chickens are terribly easy to keep...they're the goldfish of animal husbandry. They'll find their own food and rid your garden of pests in the process (although if you want lots of eggs, you need to supplement with Layer's mash), they go in to the shed on their own at dusk, and the eggs are amazing.
We have six little ones, which we keep as pets and thus spoil (no raisin is safe near them). They're excellent at getting rid of leftovers as well.
But as I've said elsewhere, good layers are not good eaters (yes, snicker away). The chicken in your canned soup or frozen pot-pie is most likely processed layer meat. They're very stringy and tough, and need hours of cooking to make them edible (the point of a layer breed is that all the protein goes toward making eggs, not muscle and fat).
NotAmerican at 2:56AM on 03/26/09
Why are those who promote self-sustainability and fresh local food considered elite?????? Isn't that what everyone did before the advent of industrial farming and grocery stores? What is wrong with having a garden and chickens? If you lose your job, you still have food. How anyone could have anything negative to say about choosing the farmer's market over the grocery store is beyond my comprehension. The Obama's are setting a wonderful example.
Barbieri13 at 12:52PM on 03/26/09
@barbieri; I agree. A good layer will give you eggs, on average, every other day. A flock of 12 will serve you and your neighbours quite well. Even our six are enough for my family, and you've never seen a yolk so orange. The expense is minimal, and our kids love them. Even the dog is protective of our clucky girls. I think it also teaches them a valuable lesson about where food comes from...we also have a vegetable garden which they 'help' me out with, and I think (I hope) that it teaches them that food worth eating is hard work, but worth that work. I don't deny them chocolate or sweets, but I want them to understand that good food doesn't just happen.
The Boy and I are building a brick barbeque this spring. We'll see what he can do on it.
NotAmerican at 2:11AM on 03/27/09