The Backyard Chicken Glamour Campaign

Hey, it's Anne. Just wanted to give you a heads up on the episodes we have planned so you can get all of your questions in. We have two episodes related to parenting. Yes, two. One about U.S. parenting trends. So like... Especially anything that's happening like right now that you're noticing happening in your like Facebook parenting groups, stuff that's happening in schools. Like what seems weird? What seems like a good shift? Like anywhere you want to take that.

And then the other is about the intersection of technology and parenting. And this is a historical look. It's going to be really interesting. But so anything that you see in your life or that you have noticed in terms of a change in how technology and parenting intersect.

We're going to do another on how private equity ruins everything. And I know that sounds kind of outside of our wheelhouse, but we need your questions to give it that special culture study flavor. And then for our continuing series on culture of place. We're going to talk Montana culture with the great Chris Latre and Texas culture with Texas native Sam Sanders. We're also working on an episode about church camp and the questions that have come in so far are so juicy.

As a former church camper, I have a lot to talk about. I cannot wait. Finally, we're tossing around the idea of a Katy Perry episode, but we need really good questions to make this one work. So let us know if you have thoughts there. As always, you can submit your questions for episodes and for the Ask Anne Anything segment at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod. Okay, thanks, and on with the show.

This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson. And I'm Tova Danovich, the author of the book Under the Henfluence. I am a freelance journalist, and I also run the substack A Little Detour. Can we start by talking about your chickens and how you got into them? Yeah. So I think it was 2018 I got chickens. I left New York to move to Portland, Oregon, and it was the top of my list. I remember sitting on the subway with friends.

And they were like, what are you most excited about for Portland? And I'm like, I have the names of my chickens picked up already. But then it took a few years to get to that point. And sadly, I don't have chickens right now because I got divorced and I live in an apartment and they are not good for apartments, as it turns out. I know this is the. hard thing right like and especially if you've written a book about having chickens and you're like

And now because of my life changes, I no longer have chickens. I totally understand this and feel it. But also like in some ways, I think it gives you like some objectivity when thinking about chickens. You're like. If I have them again, like I need to choose my choice. It won't just be.

Like a lineage of chickens. A free-for-all of chickens. Though my chickens, it took me so long to find them the perfect home because, of course, I love them. So they are happily ensconced at a B&B where they get kitchen scraps. every day and arguably might be more spoiled than when they live with me. So I've visited them a few times and the people who run it are very sweet. And they're like, if you ever want your chickens back. So we'll see.

But home buying as a single woman is, you know, a whole thing. When I asked for questions broadly related to like this push. towards growing chickens, like why is the government pushing growing chickens? You know, you suggested that we could talk so expansively about this. Chickens is a gateway to talking about much larger ideas as well. But I also think...

We got a lot of questions that are like, who's buying chickens? Like, if you live in a city, you can't have chickens. And it really depends. Yes. So can you talk a little bit about... the laws about owning chickens and how they vary municipality by municipality? Yeah, they do vary. So check your zoning codes. It was funny when I moved to my old house.

was first looking into getting chickens, I looked up the zoning laws, of course, because I'm like, how many chickens can I have? And the area where I lived, which is just outside of Portland, the zoning code was up to 50 chickens. And I actually... Called the zoning guy because I was like, this is a typo, right? This is an insane number of chickens. And he's like, no, they haven't changed the rules yet. So get still no roosters, but up to.

50 chickens, which is common. Almost every urban area you might be able to have, you know, three to... 50 chickens, but no roosters because of the noise problem. Yeah. Which is it presents difficulties. Right. And like on the island where I live. A lot of people have chickens, but then there are like different community associations that have rules against them, I think because of noise.

It's always been that's been interesting to me. And then like the city of Bellingham, there are a couple places in town where you'll just be walking around and there are free range chickens. Yeah. They're everywhere. I mean, just like chickens on the street. I saw them in Brooklyn when I looked there, you know, in front of a brownstone in someone's little yard. They'd have like the tiny chicken coop and a couple little hens and having a nice time.

In Brooklyn. This isn't chicken, but in my brownstone in... my brownstone no it was not a brownstone and it was not mine in my apartment that was near many brownstones in carroll gardens slightly different the landlord's girlfriend was living in an illegal basement apartment and also she had the rights to the backyard of this building and she From what I can tell was growing illegal bunnies for eating.

But like just like there are lots of things that happen on and off the books legally and illegally. And like so I think that that's something to consider, too. Like sometimes just because it's not. Just because it's not legal doesn't mean people are doing it. I mean, you know, I said I.

Can't have chickens because I'm in an apartment now. But a couple years ago, my first foray into the Substack universe, I did a chicken newsletter. And for one of the pieces, I wrote about people who keep chickens in. their apartments because they wanted to have chickens and didn't have the space and they have chicken diapers. It's a whole thing. I was like, I don't think my chickens want that from me. I don't know that I want that. Yeah, but.

It's a choice. You can make it. I mean, I did bring my chickens inside sometimes for like we had the wildfire smoke here in Oregon, the temperature. So I have gone through weeks of chickens living in the basement. Don't recommend. Not great. Strong not recommend. No. Also, you don't have to own in order to have chickens. It just depends on your landlord being chill with your chickens or not knowing about your chickens. Yeah, exactly. So...

The number of US households that have their own chickens has doubled since 2018. Apparently, between 11 and 12 million households now have chickens. What is your thesis about why this happened? It's not just a bunch of ewes moving to Portland to get chickens. There's something broader going on. No, that would be wild. It's actually just everyone in Portland.

Maybe. But yeah, you know, there was this big push. If you go back far enough, a lot of people start it with Martha Stewart's first book, Entertaining, because she... She loves chickens. She has all these very fancy chickens and she photographed them beautifully and all the colored eggs. So that was kind of the beginning after a long time of, you know, chickens not being around. But it really.

Or being something that like farmers and poor people. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And then it's like, oh, we can do chickens, but fancy. Amazing. So that was kind of a little bit of a beginning. And then, you know, we have the whole. Slow Food, Michael Pollan, Fast Food Nation, where people got very concerned about both how animals were being treated, you know, how far away your food has to come from, all of these things.

And that, you know, the know your farmer, know your food situation. So a lot of people got into just their own food growing generally. I mean, for me was very much where my interest kind of started from. I...

don't like gardening and growing my food. People love it. And I'm like, this is not a thing that brings me joy. There's so much canning. It's also, as someone who used to be a vegetable gardener, the only crop, at least where we lived, that was like any sort of I don't know worth the time and effort that I spent plugging into the vegetable garden was zucchini everything else oh and basil maybe everything else I'm like

i should just buy a carrot at the store or at the farmer's market from professionals um the other thing that i think about is that with

like that push towards more local consumption and getting something like eggs from your local farmer. I think there was a little bit of a revelation that... those eggs do taste different. Yeah, you know, I definitely notice a difference in texture. And I have had this in particular, like, I think you're not going to notice it if you're going to the grocery store and buying.

The most expensive eggs that you can find there. Like there is not a big difference if your hens are raised on pasture. I think that's the biggest differentiator. But when I go to those hotel buffets and they have the like weird scrambled egg and. You're like, is this water with egg in it? What's happening? I think you really do notice it in those very cheapest, super mass produced. I love that you talk about this, that it's something you only have at hotels. I'm like, oh.

from when I buy cheap eggs or like when I was a graduate student and I always was like cheapest eggs those are for me like I remember but they taste very and then I would go home and my mom used to have chickens like have a fried egg from a like a chicken from your backyard like it really it's it tastes like a different product it's almost to me and I know this is not a one-to-one creamy yeah it's not a one-to-one comparison but it's like skim milk versus

Like half and half. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's not just the taste. I mean, when when I did have my chickens, there was just this extra.

delight and whimsy of you know they all had the different colored eggs and I'd be like I'm eating Peggy's egg today I'll do one Peggy's egg and one like tiny Emmylou egg what a fun treat mix and match um which we all need some whimsy yeah and like you can go you go when you gather them and like there is like this um like a hobbyist component and you know i just today published

this newsletter about the joys of hobbies and like this is, you know, it's a hobby like any other. And I think once hobbies become much more visible, then it's also easier to be like, I'm going to go do that thing. Yeah. And I think, you know, maybe you have had this experience, but as a writer, I'm incapable of having a hobby that doesn't turn into work in some way, such as writing a book about chickens.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So there's so many other components of this that I want to talk about, particularly in like this moment and where the growth of. backyard chickens intersects with a lot of different like discourses that are floating around. So we're going to get to some of the questions that I think will allow us to talk about that. So first question comes from Becky and Melody's going to read it.

How is this wave of faddish micro homesteading different from past waves? There have been so many often overlapping from depression survival gardens to victory gardens to back to the landers to climate crisis preparation. to mini secession slash independence movements to Obama era slow food Michael Pollan solve problems with farmers markets social status trends from the 70s on distrust of government and industry has

always been part of homesteading waves. Is this just the Christian nationalism version? All the decades of distrust and fear channeled for patriarchy? A backyard flock to QAnon pipeline? Is it personal privatization of federal government systems? Is it all influencer-driven? All aesthetics appearing to arise?

utterly without context amazing question just covers it all I love our listeners they so often like answer their own questions with their question because they're so smart right and they just want they're asking us to talk more about some of the ideas that they have put forth in their incredible questions so

I know you have thoughts on this. What do you think? Yes. Yeah, I mean, there's so much in that question that I could go to. And there definitely have been differences in movements. I would say the... end of the question where it's like is this influencer driven I think yes especially right now it is so hard to take away the influence of social media from what we want to do what we are exposed to like how we think about doing it.

And it was very interesting when I had my chickens, I kind of accidentally also became a chicken influencer. The account is still there, but it's like it still has 130,000 followers. I have not had chickens. year but it was really fascinating the different types of people who keep chickens and you have people like me where it's like I'm gonna have my really cute coop and my fancy chickens and they're really just pets and this is my fun hobby

You do have the homesteaders. You have a lot of more religious people getting into it. I think chickens are fascinating because they attract such a wide range of people for so many different reasons. But within that, I think it is getting a little bit more and more insular in these different realms. And this writer...

Kirsten Lee Nelson, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing her name right, but she was a fellow chicken influencer I knew. She's a writer. She did this great piece for The Guardian within the last month about how she was a homesteader. And for many... reasons decided to stop. Some of those is that it is really hard. Like she could never go on vacation, which is very true. If you know any farmers, I have farm family in North Dakota.

All the weddings are around New Year's in North Dakota. It is not a time you want to go there, but that's when people are free from farming obligations. And she also said that she... did a lot of posting on social media, and the... comments on her posts especially in the last few years have kind of been i started following you because i thought you were like me because you're doing this homesteading but you are liberal how dare you right

which is a shift. And I don't know how big that shift is. No, and I think that you're seeing the splintering for sure. It reminds me actually of some splintering that I'm seeing in the Dahlia growing community. You wouldn't... expect this to happen but it's around progressive politics obviously but it's about like um some growers who are gay and who um

post about like oh the flowers brought me joy today when like things are hard right like just stuff that people would post in a group that then leads to these larger discussions and then leads to a splinter group of people who are like this is a place where we can talk about these things and so you get these gradual like okay we're the dahlia group that like is affirming and and liberal and we're the dahlia group that's more like

Like tariffs are good is a current fissure in the group as well. And I can see that happening in chickens too. It's like, oh, we're like the Christian nationalist chicken people. Yeah. And it's funny because I mean, when you said that, the thing that comes to mind is many years ago, my grandma's church had a splintering because one part wanted there to be a female pastor and the others were like, no.

Lutherans. Yeah, Lutherans. Exactly. I mean, many different. Very Scandinavian German. Yeah, well, and like something like that can. illuminate larger ideological fissures within the group. Which is interesting because, you know, we feel like this is all new because it's on social media and it's things like our Dahlia groups. But, you know, we don't like fewer Americans are taking part in these.

community bringing us together things like church. So it's like, maybe this is just the human impulse that anywhere we go, we make these communities and then we splinter when we disagree with them. You know, there's part of Becky's question that really struck me. She said,

um distrust of government and industry has always been part of homesteading waves and it it really like that seems to be a kernel of like the motivation on both ends of the ideological spectrum yes right like i part of my desire to get chickens do not have chickens but to get them is that okay i'm thinking about the fallout from

an earthquake and a tsunami like i want to have a food source on the island that isn't just me like begging other people with chickens for their chickens right like i want to be part of the larger collaborative movement And that like that comes from a distrust that the government will be able to respond and take care of me during a moment of national like climate crisis.

And just like general prepper impulses that like the collapse of society is maybe coming. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a big thing in the Pacific Northwest. Also, one of my friends, Emma, her. Novel Tilt just came out, which is about like what happens after the big one. No, don't. I can't read it. Don't read it. Except to. But yeah, one of the things she's talked about so much is that in the research she did for this book about.

like how people deal with catastrophe that community is the way to get through it and like getting to know your neighbors and it is interesting because there's this divide between the like bunker prepper of like what do I need for my family I'm to hide underground. I have all these secret resources that I'm hoarding. And then there's the

I live in an apartment, I should get to know my neighbors better. And I should have like a meetup point with my friends and also get water that I still don't have in my apartment. But, you know, like these are the things that will really... help us is is knowing each other and who to look for um and there is something more beautiful in that to me where it's an outward reaching instead of

I'm scared, so I'm going inward. Right, right. Or like, I'm like, okay, so I have friends on the island who do have chickens and maybe they will share their eggs with me. But what's the thing that I can offer in our post-apocalyptic... collaborative scenario that's what I want to be thinking about like am I going to have more of the water tanks like am I going to have the bleach pills like I want to think about these things what can I bring to the table on this team

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Okay, our next question, a little bit of a hard pivot. It's very practical, but we will return to these ideas that we've just discussed. This is always one of the first ones that comes up when we're talking about this. So let's hear from Caitlin. For backyard hens, what's the actual cost savings? How much are the upfront and maintenance costs versus free eggs?

There is not is kind of generally the rule. I've written a couple of pieces about this in the last few months, and we've just so... economies of scaled the egg industry that even our prices right now like what was it four dollars something when they were at their high in january um

In the 1940s, like adjusted for inflation, eggs were something like $7 a dozen. There just is no way on a small scale that you can replicate the intense cost savings of... industrialized egg production and yeah so there is that that said i think if you're looking at like I maybe don't want to stuff my chickens into a windowless barn and all these other things that go along with that. Like I think there is a kindness and environmental thing that you can look at that makes the cost.

even out a little, but... You know, a chicken coop that is actually predator proof, especially with costs of lumber. I'm like, even if you do it for yourself, probably $500 to actually fit your chickens inside of it. And then there's feed. There's all the other. stuff that goes along with it. It takes most hens, you know, six-ish months to reach laying age. So you're raising a chicken kind of for free, quote unquote, until that time.

When I had chickens, you know, I gave a bunch of eggs away to neighbors who sometimes were like, can we pay you for the eggs? And I was just like, anything that I charge you is going to feel like I'm so undercharging you. It will then make me grumpy. So I'd rather just give them away. Be part of the gift economy instead of trying to like. Exactly. And then they gave me like tomatoes and peppers.

So it worked out really well. Yeah. It makes me think, too, about even like economies of scale when we're thinking about medium-sized operations or like small-medium operations.

on the island one of my friends runs this farm that is like a local farm that lots of people tourists residents like get flower shares from and get lettuce from all sorts of great things and it's on a bunch of land and part of the reason that it's easy for her to maintain her flock is because she can move she has one of those trailers that you can move the flock around right pretty readily and then it's just kind of low maintenance the rest of the year so like you invest in the hens and then

like it's not thinking you're not only thinking about okay how much does this chicken cost how much like how much money am i getting from this what sort of things do i need to invest in it's kind of just integrated into the rest of the operation of the farm and She charges, I think, $6 for half a dozen eggs, which always was like, oh, wow, those are quote unquote expensive eggs. But at least here.

If you go to Trader Joe's or even Fred Meyer, they're oftentimes even recently sold out of the cheapest type of eggs. So you only have the more expensive. and pasture raised type of eggs, which are the same cost as what she is selling. Yeah, exactly. I would rather give money into my hyper local economy, like my neighbor up the street for the same cost as paying Fred Meyer.

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, it's so interesting because the way that we raise. animals generally but i think you really see it in chickens has just changed so much with the specialization of these breeds um like back my grandma and great grandma growing up they were like on farms so my great grandma raised chickens for egg money which was huge like all rural farm women did it it is how it's like their version of pin money right yeah exactly except it would pay for like

Everything. And we kind of looked at it as like, they're not really working, but it's like 80% of household expenses were covered by chickens. But these are all dual purpose chickens. So, you know, you have the hens where they lay the eggs. And then when they're too old, they're stew. If you have, you know, male chickens, they just immediately go go into dinner and you can sell all of them. But at that time, you know, a hen would raise maybe like lay.

150 eggs a year now the industrial hens they have 300 eggs a year But they cost more to slaughter than their meat is worth because broiler chickens, their own special thing, they reach market weight in two months. Like they grow so fast you actually can't keep them alive if you wanted. too because their breasts get too big right yeah their hearts kind of explode it's crazy um so

And that is why it's so cheap. Like we think of it as expensive, but it's like it is a lot cheaper than it used to be. And that also makes it impossible on a money scale to do it yourself more cheap. Right. And that's such an interesting thing that like we're always like, why would you do this thing if it actually costs more? And I think some of it is that we're trained to think of.

Oh, if you're doing something as a hobby, like it should also be a cost saver in some way, right? Like, oh, you're knitting your own clothes when actually like knitting a sweater is you are losing so much money, but you're knitting your own sweater. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think also, you know, sweaters, as has been well reported, they're garbage now. So you're knitting your own sweater and you're getting an amazing sweater where if you got that same quality sweater.

Would be so much more money. So it's like it's not a one to one comparison. But yes, if you are going into chickens with the sole purpose of I want cheap eggs.

this is not a good idea. Don't do it. Okay, so our next question is from Shauna, and it'll allow us to get a little bit more into the question of why the government is participating in the chicken conversation. I recently attended a lecture on antimicrobial resistance and one of the presenters reported that the majority of 2024 salmonella outbreaks here in North Carolina were due to backyard poultry.

Backyard chickens can also be a source of avian flu, it turns out. I'm very intrigued by the intersection of Maha anti-vaccine... pro-chadwife-style home farming beliefs, and the real-life danger of transmissible disease outbreaks caused by keeping animals. How do you see this potential issue playing out? Oh, and just like add raw milk into like this whole conversation. First of all, shout out to Shauna attending a lecture on antimicrobial resistance and talking to us about it.

One of the reasons you reached out to us about doing this episode is that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, went on Fox & Friends weekends at the beginning of March to talk about bird flu. And before we answer Shauna's question, let's hear the last bit of this conversation between Rollins and Rachel Campos Duffy, who is married to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

Well, I have chickens in my backyard. Sean started that. And yesterday I went out. They just started laying. And yesterday I got five eggs. I guess my question, if you could make it just really quick, because I'm out of time. Is part of the solution more small farms? Because when avian flu hits and you have these giant industrial farms and these chickens, which I don't think the eggs are as good anyway, is part of it just investing in smaller farms, encouraging that?

I think the silver lining in all of this is how do we, in our backyards, we've got chickens too in our backyard, how do we solve for something like this? And people are sort of looking around thinking, wow, well, maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard. And it's awesome. I agree with you. Yeah, I think everyone who isn't a farmer right now wants to be. So you're in the right department, Brooke. I am. What a blessing. Thank you. Okay, so what struck you about this conversation?

Oh, God. Yeah, I mean, it's not an awesome solution to any of this. And it is just wild to me that... The agriculture secretary would say that because anyone with knowledge of how agriculture and our agricultural economy works would not think that that that would be a great solution to, again, price. of eggs and availability um or just like containing this bread of baby and flu like yes yeah i know um headed on so many fronts like yeah yes um and it

It was really interesting. This question makes me think of, this was back like pre... pandemic starting. So I think like 2019, but there was this Newcastle outbreak in California, which is another disease that kills chickens. It was very transmissible. And I did a couple articles about it. And they

Initially, we're like, we need to quarantine these chickens, like stop moving your chickens around. It's spreading the disease of these chickens. It hadn't hit the California egg industry, but that's obviously what they were really worried about because they have a huge egg industry in California. And the backyard people were like...

I'm moving my chickens if I want to. You can't stop me. And there were conspiracy theories that came out about it where people were like, the government is doing this to keep backyard chicken keepers from producing our own food. Like there is no disease. Right.

It was just kind of wild and I hadn't thought about it in a while. But looking back, I'm like, this feels indicative of a lot of human behaviors we've seen. Right. It's this whole it's this whole understanding that like government regulation is actually here to.

control you instead of to keep you safe yes right yeah or vaccines are a means of control instead of a means of like saving people's lives yeah exactly i mean do you see other impulses at work here like I think that it strikes me as like this idea that if you do it yourself then somehow you are immune to societal pathogens yeah I don't know I wish I did know because it's not how I think about things. Right.

And there's so much stuff that like for a while, backyard chicken keepers, you could just get antibiotics for anything from like farm supply stores. And they shut down on that because of all the antibiotic resistance that we are seeing, which is.

largely from these like very large scale farms but obviously plays out in small farms too and um a lot of backyard chicken people judging by groups they get fish antibiotics on ebay and give those to their chickens when think they need them which is not a good idea don't don't do that again like you don't know if your chickens need them um

Yeah, it's wild. And like the CDC has put out, you know, kind of funny press releases where they're like, don't kiss and snuggle your chickens because you're getting salmonella from them. And it's like that is true. There is a risk of salmonella. Like wash your hands if you're around farm animals. A lot of people don't. They're like, you know where this egg comes from, right? Like the egg doesn't, like the chicken doesn't barf up the egg. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, we...

We make a lot of choices about that. Like the reason our eggs are refrigerated in this country is because we have decided to wash them rather than do a lot of things on the farm level that would keep... salmonella levels down and things like that so we're like we're gonna let farms be kind of as dirty as we want them to be but we're gonna wash the eggs really really well which takes off this protective antimicrobial layer on the egg which

is why you have to keep them refrigerated other countries are like maybe the farm should just have clean clean conditions for the hens and then the eggs will be relatively clean and so you can have them on the shelves yeah because they still have this bloom on them Well, and it goes back to this idea that anything that is government mandated is actually potentially unsafe. This is the whole like, I'm doing my own research.

yeah strain where it's like if you come to that conclusion yourself from the science even if you're not a trained scientist then you are in the right, right? Like if you make your individual decisions, it is your liberty to make your individual decisions because you have come to your own thinking about what is right for chickens.

or for how to inoculate children or for how we should be drinking our milk. And I think that that really all connects to this larger distrust in institutions that has been brewing.

for a very long time. And I think it's spiking right now. Yeah, for sure. And it, it is so interesting to me that you get kind of the liberal version of distrust and the conservative version of distrust and they they come from very different places like i think the conspiracies are different but their solutions kind of wind up like you go far enough and you meet back in in the middle You meet at Raw Milk. Like, that's where it is.

I know. And not vaccinating your children. Yeah. Someone I grew up going to Waldorf school. So I'm like very familiar with with that. We had a whooping cough outbreak in my school when I was growing up. Really? Yeah. And I have this great memoir that my like great grandma wrote that's just like only the family has it. And it's.

probably my favorite family thing, but she writes all these funny stories, but she also has a story about her, one of her like many siblings, but her baby brother died of whooping cough as a child and like how heartbroken the family was. over that and it was just devastating for everyone. And it was maybe five to 10 years before.

The vaccine for that came out and I just like can't help thinking about what she would think looking around if like you have this chance to stop this from from happening and you. Well, and this is where like cultural memory, I think, comes into play when you do not have the memory of people dying from these diseases that we inoculate against. And we also.

do not have the personal, at least in America, the personal memory of like negotiating widespread outbreaks from something like salmonella or like the threat every day in your life that a foodborne illness. Could kill your entire family. Yeah. And the risk has decreased so much because of government regulation. But the government like the regulation has been too effective almost. Yeah, I know. I think it's it's funny that.

I mean, in the scheme of human history, looking at when we discovered germs existed to when we kind of stopped them with antibiotics to some extent. It's like that. crossover happened really quickly yeah yeah um so yeah it's not super surprising that we're like yeah what's the problem go to the hospital it's fine

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Okay, so I want to drill down a little bit more on the subject of MAHA, which is Make America Healthy Again. It's part of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s larger plan for America. So this question comes from Elizabeth, and Melody's going to read it.

I don't know if the government wanting us to have our own chickens, which by the way is a huge bird flu risk factor, is about Maha. It strikes me that it must be, because it feels like glamorizing something that... when one actually remembers the past, wasn't actually healthy or fancy or pleasantly earthy, unless you were Marie Antoinette collecting the pre-wiped eggs. My dad grew up in poor rural Kansas working with chickens, and he described it as dirty, messy, gross, and necessary. Not sexy.

Based on his account and my own experiences in foreign countries when chickens and roosters woke me up at all hours, I've never wanted them, though we love eggs in our farm share. My boomer parents are rapidly aging and a handful in their cohort have recently died. I have felt grasping toward them and their memories as some of the last people who grew up in truly rural America.

How do we preserve and elevate their memories so that we aren't just left with fake Maha versions? This feels particularly important given the way the current administration seems to want to erase the past. Yeah, like how do we remember how gross it can be? Yeah, I know. I'm imagining that like viral milkmaid dress just going out to collect your eggs in the morning with all your cleavage. I just think like the stories that were passed down to me were just of like endless toil. Yeah.

Yeah, that's that is also what I grew up hearing about. I mean, a lot of fun, too. Yeah, yeah. That is the thing is we kind of glamorize, I think, the communal aspects of it. perhaps too like I I think of all the work and then I also think of like the barn dances that my great-grandparents hosted I'm like that sounds great I do want a barn dance yeah no I know you're like oh everyone coming together for the harvest like

But yeah, I don't know, like that tension, right? Like we don't want to romanticize it because romanticizing this past allows us to reject the things that have led us to the present. Does that make sense? But then also we don't want to like... make it look like a hellscape either because it wasn't right it was just a different way of living it was a harder way of living and I think sometimes we have to remember that like technological advancement has made a lot of things

easier, like our daily life is easier in many ways. Yeah, I think it's really interesting. You know, thinking again of like this memoir that I have from my my great grandma, because it it really puts the highs and the lows into this context versus. What we see on social media, which is where a lot of the best kind of propaganda for like the homesteading lifestyle has happened. Yeah. Where you just see the like beautiful dress while you're collecting your eggs and you're like perfectly qualified.

children and their little like matching plaid shirts um and i think it is hard to forget about the things like you can't go on vacation Unless you have a farm manager, which like only the wealthiest people are going to have farms that big. And even some of them like don't because that's not really a job that exists so much anymore.

You know, cattle come at inconvenient times, like your crops fail, like all of these things that come along with it. And I think we just look at, you know, this supposedly like.

return to simple gender roles and nothing was hard which of course it was for many people um like there there have been people that did not fit in those roles this whole time and had to just do that anyway yes um and so So, yeah, it is this erasure of the reality of what people's personal lives were like, what their hopes were that they didn't get to achieve because they weren't allowed to.

And so I think a lot of these things are lovely and there can be something really lovely in gardening, in like raising chickens who I still think are delightful, but like. Do I want that to be my only option? No, I don't. Right. And this gets to like so many questions about choice feminism and like how dare you degrade these women who want to do that. And it's like, well, the difference is that they believe that women should only do this. Yeah.

they don't want there to be choice right like they want this to be something that you just do because of like your chromosomes it reminds me of like almost like a pinhole camera like we like look when we look back on the past like this tendency to romanticize when we're dissatisfied with some component of the present like

The way that young Gen Z and Gen Alpha romanticized the 90s, the millennial culture is so fascinating to me because they're like, oh, my God, they didn't have phones. Like, incredible. I mean, I kind of romanticize that. Totally. Totally. And like that is real. And that yearning for that component of that like pre-technological moment is.

Like that expresses more about our dissatisfaction with our current moment than anything else. And I think sometimes we forget, though, that like also in the 90s, like people were bullied in my high school for being gay. There are all sorts of incredibly regressive components of that moment, too, that are decontextualized from we didn't have phones and we just drove around a lot. Yeah. Which, of course, is the thing again where, you know.

maybe I'm guilty of a version of the same thing though I of course feel like I'm right in it when I'm like oh but there was community and people like kind of knew their neighbors and like how can I bring those things into my modern day not that I want to like go back to every But to be like, there were some really beautiful things about that connection. I mean, I personally do think it's really important that we know.

facts about animals we raise for food yeah i talk about this in my book but i went to a wedding um and All the people were like, I would really love a pet cow because you can just get milk whenever you want. That's not how that works. And they argued with me about it. I have been an agriculture journalist for like 10 years at this point. Like I know about cows. They have to be pregnant to.

produce milk this is a basic biological fact and they googled it before they believed me and these are all like college educated right very smart people um and so i do think it's important to reconnect to some extent from these things that we really take for granted. But does that mean we all have to move back to the land and don traditional gender roles to do it? I don't think so.

Great tee up for our last question. This comes from Emma. Does my interest in things like chickens and gardening for my own fruits and vegetables mean that I've fallen for propaganda? I love the feeling of being more connected to the earth and my food and the seasons, but given the price of things like eggs and food in general, it also calls to mind World War II Victory Gardens.

OK, so I just love this idea of like growing chickens as propaganda or homesteading in this moment as propaganda. I think right now we're getting a little bit from the government, but that's because the government. has intersected with christian nationalism so effectively right and i think this is also maybe a time like melody just put this in the in the show notes she was like obviously we should also talk about like

race and who is actually doing the labor of producing the vast majority of our food items right now and where this, like what this romanticism is actually about, right? Like the dirty stuff is done by people who we devalue in our society. So it is oftentimes performed. by people of color, immigrants, undocumented people, etc., etc.

When I think about that, I think about once we industrialized, which did have this interesting switch from, you know, women used to be the ones that raised the chickens and then post-war the USDA stepped in and they're like, let's have men do it. Right. to these big sheds and then who are the ones working in those sheds that is going to be

people of color immigrants, which is continuing today, you know, who's slaughtering all of the chickens, those same people. So I think you see it more there where when we... extracted all the resources possible out of the animals we then move to what resources can we extract from people and which people do we want to extract those from yeah well and the other thing that to think about is like people who are raising chickens like having a garden was a thing that poor people did.

Right. Either you are a poor person who had it for yourself on your small patch of land or you were a poor person who worked for a richer person and you tended there. vegetable garden and you tended their chickens. And who was the available labor, right? Who were the poor people in a certain area? And sometimes it was... all white people and sometimes it was like white poors and also black poor people and sometimes it was other people yeah

Yeah, I mean, one funny very behind the scenes, but just because this is related to backyard chickens, is most of them, like, they come through the mail from a hatchery. Like, even if you're buying them from a farm store, they were mailed to that farm store. Amahatry and.

If you want chickens, especially if you are in one of these urban areas where you can't have roosters, you are buying them sexed, which is very difficult because chickens don't have external genitalia. It's only a job you can do when they... They are first born, like within the first 24 hours. And so in my book, I went to visit a hatchery and I watched the chicken sexers doing it, who are all immigrants of color.

you know, doing these jobs incredibly hard, really hard to find people to do this work where you look at tiny chicken cloacas for seven plus hours every day and try to figure out if there's like a little bump. So it's like, yes, you do have these lovely pet chickens that are so picturesque, but to get your hens, you're relying on these people in these very dark rooms with like one... spotlight lamp like holding tiny chicks and doing this work all of the time so yeah they're just

There is no way to get around exploitation in this country with anything if you look far enough. So.

Does it feel like propaganda to you? Does it does liking to do this stuff feel like falling for propaganda? How do you untangle a lot of this? Yeah, I mean, I think liking it within the confines of, you know, your life where hopefully you have.

other like freedoms and flexibility and and are able to follow other uh you know whatever role you want in society like i think no um if the only way you think you can do it is to marry someone and move to the middle of nowhere in the country and become a trad wife like perhaps you have fallen for the propaganda in that case um so there there are certainly degrees

Yeah, it's always hard when you like something that there is a component of people who like it who just don't like them at all. Totally, totally. You're like, oh, what does this indicate about me? And like, I think that this is where you can point more to, you know, what we were talking about at the beginning of this episode, where there are so many different things that direct us to chickens. Right. So like it can be distrust of the government for whatever reason. It can be like.

environmental anxiety or prepping for whatever reason like there are there are things like different motivators that lead us to a common practice i even think something like religious faith like there are a lot of different things that make people believers Right. Or there are a lot of different things that make people interested in wearing makeup. Yeah. And it's more important to parse what is the thing that is making you interested in it. Yeah. And sometimes it's so hard.

to parse i mean i i think about this all the time am i doing this because i see everyone else doing it do i actually like it it's kind of like no one wore white sneakers and then one day i was like i should get some white sneakers right That seems great. I love how this looks. Or with like sock length, right? Yeah. Like I resisted ankle length socks for so long. And now I'm like... Those calf socks are so dorky. And I got them. I got the stupid new socks. I'm like, this is so.

dumb but i needed new socks and i was like fine it does it now feels like it looks better right right um we are very social that is kind of how we work as we look around and we're like this feels comfortable to me like chickens feel comfortable

ball um yeah and I think like it's fine to be weird social animals that fall for for trends as long as it is not like harming you or the people around you or you're making everyone else do the thing that you're doing exactly right yeah like not everyone should get chickens but like they're great

They make wonderful pets. They do lay eggs. I think there is certainly a lot to recommend them. And they should be regulated. They should be regulated. They will not solve our larger problems. Like that's another thing is that like a lot of individual actions or the way that we are encouraged to think of our individual actions as solving systemic problems. Chickens as self-care. Yes, right? Like chickens can be a hobby.

But that doesn't mean that they're solving the larger problem of unregulated.

bird flow you know no yeah and I mean a big thing with backyard chickens you know at the beginning of the episode you kind of had the statistic about vaguely how many households are keeping them but we really don't know like there have not been good surveys on it for a number of years so we don't know if it's spiking and going back down what's happening um you know you take your dogs and cats to the vet and then when there is an outbreak of a disease in your area

People have a way to contact you. And extension offices and agricultural offices, they have really not put a lot of effort into something like that. So even with something like bird flu, the amount of work that... chicken groups on facebook have had to do right to say this is what biosecurity looks like um and you know if you are keeping chickens by a lake like don't because bird flu is being spread by wild birds and like

That is how you get it. You know, there are all of these precautions that you can take that do make it much safer for you, for the community, for the likelihood of transmission across species. And people just don't know because we. Think of everything in this free for all. Or like exceptionalism. Like, well, if I keep my chickens by the lake, they're not going to get the flu, right? I know. And it's heartbreaking. I mean, I know of people who have had their flocks euthanized because of bird flu.

Yeah, especially if your chickens are pets. Like imagine someone came to your house and they're like, sorry, all your pets have to be killed right in front of you because they have this disease. And like, obviously that is the right choice, but it's not fun to watch. this happen with like men in hazmat suits in your yard and yeah it's not good yeah

I mean, is that where we're going to end is on hazmat suits in our backyard? I feel like I always I start with like happy things about chickens and then I'm like, here's how they're treated in industry. I'm always a bummer at the end of the interview.

just need to cut me off at some point um but yeah I do I think it's really fascinating and I think that chickens can be lovely and they have been unfairly swept up in in all of this as a representation of of all of these things and yet it's also kind of fascinating that they they are so intertwined with our lives that like throughout his

they are representative of bigger issues at play in society. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on. If people want to find more of you on the internet or not on the internet, just like want more of you, where can they find you? Yeah. I mean, I'm here in Portland. Don't. come to my house but buy your book i was trying to reference like buy my book it is for sale um literally my so my first name it's t-o-v-e but if you even just google

Tova chickens like you will find me on the internet. So I'm I'm on Instagram. I'm on Substack. You can buy my book in whatever form you like to get your books. It's at the library. It is a love letter to chickens, despite what this conversation might make you think. I really, I feel like chickens aren't thought about enough as animals. And so I like to encourage that because we have this really long, fascinating history together as two species sharing the world. And I think that's lovely.

Amazing. Thank you again. This has been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast. Today, paid subscribers got an Ask Anne Anything segment all about how I deal with my two-year-old dog, Beverly. If you want to support the show and get that bonus content, head to culturestudypod.substack.com. It's five bucks a month or $50 a year and you'll get ad-free episodes, an exclusive advice time segment, and weekly discussion threads for each episode.

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