Standing inside his back yard chicken coop-turned memorabilia museum, Steve Sansweet cues up perhaps the most recognizable movie score in history: a full-throated orchestral rendition that conjures up images of space battles in a galaxy far, far away.
An Oxford graduate and the son of a prominent doctor, he knows the value of a yard chicken because he has worked in Nepal, northern Iraq and East Africa fighting malaria and malnutrition.
Fred got a dog kennel from the yard, and we loaded the 5 hens and single rescued rooster from the front yard chicken tractor into the dog cage and tossed them into the back of the truck.
Who would have thought in 2009 I'd feel like Alice in Wonderland and be more concerned about my "upper-middle-class home, big fancy car, closetful of name-brand-clothes, latest model flat-screen TV-owning" friends making it through hard times than my "flip-flop wearing, one shirt and pants-owning, mud-yard chicken and pig-coop, bonito-eating" friends in Micronesia?
Much of the credit (or blame) for the back-yard-chicken fad belongs to the "local food" movement, which Pollan helped launch.
Hammocks and shady palms adorn most yards, chickens wander the dirt roads, and the night life is pretty much limited to two local hangouts: the Inn at Manzanillo Bay and El Burro Borracho.
By The New Yorker September 18, 2009 This week in the magazine, Susan Orlean writes about the recent rise in back-yard chickens, and her own experience raising the birds.
Here in Austin, Texas, back-yard chickens are suddenly all the rage in, shall we say, The New Yorker demographic SUSAN ORLEAN: It's one of the most interesting parts of this phenomenon.
They used 130 feet of iron pipe, 100 feet of wooden beams, more than 400 square yards of chicken wire, five gallons of paste, and an unknown quantity of paper.
Judith's family had had a good home with furniture, a television and a yard with chickens.
Ms. Mullen and her daughter came to the chained and padlocked gate of her small, rundown farm, situated in a residential neighborhood where horses grazed in several back yards and chickens roamed the front walkways.
