Speaking of the owners of Boston's sports franchises, the Herald reports that Patriots owner Robert Kraft has successfully petitioned the Brookline Health Department to keep chickens in his manse's backyard. Apparently, he already has a few at his Cape Cod home, but his grandchildren like them so much, he wants to have the chickens around when the kids visit the urban estate.
Two very cool friends and I sometimes talk about when you know something is no longer cool. My general rule of thumb is: Once the Times has written about something, it means that thing hasn't been cool for about six months. In certain situations, I'll soften that standard to three months. That Robert Kraft keeps chickens in his backyard, a growing trend the past few years, as part of the renewed interest in food culture/politics and local farming/economies, confirms that having chickens in your backyards hasn't been cool for about three years. Also not in chicken-raising's favor: The New Yorker has published two stories this fall involving staffers' adventures in eating homegrown eggs. First, Susan Orlean gushed about it and then, Elizabeth Kolbert, perhaps jealous, followed.
I love local farms more than most and travel out of my way to compare one stand's broccoli to another's. However, the interest in raising chickens at home, especially in semi- or fully-urban settings strikes me as a poor allocation of resources and expertise, if not an overly fussy attempt at personal image-branding. Community gardens are wonderful community-uniting endeavors. Raising chickens in your backyard doesn't quite seem to qualify.
Then again, maybe it's idiotic of me to judge food habits based on whether or not they're cool. If vegetable stock is no longer in, I surely am a loser.
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