Over the past couple of weeks, my lovely wife and I have been talking about adding a chicken coop to our home. For a variety of reasons, it felt like the right time to make the investment.
Regardless of this recent planning effort, when my wife sent me a story from the Dining and Wine section of the New York Times called, “Straight from the Home Coop” I was a little surprised.
Why I was surprised is worthy of a bit of explanation. Let’s dive into the article. The article begins with the following:
FOR newly hatched chicken enthusiasts, the first egg from your own hens is a small miracle. “You want to dip it in gold,” said the writer Susan Orlean, who keeps nine hens at her home in Columbia County, N.Y. Then comes the second egg: enough for a triumphant breakfast.
But when the whole coop starts laying, she said, the supply of eggs quickly turns into an “I Love Lucy”-style conveyor belt scene, bringing absurd, unmanageable excess. Ms. Orlean scrambles them into a pile for brunch or dinner, sprinkled with Indian spices, slivered almonds and unsweetened coconut.
It’s not unusual for food lovers to toy with the notion of adding chickens to a thriving garden or building a rooftop coop. Now the novelty has become reality: despite coyotes, foxes and the occasional cage-break, many urbanites and suburbanites are raising their own eggs.
As the article goes on, it talks about how great eggs fresh from the backyard coop are and what you are missing by not having access to them.
How the flavor is better than the eggs you buy from both standard commercial AND organic sources. How the egg yolks are yellower, the taste is richer, and the whites don’t run. How the flavor of the eggs are at a peak in the days just following when they are laid, before they are refrigerated.
Wow. It’s a rave.
If you run this through your head one more time, it’s even more than a glowing article. They made a chicken coop sound like an essential part of a gourmet kitchen. In other words, The New York Times just made the case for why a chicken coop is an aspirational home amenity.
A Chicken Coop!
Resilience is IN
In marketing, an aspirational product is something that is difficult to attain (usually financially). In this case, you need the space, the zoning, and the time to have a chicken coop. If not, you are out of luck.
Glowing articles in the aspirational press about adding a chicken coop, growing food and herbs in a home garden, adding rainwater irrigation for your yard, etc. are all part of a pattern. The case is being made that life is better with them, and that you need them to live your life to its fullest.
It’s a pattern that is telling us that resilient homes and communities are places you should want to pay more to live in. Places that are worth much more because they produce than homes without a similar capacity. Places that provide you with access to higher quality food and experiences than other places.
In short; Resilience is IN and that’s a good thing for all of us.
Your soon to be eating fresh eggs from a backyard coop analyst,
John Robb
PS: Of course, all of this can be done DiY. Which means that you can enjoy the benefits without the expense.
