Makendra Patzer

English 316-03

Food: Feathers and Futures

What is it about our food that fascinates us? It has only been a few

decades since the majority of households were farmers. The food on our

plates was a symbol of success and a reward for the work of the day. The

idea of being something more than a farmer or a laborer was a dream for

most. In about the span of one lifetime, food gathering transitioned from

home gardens to buying all food items at a commercial chain store. The

commercial convenience has removed us, the consumer, from the process

that connects farms to tables through food. Perhaps that is why there is a

new interest in our food connections.

For example, consider the trend of the backyard chicken. The

conscious effort to raise new generations of backyards, suburban-roaming

chickens is a step back to the agrarian roots that rules most of our pasts.

It’s not the pig or the cow, nor the fields of wheat or the tractors, but the

bird with an eraser sized brain that is filling our need for a connection with

food. If you have been in the presence of happy, backyard chickens, then

you have been in the presence of simple joy. There is something comforting

about watching the birds scratch for worms in the shade of a tree

midsummer. They content themselves with the things we like to avoid:

insects, dirt, heat. With the rustling of feathers, a bird will drop to dust in

the red clay. Its wings and feet flail in the air. Dirt colors their skin brown
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while its body nestles closer to the ground. The chicken tires and falls

asleep in its newly made nest. When evening falls, good chickens will self-

roost in store constructed coops in red and orange wood. Fresh eggs comes

early in the morning ahead of dust naps and insect lunches. Have you ever

tasted just laid, scrambled eggs?

The grocery doesn’t offer that experience. In the meat department,

the poultry section is as large as the beef despite the chicken’s limited cut

options. Across the aisle, there are brown and white eggs in cardboard

cartons stacked on metal shelves—resembling the cages of production they

originated. Modernization is about convenience it seems, and we, the

consumers, are buying into it.

The lore of chickens has to do with the lore of searching for the part

of ourselves we left behind decades ago. During the last century, modern

technology has made it easy for people to separate themselves away from

the hard, uncomfortable agrarian lifestyle. Farms are now commercial

operations. The food—through an extensive processing system with dictates

the form of every grain, soil particle, and plant—arrives in nearly identical

quality to the stores and shelves. Technology has made it so we too live in

identical houses on identical streets. The convenience of our shared identity

no longer allows authenticity nor does it satisfy. We are passengers when it

comes to our food. The lettuce in the salad has the same origin point as the

chicken breast, and our minds do not have to work beyond that. If you
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wonder where that lunch salad has come from, some might say you wonder

too much.

Modernization has made our lives easier. I won’t deny that. I enjoy

living in a home that is insulated with an electric heating system that

changes at the flip of a switch. I relish in the benefits of having a fridge to

preserve food and a modem from which I can use the internet. Our lives are

easier now and, incredibly more complicated. We have such full lives that

anything simple seems foreign. Farmers might be our neighbors, but they

represent an idea of living in the past. Somehow, we fail to connect

smartphones with gardening. We fear leaving behind the 21st century

conveniences for more fulfilling practices.

That’s why backyard chickens are so popular. We look at the little

amount of manual labor it takes to collect eggs as if it awakens the feeling

of something more, something long forgotten. It is an act of primal

satisfaction. We touched dirt today. We are human after all.