Both my wife and some of the greatest evolutionary biologists of our era have wrestled with the same vexing question:  Why, exactly, do males exist?  When you think about, from a resource perspective, it is very expensive to have males around, and not just because we waste money on stupid hobbies.  The genetic and evolutionary theories of [...]

In the insular world of marans chickens, a few names have gained almost mythic status among the growing following of this rare and beautiful breed. People endlessly debate the origins and merits of the various bloodlines, and there are several breeders who have been instrumental in bringing the marans to this country and improving the breed. But, [...]

With financially stressed farm budgets, how do you satisfy the insatiable appetite of a herd of pigs?  The answer, of course, is the time-honored strategy that has long served the down and out:  by desperately begging. Processed feed is expensive.  A hundred-pound bag of locally milled feed (mostly consisting of corn and soy) costs about [...]

As a culture, Americans don’t handle death very well, even when it’s not our own.  I recently read of a whole-pig roast in a Los Angeles backyard.  When guests were confronted with a complete and identifiable dead animal slowly cooking over the coals, about half of them refused to eat the pork.  We tend to [...]

There’s a quiet revolution going on in America…. Let me start over. There’s a noisy revolution going on in America, and the noise primarily involves roosters crowing and hens clucking.  The desire to ‘eat local’ and connect to our food has spurred an interest in homegrown eggs, and all over our country people are constructing chicken coops in their backyards.  What started [...]

Today in a rare fit of responsible reading I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal.  There, in the inner section that addresses something livelier than bond trading, was the lead article that proclaimed the summer of 2009 to officially be the most boring summer  –and therefore by their calculus the worst summer– [...]

How will your children eat? That is to say, how will your children, when they are your age, get food on their table?  If you guess that they will drive to the grocery store once a week and buy bananas from Central America, pork from Iowa, and a salad mix from California, you’re wrong.  The way they obtain food –and the type [...]

Meet Dr. Hubbert In the 1950s, M. King Hubbert, a far-thinking scientist who worked for Shell Oil, postulated that one day oil production would peak and then begin a predictable decline.  He guessed that this would occur in the United States in about 1970 and would occur on a global basis in the 1990s.  Revered [...]

A few days ago the federal government borrowed another $300 billion or so that will one day have to be repaid by Americans who are now approximately three years old –hey, they never objected– so the money could be applied to help alleviate a little mortgage debt across America, or, say, in the Vegas condo market. Cut [...]