
The Silicon Valley elite’s latest status symbol: Chickens - nautilus12
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/03/02/feature/the-silicon-valley-elites-latest-status-symbol-chickens/
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ardit33
Hit piece of an article from an East coaster. It doesn't take much traveling
to realize that people in California like all organic, chicken, and organic
food as something normal/part of their lifestyle, independent of their income.

Heck, I know plenty of folks in either Oakland or Berkley, that do raise their
own animals.

Being in SV, or an engineer, has anything to do it. The only constrain is to
have a back yard. When that is not possible, than people start growing organic
in communal farms.

There are few of them in Brooklyn as well, even one in East Village (done on
an abandoned lot).

~~~
stephencanon
It doesn't take much traveling to realize that people in the Northeast are
basically interchangeable with folks in the Bay Area, and that we have plenty
of backyard animals here, too.

(I lived in Berkeley and Palo Alto for a decade, back in New England now, have
always kept chickens. Had goats in Palo Alto, will have them again in New
England when we move to a house with bigger yard.)

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wheresmyusern
is it just me or is homesteading becoming popular again? jerry brown is
retiring to an off-grid ranch. off-grid ranches, homes and homesteads are
becoming more popular. locally grown greens are more popular which flirts with
homesteading and is totally different from the centralized farm model of the
past. and me and a lot of people ive known all seem to have come upon living
away from the city, growing a little food and keeping some chickens, as an
attractive prospect. i think this trend may grow into something much larger

~~~
zokier
I definitely feel a trend going on for small-scale agriculture. But unlike in
olden times where it might have been a way to reduce a (lower class) family's
grocery bill, now it's more of a hobby for rich boys that probably in most
cases does not make any economical sense.

~~~
aldoushuxley001
Small scale agriculture is actually very profitable if you do it right. I know
farmer making $100,000/year off half an acre within city of Vancouver, and
while that's definitely a bit of an outlier, shows that it's very very
possible to have profitable small scale agriculture. In fact, most of the big
farmers I know are drowning in debt. Sometimes scale is a burden.

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rokhayakebe
In Senegal, Africa, a similar thing is happening with sheeps. They, however,
have taken it to a whole new level. People breed them and ask for exorbitant
prices, say $1,000 for a lamb before they are born. Peple negogiate prices
sometimes pre-conception. These sheeps have names, some are known locally or
regionally. Nowadays it is not uncommon to hear a seller tell you "This is so
and so, the grandson of so and do and so and so."

~~~
DanBC
I would love to read about this, especially if it included photos.

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wavefunction
It's tough to read the tech workers quoted in the article talking about how
they're doing things that farmers did long ago, like figuring out how to
maximize egg yield to chicken feed.

I can't believe I find it so difficult to relate to people who have many of
the same interests and presumably backgrounds as I do.

~~~
closeparen
As with most stories about tech workers' ridiculous extravagance, they are
really talking about tech executives, investors, and entrepreneurs. It's not
surprising at all that ICs are as culturally distant from senior management in
tech as everywhere else.

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chasingthewind
I'm not in SV and the market where I make my living doesn't have nearly the
high salaries or costs, but I've considered getting chickens a few times. I
didn't plan to do it for health reasons, environmental reasons, or any sort of
activism. I considered it because working in tech consistently makes me feel
very far removed from the kind of lives that many people lived only two
generations ago and having backyard chickens has always appealed to me as a
way to slow down a bit and do something that's completely different from my
usual routine of going to work in a corporate office all day and feeling like
everything I do is completely ephemeral.

I've been very blessed to get into tech and have a nice living for the last 20
years but some days I really wonder what it would be like to live an existence
that wasn't almost completely dedicated to technology. The reason I've never
followed through on chickens is because I suspect that having them won't
really evoke the kind of connection to simpler times that I crave.

I don't really enjoy articles like this. Am I supposed to decide that all
backyard chickens are anachronistic foolishness or only that it's silly if
it's taken to the extreme presented here? If people get pleasure out of
backyard chickens that's nice, regardless of whether they feed them scraps or
grilled salmon. I can think of many other pastimes that are far more
pernicious.

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aldoushuxley001
Have you tried growing your own food as a way to get that connection back?

For me, ive found it an invaluable way to "get out of my head" and calm down
my mind. It's very peaceful, plus you get to eat fresh food. But mostly I do
it to stay grounded, pun partially intended

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chasingthewind
I did try that about ten years ago and while I enjoyed it a little I had
problems with pests ranging from slugs to deer. I also had a bit of a black
thumb and my veggies never turned out that well. Part of the reason I've never
taken the plunge with chickens is because I worry I'd make a bad farmer. :)

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mindslight
Alert: hit piece !

It's true that there is an obscene amount of money in SV, and it has chiefly
been accumulated by building out the modern surveillance state to the
detriment of wider society.

But given that the mainstream critique seems to be inevitably descending into
this type of populist rabble rousing over the petty, the result is not going
to be productive nor pretty.

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CalRobert
This title would benefit strongly from an apostrophe.

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seanmcdirmid
Whenever I visit my mother-in-law’s house, she always prepares fresh chicken
for us, and by that I mean she keeps a few live ones (provided by a farm, she
doesn’t raise them) in a storage locker outside of her apartment that she then
kills with her hands when they are going to be eaten. She doesn’t even live in
a rural area, china is just flexible like that.

I looked into it here, but it seems like keeping live chickens in your storage
space is a nono in most USA cities.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Ducks are much more quiet, but they do require some water

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resist_futility
So chickens are the new horses when even the rich can't afford pastures

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RickJWag
Huh. Here in the remote-work mid-south, chickens are commonplace. The eggs
just taste better.

I guess every locale has advantages and disadvantages. For me, winter weather
gets extra weighting.

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tomcam
Chinese families in Silicon Valley have literally been doing this for years,
out of frugality and not status-seeking. They also do group buys of meat
direct from the farm.

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khazhoux
Allow me to dissect the subtle bragging in the opening:

> Excelling at his work, Land said, requires an obsessive focus on it

"I excel at my work."

> But maintaining that passion — especially with his fourth child on the way —
> means knowing when to detach

"I'm excellent at my job, despite having more kids than average (i.e.,
probably more family obligations than _you_ ). And also, I find time to '
_detach_ '. I'm awesome at my job _and_ find time to chill out."

> relaxing with a glass of wine in the back yard alongside his wife, kids and
> the family’s 13 chickens and three sheep

"Despite working in Silicon Valley, where a 1100sqft home with no yard costs
$2m, I have a wine-worthy backyard with enough grounds even for sheep and
chickens."

This just reeks of the I'M ALWAYS WINNING attitude so pervasive in Silicon
Valley, buried in an article about chickens ffs.

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dang
Please don't use uppercase for emphasis in HN comments, regardless of how
annoying something is. It's basically yelling, and the site guidelines ask you
not to:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

