a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Never Shower Again? Using Bacteria to Keep Us Clean

    Julia Scott wrote an interesting article in the New York Times today about her My No-Soap, No-Shampoo, Bacteria-Rich Hygiene Experiment. She took part in an experiment done by AOBiome, a biotech start-up in Cambridge, MA. The firm is developing a living bacterial skin tonic.

    The premise behind the tonic is that humans don’t need to shower or bathe or wash their hair. In fact, “the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+ has not showered for the past 12 years.” Instead, what we need to do is to restore the right balance of bacteria living on our skin and hair, and let the bacteria keep us clean. According to Julia Scott:

    The tonic looks, feels and tastes like water, but each spray bottle of AO+ Refreshing Cosmetic Mist contains billions of cultivated Nitrosomonas eutropha, an ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) that is most commonly found in dirt and untreated water. AOBiome scientists hypothesize that it once lived happily on us too — before we started washing it away with soap and shampoo — acting as a built-in cleanser, deodorant, anti-inflammatory and immune booster by feeding on the ammonia in our sweat and converting it into nitrite and nitric oxide.

    In the experiment, Julia Scott spent four weeks without taking a shower with soap. Her showers were limited to three minute rinses with water, no soap or shampoo. Instead, she misted herself with the water containing Nitrosomonas eutropha before she left her house and when she returned.

    Even though her hair did darken and become more oily, her skin changed for the better. As she describes is, “It actually became softer and smoother, rather than dry and flaky, as though a sauna’s worth of humidity had penetrated my winter-hardened shell. And my complexion, prone to hormone-related breakouts, was clear.”

    During the experiments, AOBiome was taking a swab of her skin every week to monitor the changes in her microbial community. Though her swabs showed that her bacterial community was similar to that of the majority of Americans’, by week 2 the swab also “showed hundreds of unknown bacterial strains that simply haven’t been classified yet.”

    After the four week experiment was over, it took just a few, short showers using shampoo and soap for her to destroy all the Nitrosomonas eutropha she had cultivated on her body during the four week experiment.
    DirtBath01

    Maybe the chickens are on to something with their dirt baths.

  • Waterfowl or Where the Bugs Are

    When I think of waterfowl, images of ducks, geese, and herons come to mind. Chickens? Not. But, chickens go to where the bugs are, and so they spend a lot of time wading narrow streams, scratching in the mud for bugs to eat. They’ll also dig along the banks of the pond where they find plenty to eat.

    WaterFowl

    The thicker the brush along a stream the better. You can’t see them, but there are six chickens hidden under the brush.

    ChickenHiddenInBrush

    And a mother hen leads her chicks through the forest, followed by a young rooster looking for love.

    HenAndChicksInForest
    RoosterAndHenInForest

  • May Flowers

    This is a month of flowers. The rhododendron are in full bloom. Lawn flowers are in bloom all over. And even though the dogwood is not blooming yet, the bracts have spread out and look like flowers themselves.

    Rhododendrum140521A
    Rhododendrum140521B
    LawnFlowers
    DogwoodGettingReadyToBloom

  • A Mother Hen’s Touch

    These chicks are now three and four days old. They stay close to their mother all day long and watch her every move. They watch what she is eating. They watch where she drinks. They roll around in the dirt with her when she takes a dirt bath. When she goes for a walk they run alongside her.

    ChicksWithMother140520
    ChicksWithMother140520B
    ChicksWithMother140520C
    ChicksWithMother140520D

    Two hundred years ago, this is how all chicks were raised. According to the National Chicken Council it wasn’t until the 1920s and 1930s that the modern chicken industry began to develop. Prior to that, chicken was a summer meat, something special for Sunday dinner.

    Now, the chances of a chick hatching under a mother’s warm breast only happens in small backyard flocks. The chances of it happening in a commercial setting and for customers to purchase chicken raised this way is infinitesimal.

  • Paradise for Few – Hell for Many

    AManAndHisHoeChickens

    Looking at the peaceful pictures of roosters, hens and chicks at a man and his hoe®, it’s easy to get lulled into thinking that this is how many chickens spend their lives, happy and carefree. If you want spectacular eggs, this is what it takes.

    But the truth of how eggs are really produced is not so idyllic. According to the American Egg Board, there are roughly 280,000,000 egg laying hens in the US and they lay 75,000,000,000 eggs each year, about 10% of the world egg production. Almost none of these egg laying hens have the a man and his hoe® experience. A tiny percentage of them have something approaching what the chickens here have. Sadly, according to NPR, 90% of egg laying hens in the US live out their lives in wire cages. Most of the rest spend their lives in very crowded, cage-free hen houses.

    Today, I came across an article from Australia at Australian Broadcasting Corporation, reminding me again just how dreadful most egg production is. When you buy inexpensive eggs at Walmart, Costco, and most any supermarket, those eggs were most likely produced in a facility similar to that pictured below. In these battery farms, the hens spend their entire lives, four to six in a small wire cage. They never get to snuggle down in a soft, straw nest to lay an egg in peace. They never get to sun themselves under a blue sky. They never get to roll around in the dirt. They never get to do the things chickens want and need to do.

    AustralianHenHouse

    The result is billions of inexpensive eggs, but at an incredible cost to the hens. There is also a tremendous human cost. First, to the egg farmers who must face the unspeakable suffering they inflict on the tens of thousands of chickens under their care. It’s hard to imagine that farmers doing this do not incur an emotional cost.

    Then there is the cost to everyone who eats these eggs. Can it possibly be healthy to eat eggs produced by hens who live in such dreadful condition? This type of egg production makes people believe that it is possible to produce good food cheaply, but when it comes to eggs, that is a lie. Creating eggs worthy of human consumption takes a lot of space and time. To create an egg worth putting in your mouth, a hen needs to spend her day outdoors, free to go wherever she wants to. She needs to be able to scratch in the dirt for earthworms and bugs. She needs to be able to roll around in the dirt. She needs to be able to soak in the sun. And she needs a clean, quiet nest to lay her great egg.

    So when you buy your eggs, demand eggs that are worthy of you.