Home to Roost: A Backyard Farmer Chases Chickens Through the Ages - Hardcover

"Bob Sheasley's engrossing, bittersweet "Home to Roost" describes the author's experience and fascination with chickens, their place in history and society, and the connection they provide to the American past and future. ... For the true chicken admirer, "Home to Roost "will be essential reading." --"The Seattles Times" "Utterly enchanting . . . a remarkable writer, a classic romantic."--"The Philadelphia Inquirer"""Home to Roost" is a compulsively readable history of man's relationship with" Gallus domesticus"", " rich with anecdote, fable, and fact." --Julie Zickefoose, author of "Letters from Eden""Combines firsthand experience and wide-ranging research in his treasury of chicken lore. . . . A diverting excursion through the coop and beyond.""--Kirkus Reviews"

"Home to Roost" follows Bob Sheasley through four seasons on a small farm, where he raises fifty hens in a coop the he handmade. Each day he travels from rural Pennsylvania into urban Philadelphia, where he works as an editor at the Inquirer, with a basket of fresh eggs at his side.Along the way, he shares an abundance of what he's learned and observed and uncovered about the history and behaviours of chickens, which humans have loved and exploited for 8,000 years. This is a story of agriculture and human migration; of folk medicine and technology; of how we dreamed of the good life, threw it away, and want it back. He delves into where chickens came from, what their DNA tells us about our kinship, how we've treated our feathered fellow traveller, and the roads we're crossing, together. Consider: When classical music plays in the coop-specifically, Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" - hens lay more eggs; researchers have proved it, even patented the process. Success and the good life-the American dream, and it was right there all along in the backyard coop.