Chicken-keeping class at Miraval Berkshires with instructor Tess Fedell.Megan Lisagor Stoessell
When I read that Gen Z had shamed millennials on TikTok for wearing skinny jeans, it didnât phase me or my fellow soccer moms. I laugh-cried to think weâd care about denim during days like these, refusing to be canceled in my pajama sweats. Out here in the rural suburbs, or what I like to call the country, weâre shopping online, but not for pants. Weâre busy buying gloves and veils.
Not because weâve embraced the âBridgertonâ-inspired fashion thatâs supposedly stylish. Itâs because weâve gotten into bee- and chicken-keeping. For adults of a certain age, these are the trends occupying our time. I canât go for a run in Sherborn without passing a new coop or hive box. Add a maple tap, and you have the town trifecta.
Neonicotinoids were developed in the 1990s, when crop-destroying insects such as aphids, leafhoppers, beetles and caterpillars demonstrated increasing resistance to existing pesticides. This family of pesticides had the additional benefit of being less toxic to vertebrates, and were more easily absorbed by neurotransmitters in insect brains.
Neonicotinoids became the pesticide of choice, the most widely used and studied in the world, and they are found in approximately 300 insecticide products, according to Deirdre Cummings, legislative director for the public interest group MASSPIRG.
But concern about the affect neonicotinoids were having on non-targeted insects, pollinators in particular, led MASSPIRG, the Northeast Organic Farming Association, the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association and dozens of other agricultural, environmental, climate and pollinator advocacy groups as well as Massachusetts legislators and other state government officials to campaign for a ban on their