meat

Memories

I eat meat, but I don’t always like to do so. If I can put myself in a situation where I can raise my own animal, give it the good life that it deserves, come to know it, then I will always enjoy the meat that I get from it. I can thank it by doing my best to treat its body and its life with respect.

“Meat is not merely flesh.” John Seymour wrote. “Each animal has its own life saga…” I have come to realize the truth in that statement. It is because knowing that saga gives us a relationship to the meat that we have on our plate; to all food that we eat. It makes the food taste better, we feel better. When we have memories on our dinner plate we understand the cost of putting it there.

I have wanted, for many years now, a place of my own to raise food, to work. And while my desire has been couched in a need to fend for myself, to make my own way, to prove to myself that I can, and to live in harmony (the best I can) with nature, it is in no small part because I want those memories.

I was not raised on a farm, and had only the faintest experiences on my grandfather’s ranch when I was young. But I have been lucky enough to have had a taste of the freedom (that word so many sling around) that comes from having memories mixed in with the food on my plate.

Paying Attention

On a whim, we bought four chicks from a well-known agriculture store to supplement our existing flock.  After a few weeks, we find that we have three roosters and a hen.  Right now they’re cute; they run around playing and chirping, but I know the future for the three little roosters.

That future is a reality for people who have decided to be self-sufficient.  The first lesson to learn is that self-sufficiency is not always bucolic, it is not always so peaceful.  Every day I take the little chicks out of their box in the coop and transfer them to the chicken tractor to enjoy the grass and sunshine.  And all the time, I know that the rooster’s days are numbered.

Last year, I “processed” about sixty five chickens and two pigs.  The killing is not easy, but the passing of the days with the animals was enjoyable.  Don’t let anyone lie to you: animals have a personality and I firmly believe that they smile in their own way.  This does not make my job easier and nor should it.  When it becomes easy to kill or worse, enjoyable, then we as a society have a problem.

This problem shows itself in many ways, often subtle but equally disturbing.  Taking a life, human or otherwise, should never be an act taken lightly, but because we often want easy, it has become just that.  Every morning I take the chicks out, and I let the hens out.  All of them have a limited time on earth and so do we.  Death is inevitable, but it is the time before death that counts.

Maybe we should pay attention to life a bit more and we will finally realize just how precarious it is.