Addition to original post: I am not trying to be an alarmist, but I do want to be encouraging. We haven’t forgot all these skills in just a few years and we won’t re-learn them in that time frame either. But, while I long for the good ‘ol days once in awhile I like the times we live in too. Innovate and try new things, and ways to do them. I love MiG grazing with electric fencing, which is healing our land faster than my forebears could do with the tools available to them, so relish the good of modern times and change the bad if you are able, and do it at a pace that is comfortable for you. And thanks for all the great comments and dialogue!
I am in a position to grow almost all the food we eat, but I know many people are not. And it isn’t because I grew up on a farm or inherited farmland, my sisters did too, and they hardly grow anything they eat. It is a conscious choice my husband and I have made to live this way, and eschew the trappings of modern, consumer life. So how do we take charge of our food supply when we have entrusted this integral part of life to others for so long? It isn’t easy, but what I have discovered in my personal life is that something worth having or doing won’t be easy, and there will be bumps along the road.
But with food safety and supply becoming an issue these days, I am not going to advocate baby steps and sugar coat this post. I think you should probably not run, but walk swiftly in the other direction.
I think enough generations have passed now, that too many people really don’t have a clue to what it takes to get the food they eat to their table. And really, we can’t blame anyone but ourselves, if we didn’t buy into the convenience and cheap factor, “they” wouldn’t be able to sell it. We live in a free country, and we do pretty much what we want to with our time and money. So we have sacrificed a lot for actually a little. But enough ranting on my part – it’s back to school for all of us.
I think it is time for the consumer to step up and be responsible for what is put in their mouth. Everyone has fed a baby and watched them turn away from a spoon of gluck offered to them. I had to turn away from the gluck, (I am no stranger to a bag of Doritos or a can of Dr. Pepper to swill said Doritos down with) because my body can no longer take the preservatives and dyes in junk food. I love the taste, and hate the hangover it gives me. It just isn’t worth it anymore. If I eat processed food now, I am looking at a hour long nap at least, and then I am groggy for several more hours.
So what to do? I cook from scratch with unadulterated ingredients. But just finding the unadulterated ingredients can be hard. If you grow a garden or orchard, you know that the fruits of your labors will not all be uniform and keep forever. But when you go to the store, what do you see? Uniformity and sell by dates that are way beyond what a reasonable person would expect. So while it is great that the cream cheese will keep for 2 + years. Is that really what you want to be eating? So we as consumers need to educate ourselves. If we make our own cream cheese at home will it keep for two years? The answer is no. We need to go back in time, and relearn what we have lost. Our grandmothers knew this and now we don’t. And we have people who are scared of food. Scared of real food that spoils, because all that is available in the store is perfect, plastic looking food. Since I live with my food all the time, I am skeptical of food that keeps too long. I expect my raw milk to sour, and apples to go bad. I am my own produce manager, I have to clear out the soft fruit, and cut away the bad spots, and rotate my freezer and canning stores.
But, besides all that, people have to become more generalized and not so specialized when it comes to food production. We need to learn how crops are grown industrially to know if we want to buy them, and keep perpetuating an agricultural form that we all bitch and complain about at the water cooler or soiree, and then turn around and purchase something produced out of season doused with who knows what chemicals. I know everyone is enamored with Michael Pollan these days, but he really turned me off when I saw a segment on Martha Stewart where he was promoting his book, In Defense of Food. I did not expect much from Martha, since when she wants something she gets it, but I did expect more from Pollan. After extolling the virtues of eating local, organic, blah, blah, blah, they cooked up a meal of Copper River Salmon (Alaska) and baked some kale chips. Oh gee, A+ on the dried out kale, but expensive non-local salmon flown to New York! F-! And that F means flunked. Organic and wild should not be for the elite, and famous only, it should be for everybody or at least regionally - but everybody needs to stand up for themselves and demand it. But you have to know what you are demanding. So learn how crops are grown, do you really think a perennial like asparagus will grow in a 100 acre field with no weeds? Does anything in your garden grow like that? Probably not. In my garden, I want the weeds to look healthy too, that tells me what is going on in the soil. The same with bugs – a bite here and there is OK, an infestation means something is wrong. Poor soil, not enough water… . It isn’t normal in nature for infestations or abnormal growth to occur. And cancer is an abnormal growth. Healthy plants resist attack from pests and disease. It works the same for humans and livestock too. If we kill all the bugs when we see them, we never see the truth about why they are there in the first place.
I know I am either preaching to the choir or am making someone mad, but really when I look back at my blog and see photos of 50+ swallows on our barn last summer, and this year I see 10 – 15. I make the connection, their trip through sunny California wasn’t so safe. Those swallows are insect eaters, if they eat too many insects that have been sprayed with poison after awhile they will die or not be able to reproduce. I read blogs about farming that isn’t organic, because I can learn from them. Not what I want to put into practice, but what I don’t want to bring into my house. Recently on a blog that I read, one of the family members was diagnosed with cancer, the chemical farming went on while this family member underwent more chemical treatment. To no avail, gone, dead, leaving memories. Profession? Chemical salesman to farmers – probably visiting the farms on a regular basis, week after week getting a higher dose of what he was selling. They don’t make the connection. It makes me sad.
So if you make the connection – learn all you can. Decide for yourself if that weed, or the bug bite on your produce is really that important to eradicate. Read farm magazines, organic and conventional. Inform yourself, so you know. If you buy at a farmers market, don’t just go for the prettiest produce, get to know the farmers and find farmers that have values that mirror your own.
Our bodies have to filter out all the toxins that our modern world throws at us – it is up to all of us to decide which ones are worth it. For more reading on the subject of taking charge of your food supply, read the entries on Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday’s. You will be sure to find something there that will pique your interest!
I just wrote an essay in reply to this wonderful post of yours, then deleted it. Amen to all that you wrote!
We’re on the road backwards and truly believe that we must travel it. We seem to be running a marathon of in-betweenness to get there…I have a huge amount of frustration at the amount of time and energy we’re inputting to trying to stay afloat long enough to retire enough debt so that we can be somewhere else where we can fully take charge of our own choices. Yes, we’re doing what we can now, but the fact is we’re noticing the results are in proportion to the time and effort put in…we can’t halfway do our garden and expect to feed ourselves from it very well. We’re badly positioned for our own survival, and that must change.
Well, anything truly worthwhile IS worth the hard work…especially so the hard work can be the type of our own choosing and not just to keep mindlessly “feeding the machine.”
Robbyn, we all have to do what we can and are able to do at the time. I think the elusive “done” we have all been taught, is not really there at the end of the tunnel. At one time I found myself falling for that and there were no new discoveries in my life or much learning.
I hate to think back about my “awakening” when my brother’s health really started to fail. He was tough, it took him a long time to die, and through all that time, and not until the last did one of the many doctors treating him ask what his chemical exposures had been. He had smoked as a teen and that was always blamed, but in retrospect it was just one of the many straws before the camel’s back broke.
We live in a biological world, and to ingore that is, well, ignorant. To think a chemical that will kill a weed, or a insect in a matter of hours and not do any harm to a human is not really logical thinking.
I have discovered things about my cattle and their behavior in the last month, that had I not changed one little part of my behavior I never would have thought of, or known. It’s exciting to be farming and growing food. I don’t think it is exciting to suit up (or not) and go out and spray acres of chemicals. It is just a job and not a very good one at that.
I think you and Jack are doing great – you are in this together and believe me that is more than 1/2 of the equation!
Well said. I grew up on a farm where we raised most of our food. And, like you, I’m the only one of the family that still grows and preserves much of our food. Neither of my sisters, nor my brother do much.
It is a very empowering feeling to know EXACTLY what is in your food.
Judy, thanks! Your new garden is doing great too! My sisters do a little gardening and canning, but it is something they “used” to do, or had to do. The ultimate for them is buying something and expending only money not labor.
15 years ago, I left Gettysburg and went off to college north of Pittsburgh and was shocked at all the cancer in the area: everyone (I mean EVERYONE) I knew originally from that area either had cancer, knew someone who did or knew someone who’d died from it. My best guess at the time was that it was the steel and coal mining and what it did to the water, etc.
Now, it is like that here.
I have a flea beetle problem on my potatoes this year and everyone tells me to dust with Sevin. My answer is no. I will live with it this year, next year I’ll find an alternative if I need to, but not a chemical. Not a known carcinogen that is banned in 7 countries, are you kidding me???
Like you, I”ve noticed some changes in the past few years. Fewer bees. I have not seen a hummingbird yet this year. My husband has seen 2. Most years there are 4 females fighting around the feeder. This year, not a one. It really worries me.
JodyM, scary isn’t it? There is block of truck farms here in our area, which isn’t really a town, but anyway, these different farms all grow cabbage and raspberries, and have been sprayed each year for the last 70 years. The huge BPA powerline goes through these fields and it is down wind of the Reynolds aluminum plant. Guess what, almost every family clustered around these fields has lost someone to cancer or has someone in the family now with cancer. I have seen soil tests on some of these pieces and the DDT and DDE is still in the ground. They cannot be certified organic except for just the crops that will not uptake these chemicals. I sometimes feel like the horse is out and it is too late to shut the barn door.
As for the Sevin, the flea beetles probably won’t do too much damage, and if you work on building your soil the potatoes should be healthy enough to withstand a bite or two. I just read an interesting blurb in a book called WEEDS AND WHY THEY GROW about healthy, compost fed commercial potato fields having no potato beetles and they were right next to conventionally farmed plots infested with beetles so bad the potatoes were being eaten in the ground. It reminded me of the old guy in PRODIGAL SUMMER who was worried the bugs from the organic orchard would come over and eat his fruit, so he kept spraying. Good book that one, for conveying the message in story form.
I just purchased a little 10 acre home a month ago. It’s half way done and the previous owners left an unbelievable amount of trash everywhere…but I got a fantastic deal on it. I literally paid less than what the land alone could have gone for because of the economy, the owners’ upcoming divorce, and being in the right place at the right time!! Despite starting medical school in under a month, I’ve got some terraces and tomatoes in, and while the growing season is significantly shorter here, I may be lucky enough to get a few peppers before the frosts set in. Now I just have to worry about moving my rose collection! (I’m definitely not excited about that part…) Better yet is the fact that my neighbors get licenses to shoot deer here for crop protection. I LOVE butchering, and I’ve offered to clean and prepare whatever cuts they want in return for keeping the rest of the carcass for my own use. Not to mention that hunting regulations here allow 8 does per hunter!!!! (My husband is delighted!)
While my horses will never be organic or low impact, I’ve got my hay sourced from my neighbors (and it’s beautiful dairy hay to boot!), so I’m spending my dollar in a very local way. I’ve ordered a variety of birds, from a large number of heavy breed cockerels to process in late fall/early winter, Silver Appenheller Spitzhaubens for their foraging and laying traits, and some Royal Palm turkeys. I would like to add a few Pygmy goats as I had a dairy goat as a child and would like to have the milk (they are too cute as well, and easier to fence!). My House Chicken is pretty useless as far as economy goes, but he’s awfully cute and a good homework partner.
What shocks me is the variety of wildlife at this new house. I see zillions of hummingbirds, snakes, and a plethora of amphibians…it gives me hope that this place (despite the trash) is a lot less polluted than it looks. I’m moving from the Chemical Valley to literally the best part of the state, so it’s all good (so far…). I’m just not too thrilled about the upcoming winter because it’s so much cooler here, but I’m sure we can all cope.
wolfandterriers, Wow it sounds like you found the perfect place. I have heard about those hunting limits, unbelievable! The deer must be small. I don’t know if a bunch of small ones would be better than a few big ones. They sure can make short work of the garden when they feel like a vegetable dinner!
Despite all the leavings of the former humans, it sounds like the natives did OK – good luck to you!
It is a struggle and so discouraging when the garden is a flop or the milk tastes bad. I so appreciate your posts which inspire me and encourage me to keep doing what I know is right.
Tami, and I appreciate your comments to keep me going
I have some garden flops that I need to post about, and I won’t even go into Della’s last calving…her boyfriend keeps calling though and she has a date soon. Hope it takes, she is trying to wean me, and I really miss having a baby calf that is not a bucket calf.
Thanks again for the kind comments
Well said, and very true. I especially agree with your statement about not trusting food that doesn’t spoil for way longer than you would expect.
Sande, it seems shelf-life is taking away our lives.
I am only beginning my journey of mindful consumption. I have the luxury of being a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, so the kids are all learning right along with me. But it has been nearly a full-time job for the crash course I’ve put myself on. Not only have I had to discover the sources of my food, but there is so much we, as citizens, are not told. MSG is in food that is labelled MSG-free because it goes by another name. GMO and nanotechnologies are being embraced despite questionable efficacy and safety…every day it seems there is a new subject to study.
For example, just last week I learned that the carbon footprint for shipping a red bell pepper out of season to me (near the east coast) from Holland is much smaller than trucking one here from California. I would have never guessed that. Carbon footprint is not the end-all, be-all, but one part of a larger equation I take into account when making purchases.
I can understand why so many just throw up their hands in the grocery store and say, “If it’s here, it MUST be okay to eat, right?” I’ve been there.
Peggy, your kids are going to find this easier to learn than we have. It is difficult, and it is so much easier to just trust the store – but in some cases it just isn’t safe anymore. And it doesn’t help that big business has gotten into organics either. I don’t think a processed, organic frozen meal is very good for us. It’s organic, but that loses any shine compared to fresh or at least minimally processed.
Working at a food testing lab opened my eyes. Test carrots for pesticide residues not allowed in organic baby food, test too high, into the regular food supply. It’s all laws and labeling and the consumer takes a back seat… . Sad but true.
Thanks to you Nita, this year we had a small garden. It was a fun experience to eat the beans and peas we grew ourselves. Not everything grew well, but notes were taken and we are already planning for a better garden.
I am so facinated with your farm life and have learned so very much from you. I am impressed that you already have your winter garden in the works. It is so hot here and we have hardly had any rain.
We still see lots of hummingbirds, butterflies, lightening bugs, lizards and other insects. We went all natural with no pesticides. I tell my husband about your blog all the time. His mother did all things homegrown. She was a country girl with a degree in home economics.
This post is in greatful appreciation to you and your wonderful way of life.
Blessings to you,
Pam
Pam, congratulations on your garden – your beans and peas looked delicious! Thanks for the kind comment and PS, the planning for the next year thing means you’re hooked girl!!
Thanks again
Fantastic post, truly words to live by.
My Nana lived on a farm growing up. She moved away, but always kept a veggie garden, as did my mom. Now I garden, too, and hope to slowly increase my production until I, too, can feed my family. Three generations away from the farm is too much!
Right now we rent a suburban house. Every year, we add to, or improve our beds, slowly digging up more and more lawn. Hopefully within the next 3 years, we’ll be able to buy 5 to 10 acres, plant an orchard, and start raising livestock.
This blog keeps me inspired to continue our journey toward self-sufficiency.
Alison, thank you! When you finally move to your land the next renters will be very lucky indeed
Nita … You rock!
Ditto to your entire post. Your brother would be so proud of all that you’ve accomplished and taught others. Novices and newbie gardeners like myself need all the guidance and encouragement we can find!
Paula, thanks – your compliments and questions are always encouragment for me.
I’ve been a regular at our farmers market for 27 years, and organic for the past 4-5. Added meat/poultry/milk/eggs all grass fed 2 years ago.
So yeah, I totally get what you’re saying.
I’ve pushed a friend into about 1/2 organic and mostly local, but she is constantly berated by her family for it. Her sister insists that “irradiated food is healthier because it doesn’t have germs and is fresher, doesn’t spoil.”
sigh.
Hayden, WOW 27 years a regular! That is great – Portland hasn’t even had market for 27 years!!
I don’t understand the germ thing – sorta like the folks who vaccinate their kids and then worry that the unvaccinated ones will make their kids sick! Aren’t they protected with their wonderful vaccines??
I’m working on it (it being both buying more sustainably and locally, and hopefully moving towards growing my own food), but I have to admit to feeling overwhelmed sometimes – what to do, where to start, and everything that goes along with all of these changes. I’m trying to keep in mind that every little bit counts, but I also don’t think that little bits are going to cut it anymore. But thank you for the reminder of what needs to be done, and the importance that we actually do it – I’m going to find some more things to work on, and get going on this again – it’s just too important not to.
Threshholddweller, don’t feel bad, it is overwhelming. It is a lot to learn and be responsible for. The knowledge about food and soils has been steadily slipping away for quite awhile. Our modern lives now are too preditable – computer logic tells us that if we do _____, the result will be ______. 2 + 2 always equals 4. Biological living/farming/gardening does not yield such perfect results every time.
And it is always choices – yesterday I was faced with canning cherries that I bought or planting some more seeds in the garden to take advantage of the rain that may or may not come. I planted seeds…it’s raining today and the cherries are just fine. Sometimes it is hard to make the call.
Excellent Post!!! I was just having this discussion with my DH, about a recent newspaper column extolling the virtues of ‘going green’ (anyone else already tired of that phrase?) and how you “don’t have to drastically change your lifestyle”.
Why do we have to couch our environmental message with disclaimers? Why do we worry about making sure we don’t alienate people with the thought that being responsible stewards might involve sacrifice?
Change is good, but sometimes it’s also hard….but necessary.
(I feel a blog post coming on:)
Maureen, I know what you mean about the “going green,” a guilt trip never works, and if people just follow the fad, they may give up too soon when the next hot thing comes along.
Can’t wait to read the post
This is a big conversation. I posted my thoughts on Bioneers http://bioneers.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sustainable-food. I won’t clutter up the comments with more, but I hope to(and plan to) continue this conversation.
Thanks for starting in such a straight forward way.
What an absolutely PERFECT Fight Back Fridays post!
Seriously, I really enjoyed reading this.
There is an organic farm near us that sends us their weekly email newsletter. I like the stories about the chickens, the workers, their battles with snakes, whatever. But every so often they write an email about how a particular crop was totally devastated by a particular insect, and I think: that’s not supposed to happen. I know that in most permaculture-inspired environments, it wouldn’t happen. And I know that in most organic gardens where the soil and plants are healthy, it wouldn’t happen. So I wonder, what are they doing wrong? Perhaps their growing methods, though organic, are still too conventional? Perhaps they need to move “beyond organic”?
Anyhow, thanks for sharing!!!
Cheers,
KristenM
(AKA FoodRenegade)
Kristen, thank you!
It takes a long time to build the soil, and many organic farms don’t have livestock or enough livestock in the equation to build in the fertility that is needed for high need crops like vegetables. And to some if you just trade a conventional way of farming for organic, you will have some of the same problems. Especially if your first plan of attack is the sprayer. So many things come into play and we need to face it, growing vegetables, (especially what we are accustomed to eating) is really an unnatural and pretty unsustainable practice. This will drive vegetarians crazy, but the cattle on our farm are the most sustainable, giving more than they take. The vegetables I grow, not really at all. A real biodynamic farm (if you read the actual textbooks) will only sell meat, milk and fiber from the farm. All components of a biodynamic farm are supposed to enhance what is there, not deplete.
Commonly these days, most CSA farms are what I call vegetarian farms, choosing to leave animals out of the equation, in favor of high off farm inputs, that don’t carry the stigma of keeping livestock, but are very harmful to the environment by either being mined or shipped great distances. And really is using feather meal for a vegetarian farm really a true representation of the marketing mantra , “vegetarian?” Last time I checked feathers came from chickens, and if they are being sold for fertilizer, they came from conventional chicken houses and then comes the processing of the feathers into a meal suitable for vegetable production.
All these marketing terms, like organic, natural, free-range, biodynamic, and countless others are confusing to the consumer. It is no wonder people have a hard time making a choice – it is hard and I am a farmer, and farmers have a hard time too. I have just watched a neighbor plant a crop of oats for hay for his cows, he has been regularly spraying this field for broadleaf weeds. It is a waste, if he was trying to sell oat seed, he would need to spray or handweed to make a clean seed crop, but for hay, the cows would probably relish the broadleaf weeds. But, he gets advice from someone who grows crops for seed not hay, but thinking about the difference is a stretch.
I am rambling here – but in regards to the farm near you, I just read some interesting information about a common pest in newer vegetable fields/gardens – the cutworm. It seems that poor decay in the soil caused by low calcium and pH will release too much aluminum and iron, the soil doesn’t decay properly and this can activate the hormone system of the cutworm. And that is just one insect pest! It seems the world beneath our feet is much more complex than we know, we are just scratching the surface.
Wonderful post Nita. I work with cancer patients everyday I work and John just got done working on an oncology floor for the last 2 years. I am often amazed when talking to the patients. Some people are well educated and aware of why they possibly got cancer and have made significant changes. Others just can’t understand why as they sit there with a pack of smokes in their t-shirt pocket. It just blows me away. A few years back I took a Women’s Health & Environment class and that is when I really made that connection between environment/food supply and cancers. We read a few books by Racheal Carson. I am always looking to learn more and change our ways. I have a long ways to go!
The sad thing is that the majority of the supermarket doesn’t just have ‘plastic looking food’ but plastic food! I have to question a society that allows some of those ‘middle aisle’ so called ‘foods’ to be called food. It is a disgrace.
There is a certain joy not to mention an enormous learning curve to putting food on your own table. I’ve learned more in the last year than all my years at university combined, and am surely the more healthy for it (I know I sleep better, literally).
No, it is not easy to get up close and personal with those you will eventually kill and eat. It takes a certain emotional trajectory to accomplish that too (an ironic twist to the decision to grown all one’s own food). This year’s will be the most difficult emotional trajectory for me for example. Last year at the end of hunting season I came home, walked past the goats with my rifle in hand and thought ‘They are just like small deer; I can do this,’ and promptly got them pregnant with a view of killing and butchering the kids and thus having my own source of red meat.
Now, however after watching the gals grow more and more pregnant over the past 5 months, my resolve has weakened. I can’t kill them because I have come to love and adore them, yet I’m not so sure I can do in the kids either (cuz OH God, they’re going to be cute) which was the original plan.
So here’s the thing: When you realize that the food in the store is questionable (if not downright frightening and possibly lethal–in the long and sometimes sort term), and decide to grow your own, you come to know those animals intimately and the theory suddenly becomes more difficult to put in to practice. You realize that cows love their babies, that chickens can have loves of their lives and senses of humour, that turkeys are a blast to raise and not at all the ’stupid’ creatures of confinement operations, that dogs could like morning coffee (only it is instant), and goats…well, there is not much you can’t say about goats. Goats are simply delightful (and that is not to say they aren’t infuriating at times)!
Once you’ve spent some time raising these creatures and getting to know them, you come to realize that the animals we are eating are more like us than not; and this knowledge makes it all the more difficult to ‘do them in’.
Yet do them in we must if we are to eat meat honorably. On that note, I’ve got to go start up the scalder. I’ve got some Cornish Crosses to ‘do in’ today.
HDR, your perspective is interesting to me, who grew up seeing and then participating the “doing in” of various livestock species. Almost anything anyone eats has to be “done in.” Whether you follow a vegan diet or not. Even the weeds that so many people cuss, are alive and if you let huge amounts of weeds grow in between your rows and mow and/or mulch them they are killed too, or living less of life than if they were allowed to grow wantonly in our gardens. I suppose the dandelion feels important in it’s dandelion world, just as a tomato does with it’s brethren.
I never understand when people say we must quit eating meat, and stop killing the animals. So what do we do with the animals that are here now on earth. Kill them all, or let them live out their lives and do and go where they want? We all draw the line in a different place. And we all (all species) live and die.
When you speak of your kids, I understand, I would not want to eat a baby calf, but by the time that baby is two years old, they may be beautiful to look at, but they aren’t cute anymore. I appreciate the way our livestock enhances our land, and maybe if cows could live forever, I would not harvest them, but since they don’t, they have to “work” here like I do.
I enjoy your insights as a newbie to harvesting their own food
I only wish I had grown up like you! I knew instantly at 5 years old on my first trip to a farm that I should have been left (raised) there. Now, I’m giving that dream to myself as an adult (along with the learning to ride–take care of, have a relationship with–a horse).
When I first decided to begin raising the food animals for meat I really didn’t consider how tough it would be to kill them because of my relationship with any of them. Instead, my whole focus was on providing for my family, getting my dollars off the corporate agriculture dependency train, and to raise animals ethically. I really didn’t imagine the emotional trajectory that might need to come along with that and as such, it came as a surprise to me. Of course, I knew there would be some ‘icky’ bits with the whole ‘learning to kill and butcher’, but the real shocker came a few years into the piece when I had much more knowledge (and intimate relationship with) about each animal. Suddenly, the thought of killing them became much more difficult because they each are individuals with plans and ideas about themselves!
It is funny when I think of it that it actually got harder before it got easier, after it being not so difficult! But then, when I first started, I didn’t have attachments to my chickens the way I do now (let alone the goats!). And, the real irony there is that although I didn’t consider the chickens personalities then, I was utterly hopeless at killing them (tried once or twice and made a mess of it and was terribly turned off and afraid to try again) and laid off it for several years!
Of course, part of the problem now is only having five goats: three females, two wethers, and only two of the three gals are preggers. It’s not like I have a herd. These gals are not far from being pets really which is why it has taken me 4 years to ‘pluck’ up the courage to get them pregnant. But, this year was the year to put them to ‘work’.
As far as ‘offing’ them, I’ll get there. I am just reflecting on the change in me from last fall after hunting and butchering so many critters to now. Believe me, I found it funny/interesting this change also; took me by surprise. Like I said, when I got home last fall I took one look at them and thought ‘yep, it’s time’. The good news is the kids will be 5 months (and therefore ‘butcherable’) round about the end of hunting season this fall! I hope to have come full circle by then so I can eat my kid and have some too.
PS. Having been a vegetarian and then vegan for more than 12 years, I now realize that that idea is silly and unnatural. I really don’t any longer hold ideas about not eating animals. It is what humans have done since the dawn of time. That is why hunting and fishing became part of my learning curve. I want to know what it is like to be really human, and that involves stalking and killing for my survival. This ‘once removed’ and so called ‘civilized’ society we live in today is not even humane, let alone human.
cheers,
HDR
If you look at the grand circle of life then we are what we eat. We are the goat, the cow, the chicken, the carrot. We are also the grass the goat ate, the grain the cow ate, the worm poop the carrot ate. We are the worm, the dirt, the place. Only when we remove those bits to somewhere else does this stop. If we break the circle, if we do not return the building blocks of life we have used to the community we borrowed them from, then we are doing wrong. That is evil, the breaking of the cycle. Being part of the grand cycle in the place where you live just makes you one of the experessions of that place. You should celebrate your part, your place in the cycle with honor and joy.