You Already Are

I’ve always had a way with the piggies

I’ve been terrible about updating my appearances page, which is why there’s nothing on there about this weekend’s NOFA NH winter conference, where I’ll be keynoting on Saturday. Come on down. I have something real fun up my sleeve. 

I’m still wondering how one goes about slaughtering an animal that they have personally raised – seen every day, fed every day, cared for (cared about?) every day.  Is this a silly question?  Yes, there is a squeamish aspect to it, for me.  The only comparison I have, from personal experience, was killing white mice by hand in order to feed the snakes at the nature center where I volunteered/worked as a teen.  I had no emotional attachment to the mice but did make a concerted effort to kill them with the first blow.  Is animal slaughter something one simply gets used to, becoming desensitized to death because of the necessity to eat?  Or is there a something of a ritual to it, a celebration of the never-ending cycle of life; some respectful acknowledgement, show of gratitude, if only inwardly, for the something that dies so that something else lives?  Does your family, Ben, slaughter your animals; or does someone else do this for you?  Perhaps I’m being overly morbid, or terribly naive, or just downright silly.  I’ll not ask again.

The first year we kept pigs – this would have been probably 15 years ago by now – I had one of the few dreams I’ve ever remembered. It was the night before we were to have them killed, and I dreamt that I’d taken them to work with me. At the time, I was still working a few hours per week at a bike shop, waiting to hit the freelance big time. That’s a joke. Because “freelance big time” is an oxymo… Never mind. You got it.

Anyway, in this dream, I’d left them in a cage in an alley behind the shop, and ever half and hour or so, I’d tend to them, give them kisses and scratches and whatnot. Then, inexplicably, I left them in the alley when I returned home that evening. That was the end of it; when I realized I’d forgotten my pigs (Big Girl and Little Girl were their names), I awoke in one of those silent panics you occasionally awake from when you’re dreaming and something really, really bad happens. You know, like when the plane you’re in is about to hit water, or you’re driving with your friend Dirk, and he slides Frampton Comes Alive into the CD player. Again.

We’ve raised pigs every year since then. We’ve raised beeves every year since about the year after that. Chickens. Lambs. Everything we raise dies on this farm. Everything. There’s been a good bit of blood spilled on this ground (though we do try and catch as much as we can for the compost). Some of that blood has been spilled by people we’ve hired to do the job, but somewhere along the way – about 10 years ago, I’m guessing – we decided we should be able to do our own slaughter. So now we kill all our own pigs and lambs. The beef we still hire out, simply because I’m frankly a bit intimidated. They’re just… big. I have shot and bled one of our steers, a particularly suspicious fellow that liked me but wouldn’t let our slaughterer get near him. It went fine.

One of these days, I suspect we’ll take over the beef. Or maybe not. Chickens we hire out too, with the exception of the inevitable handful that either come lame, or escape the roundup on slaughter day. Nowadays, the boys do these for us. Chicken killing is one of those repetitive tasks that specialized ($$) equipment makes sooo much easier, and although we could rent the equipment from friends, we really like the couple that kills for us, and they’re cheap, so we hire it done. Honestly, I don’t really feel as if we need to kill every animal we eat. But I do need to feel as if we’re capable of doing so. And we are.

Pigs are shot in the brain with a .22 and then bled. Ditto beeves. Chickens get their heads cut off. The lambs get their throats slit and necks broken in one swoop. We do not perform any official ceremony. I know folks who light candles and chant and maybe sing, and I respect that, but it’s not our style. Still, we do always thank the animal quietly and do our work as expediently as we know how. Do the animals care that we thank them? Does anyone or anything? Does it matter in the least? I have no idea. I guess it matters to us. But frankly, I’m much more interested in how our animals live, than how they die.

We have no problem killing animals we’ve fed every day. We are not squeamish about it. It is hard work, and a task I’m always glad to have behind us, sort of like digging a big hole by hand, or lifting something heavy. My feeling about death has no doubt been shaped by living on a farm, and in a community of farmers, where the death of animals is never far away. It has also been shaped by the untimely death of a very close friend a few years back, an experience that included lifting him into his coffin and burying him on his land. You’d think such a thing might make one more fearful of death. For me, it was just the opposite.

Death happens. Things die all the time so that we might live. You drive a car whose emissions are smothering countless creatures, including fellow humans, whose very production has killed many times over. We sit in front of computers that are full of rare earth minerals, the mining of which ravages ecosystems far beyond our range of vision. I could go on. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what you eat or what you don’t eat. It doesn’t matter if you wear leather or don’t, if you live in the city or the country, if you read the Bible or the Koran. Things die so you can live. You will someday die so others can live. To the extent possible, our preference is to acknowledge this reality. To take some ownership of it.

People sometimes say to me, in reference to slaughtering animals for our consumption I don’t think I could do that. I understand the sentiment. We inhabit a culture that does its level best to segregate us from the reality of death and dying, and particularly the death and dying that is the direct consequence of our living. The thing I always want to say in reply to this comment, the thing I never quite have the guts to say because I fear it could make them uncomfortable or be perceived as insensitive, is this: Sure you could. In fact, you already are.

Wednesday lunch: Burgers with homemade mayo, steamed beets, roasted potatoes, and kimchi