Autumn
Even though the temperatures here are still hitting the 90s on a regular basis, I sense that fall has arrived. Not just because today is the autumnal equinox; there have been other signs as well. The summer drought ended a couple weeks ago with the kind of rain they call a gully-washer around here, the nighttime temperatures have dipped down into the low 50s a few times, and some trees are dropping their leaves. Hallelujah.
I haven’t written in a while due to school obligations combined with wedding planning (the C.F. and I are getting married!) but I’ve found a moment today. With the beginning of fall here, I’ve been struck with a case of the contemplative, thinking about not just life on the farm, but death on the farm as well. The plants have begun winding down their lifecycle with the slightly cooler weather and shorter days. And it is time to take the animals we are planning to eat this winter to the slaughterhouse.
I was a strict vegetarian from the ages of 10 to 23. At 23, I moved to Alaska for the summer and decided I should eat salmon while I was there. Since then, I’ve been gradually adding other animal products to my diet. Now my dietary boundaries have expanded to include some fish, and only meat that we raise or that I know was raised naturally and humanely. I still feel like a vegetarian most of the time though. The thought of sitting down to a giant steak, which I know makes the C.F.’s mouth water, still makes me a little queasy.
Taking animals to slaughter, which would be hard for even devout carnivores, is heartbreaking to a sap like me. I watched these animals arrive into this world covered in placenta, I named them (albeit the bucklings got names like “Kebab” and “Mr. Lunch”), and I worried over them and trimmed their hooves and got their heads unstuck from the fence. And now that it is fall and they are fattened up, it is time to load them into the stock-trailer and take them away.
It feels like betrayal. I, who fed them and kept them alive, am now the person responsible for of their death. I don’t hold the knife, but I might as well. It is heartbreaking.
I haven’t found a way to make peace with this process yet. I will eat the meat, and I will force myself not to be sad about it. I can’t think that sadness will do any good. Appreciating the meat for what it is—another creature’s life, taken in order to fuel my own—should involve gravitas, but that doesn’t necessitate sadness. It is difficult, disturbing, and complicated. The only way I am able to make some amount of peace with the fact of eating an animal that I had the power to keep alive is that while it was alive, it had a good life.
It is the end of another growing season, and a time of celebration as well as sadness. We’re getting married in ten days, which is a thrilling and exciting new beginning. We are harvesting the last tomatoes and cucumbers, planting the garlic for next year, watching the pumpkins mature. The persimmons will start falling soon—a sweet end to another summer on Cedar Creek Farm.
I haven’t written in a while due to school obligations combined with wedding planning (the C.F. and I are getting married!) but I’ve found a moment today. With the beginning of fall here, I’ve been struck with a case of the contemplative, thinking about not just life on the farm, but death on the farm as well. The plants have begun winding down their lifecycle with the slightly cooler weather and shorter days. And it is time to take the animals we are planning to eat this winter to the slaughterhouse.
I was a strict vegetarian from the ages of 10 to 23. At 23, I moved to Alaska for the summer and decided I should eat salmon while I was there. Since then, I’ve been gradually adding other animal products to my diet. Now my dietary boundaries have expanded to include some fish, and only meat that we raise or that I know was raised naturally and humanely. I still feel like a vegetarian most of the time though. The thought of sitting down to a giant steak, which I know makes the C.F.’s mouth water, still makes me a little queasy.
Taking animals to slaughter, which would be hard for even devout carnivores, is heartbreaking to a sap like me. I watched these animals arrive into this world covered in placenta, I named them (albeit the bucklings got names like “Kebab” and “Mr. Lunch”), and I worried over them and trimmed their hooves and got their heads unstuck from the fence. And now that it is fall and they are fattened up, it is time to load them into the stock-trailer and take them away.
It feels like betrayal. I, who fed them and kept them alive, am now the person responsible for of their death. I don’t hold the knife, but I might as well. It is heartbreaking.
I haven’t found a way to make peace with this process yet. I will eat the meat, and I will force myself not to be sad about it. I can’t think that sadness will do any good. Appreciating the meat for what it is—another creature’s life, taken in order to fuel my own—should involve gravitas, but that doesn’t necessitate sadness. It is difficult, disturbing, and complicated. The only way I am able to make some amount of peace with the fact of eating an animal that I had the power to keep alive is that while it was alive, it had a good life.
It is the end of another growing season, and a time of celebration as well as sadness. We’re getting married in ten days, which is a thrilling and exciting new beginning. We are harvesting the last tomatoes and cucumbers, planting the garlic for next year, watching the pumpkins mature. The persimmons will start falling soon—a sweet end to another summer on Cedar Creek Farm.
Comments
Post a Comment