The food journey begins . . .

So when the little one’s soul was screaming for meat, I had to go shopping. And discovered that buying good quality, organic, free range meat is not possible in either of the Duopoly’s chains. Strike One!

Then I hunted out butchers. In the UK these are normally jovial chaps with a real passion for quality meat and making sausages etc. They are artisans, artists of meat. But in Oz I found they were often rude and told outright lies in order to get me to buy their products. Strike Two!

Finally I found a butcher with integrity, who laughed when I told him it was the first time in a butcher’s shop for over 20 years and that I was a vegetarian. The expressions on my face must have been priceless at times as I looked at his wares and listened to his spiel. It was great to find good organic free range chicken, albeit very yellow and skinny so corn fed and maybe marathon runners?

And sourcing goat from him was wonderful. The energy of goat is very clean and pure, nurturing and rich. I never had a problem working with it in the kitchen while other meats made me gag. And goat stew in Autumn and winter is just so wonderful, rich, flavoursome and full of goodness.

It was hard at first, to handle and cook dead animals. But most Mothers will do anything for their children, and despite my ingrained belief at the time that I was a bad Mother, my willingness to forsake all my beliefs for my son speaks to the contrary!

And the more my son ate, as he transitioned from milk and purees, the more interested and involved I became in food – where it came from, what was in it, who grew it and with what energy, intention and chemicals involved.

We ate better as a result. Our diets became more varied, diverse and rich. I learned to bake (and let me tell you I was the worst – I have burned more cakes than you have ever eaten!) and good food became a passion. I always say our children come to heal us and Ben healed my food issues and opened me up to just how nurturing and delightful food can be.

I sourced the best, in bulk – stocked up the pantry and freezers with home cooked and home grown produce with all the goodness intact. As friends and woofers came to stay they praised my food and started dialogues and journeys of consciousness around food that sparked the idea of sharing good food on a wider basis . . . one day . . .

Back on the Vegetarian Bandwagon

When we killed our first two pigs towards the end of last year, despite my tears at their demise, I launched myself off the vegetarian bandwagon I’ve been driving for over 20 years.  Boots and all I landed firmly on the side of the carnivores as I feasted on the fat of the land – literally.  While the boys were savouring the meat of the bacon, I was supping on the fat.  We were like that old childhood rhyme – ‘Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean.  Between them both, they licked the platter clean.’

Even while my tongue and tastebuds were revelling in the taste and sensations in my mouth, and my belly was full at last, my mind and soul were wrestling with the implications of my newly formed enthusiasm for flesh.

I read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and more as I tried to make sense of this physical need to be satiated with the flesh of another, while the soul abhors the loss of life integral to the process from paddock to plate.

On the farm, life and death is often very arbitrary – just like human life.  Animals can be here one day and gone the next – flood, snake bite, wild dogs, weakness, paralysis tick etc. Witnessing the cruelty of nature made me think that our considered culling was pretty tame by comparison, notwithstanding the fear the animals feel as they load and leave this land that they have always known and loved as home.  As they leave their families and friends to destinations unknown and uncertain.

I love these animals, each and every one, and their grief is heartbreaking as they go.  Yes, they have had wonderful peaceful, joyous lives, foraging as nature intended and they wouldn’t have been born and had the experience if it weren’t for the human need and love of meat.

I’m not condemning anyone else’s choices.  We will still be raising animals for sale, slaughter and feeding my two carnivorous boys.

But maybe the wholesale slaughter of my beautiful sheep by the wild dogs, or tempting the pigs into the trailer for their final journey to the abattoir, or the freezers full to the brim of dead pig at the moment, or looking at this year’s crop of calves and how beautiful and full of life they are, has turned me from my thirst for flesh, back to the the peaceful serenity of veg.

Maybe I’m just sick to my stomach of the swathe of deaths we’ve witnessed over the last few months.  Never say never, I might be tempted by the smell of bacon in the future, but for now I am clambering wearily back onto the vegetarian bandwagon.

These animals are my friends, and I don’t want to eat my friends . . .

The Carnivore’s Conundrum

New lamb 2013

For most of my life I have been a vegetarian. For a long time there I was a vegan. I have had my moments of meat eating but then my spiritual sense that all animals are sacred beings has sent me back to the veggies and pulses.

Living on the farm has changed me, and I waver more and end up sitting on the fence a lot! It was all very clear cut for me before I had Ben. I wondered and worried whether he would want to eat meat, whether I would know if he did, whether I would let him and cook it for him etc . . . (I have to admit that I have turned Mother Worry and Guilt into an art form!) But one day, I looked across at my toddler sitting eating at the dining table and I realised ‘that boy needs meat’ . . the next day his career as a carnivore began.

And this has changed me. Keeping his diet balanced with meat and veg and being determined that he eats the very best meat money can buy – which, of course, means not buying meat at all but slaughtering our own. Now he’s almost 5 and happily eating Harry, our lovely chestnut steer out of Honey, and beautiful farm bred and reared lamb (the sheep don’t have names . . .)

I cried when Harry went and as I witnessed his terror and resignation in the trailer. He knew exactly where he was going. On the one hand he accepted that this was the ultimate gift he gave to us and humankind, but on the other he had the natural terror we all feel when facing death and bucking (literally) against that unknown abyss.

But I have cried over the natural losses we face as well – unexplained illness and death or deformity. The waste of a life and the cruelty of nature. The randomness of Mother Nature’s scythe across the swathe of our livestock. Is it better just to die or to be killed and used and appreciated? I have tasted and enjoyed the lamb, but I balk at sampling Harry.

We bought our first pigs last year so we could have a house full of ham and bacon, but of course they have stolen our hearts and are off to the boar tomorrow for some fun and frolicking and to birth our pig population to fill a few local freezers. Two more fatteners arrive tomorrow and they need to be called Ham and Bacon so we keep the end in mind and not fall in love with them. I have hatched a plan for pigs and chooks to live together in harmony so later in the year we should be able to fill the freezer with lots of roast chicken dinners and I am looking forward to hanging hams, making salami etc.

My body really appreciates meat but in my grief over my beloved horse and friend, Baby, and my clear realisation that she was my Mother in another life in India when I died as a child, my belief in reincarnation has become ever stronger (although I have never wavered in that). I have come to understand that far from common belief that animals are somehow lower on the spiritual scale than us, that they are, in fact, higher.

I have always said that people who think animals are stupid are wrong – after all you don’t see any animals on the relentless wheel of work, mortgage, motor and power payments – they live peacefully with what they have and can forage. Cuddle a cow, alpaca, horse, pig or sheep and you can feel the palpable sense of peace they exude. They are happier than us humans, far more content. Serene in their sense of spirit and where they stand in the grand scheme of things.

I began to think that they gave of themselves in the ultimate sacrifice as an act of service. Now I think they are accepting of our insistence in slaughtering and eating them. Perhaps this is the human dilemma – whether to serve the base needs of the body or the higher mind and spiritual consciousness. Maybe this that I wrestle with is the ultimate human question. The idea of eating flesh and blood feels so much like cannibalism to me and yet faced with a plate of pork sausages, roast lamb or chicken, I am often hard pressed not to sample some, though the texture can often revolt me.

How can it be right to kill another, whether human or animal? Is it ok to kill a wild dog who is stalking our livestock? Or to end the suffering of an animal or human in pain? Does our quest for flesh make it easier to countenance the demise of another human in a war or other? These are all big questions with no easy or right answers . . . the Bible purportedly says ‘Thou shalt not kill’ and yet globally Christians eat meat with relish.

Tales of cannibalism relay how addictive it is to eat the flesh of another and I do believe that eating meat is addictive. Perhaps we are all trapped in a spiral of addiction to flesh? I don’t know what the answer is, and I wish for a finite solution.

Meanwhile I continue on my path on the land of raising healthy, happy livestock for my family and friends to enjoy . . . I guess what I have learned is to have enormous respect and love for the animals we eat, to know where they have come from, what they have eaten, how they have lived and died. And to rest easy in that, at least.

For the animals’ sake, I wish for every carnivore to ask themselves the same hard questions, and to make sure that the meat they eat is raised ethically, organically and killed peacefully, if it is possible for any of us to go gently into that final goodbye . . .