Tag Archives: pigs

The Carnivore’s Conundrum

by . Posted on
14 Jul

For an animal lover and long time vegan it was hard to conceive of eating meat for myself, even if I could feed it to my family. I had long before accepted that eating eggs was a whole and healthy protein source for my diet – as long as from my own chooks that I fed, loved and nurtured. I like to know EXACTLY where my food is coming from!

I slowly added some dairy to my diet although it has never really agreed with me (perhaps subconscious memories of the sour, warm, cream rich aluminium top bottles from break-time in my primary school years – yeuch!) When the few steers went either to the sales or slaughter (Hector the Protector, Harry etc) I cried and cried. Harry fed Ben and Ged for almost 3 years. One steer, much loved, no waste.

But I tasted the lamb a few times (picking over the choicest cuts, nibbling hesitantly) and remembered that I had eaten lamb before in my early 20’s when too skinny and unhappy and my sister was worried about my weight! It was ok to eat a boy lamb who had been driving me crazy squeezing under fences to whittle away my garden. We always knew that was where the boys would end up. My precious, beautiful ewes were a source of endless joy and delight as they gradually came to love and trust me. When the wild dogs hunted them down and murdered them so cruelly I was seized with rage against a Mother Nature who was so cruel and wasteful. As I dragged their dead bodies behind the car to the animal graveyard to feed the crows, goannas, eagles and other scavengers . . . such a waste of my beautiful girls.

And I realised that at the end of any of our lives all we can hope for is that we have helped someone, served someone, been of use, of purpose. That our lives have been a waste. And these animals of ours were living blissful lives on a piece of paradise. We are all going to die. Every one of us. Some will be killed in accidents, by others, some will die at a time of their own choosing. If a live serves another or others in a useful way – is that so bad? If it has been a happy life, a rich and rewarding life, filled with love?

These are the questions I wrestled with. Questions to which there are no cut and dried answers (no matter what PETA may say!) I learned to walk a middle path, to tread the fine line between my spiritual beliefs and the base nature of the human body. Is it possible that I could be learning balance??

We had bought two pigs to grow up for slaughter. But I couldn’t bear to be parted from Saddleback Sam and Babe. So we got two more which Ben named gleefully. We took them to the abattoir ourselves and arrived just after a triple decker of glowing white pigs, blinking in the bright sunshine. They had never seen dirt or mud or sunshine before. Never rooted up pasture, digging for grubs and roots. Never wallowed in cool muddy shallows or had the hose cascading over their backs in the heat of the day. Never made a nest with weeds and grasses. Never really lived. And yet that is what most people eat. Now that is wrong.

I cried and cried over our two gloriously dirty and bristled pigs. I know why pigs eyes are always so sad – because they know that almost all pigs are slaughtered and eaten . . . at least ours got to LIVE before they died. I never thought I would be able to eat them. For a long time I resisted the wafting savoury smells of good bacon in the pan. Finally I succumbed and was floored by the rich, smoky complex flavours and the sweetness of the fat. We were like ‘Jack Spratt and his wife’ The boys would eat the meat while I would greedily suck at the fat. I realised I was fat starved after years of following a low fat diet.

Now I eat meat maybe once a week. I am a convert to the fact that the body needs a little meat. Pastured. Ethically raised and reared. No waste. Eaten with respect and honour. And that is what we provide and serve to our customers. Grown with love, served with passion, eaten with respect.

Back on the Vegetarian Bandwagon

by . Posted on
21 Mar

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 . . .

Pig Tails

by . Posted on
02 Nov

On the recent holiday Monday we had a rare family outing.  To the abattoir with two very fat pigs. As a recent convert to the joys of bacon fat after over 20 years as either vegetarian or vegan, I knew that I needed to see the full journey of my meat from paddock to plate.

I didn’t want to go.  But we were combining the pig delivery with a pick up of new bees, and hoping for some fun time in between the two.  Of course the pigs were impossible to load on the trailer (all animals know where they are going when the day comes) so we were late and then when we finally found the abattoir (no signs) a semi trailer of pink pigs had just arrived before us and so we sat and watched them being unloaded, squealing at the cattle prod and blinking at the light in the bright spring sunshine.  They didn’t look as if they had ever seen daylight before.

I stood by the trailer and looked my pigs in the eye, crying softly and whispering, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .’

Needless to say, the promised fun time, didn’t eventuate!

I had been warned by a neighbouring newbie pig farmer not to go to the abattoir and for my husband to go alone, so I was terrified of what I might find.  It was clean and quiet, but then it wasn’t a working day.  Behind us in the queue were farmers with cattle and sheep.

I went around the corner of a building to do a wee and there saw the slurry pit and that did smell, and no matter how brave I am getting, I wouldn’t want to go on a slaughtering day.  When it came to our turn the men were patient and kind to us, the pigs were unloaded into a concrete stall, awaiting branding by the local LHPA inspector the next morning before they could be ‘processed’.

Needless to say, I was the only emotional female there on the day and I am sure there were a few smirks about my blubbering, but the farmer unloading his sheep looked at me with empathy, no one likes this part of the job.  I was asking him about the skins and where they went.  The abattoir worker told me they put them out for tender and were processed in China, no one is Australia tans hides any more.

As it turns out, there was a bit of confusion about my pigs and they had a slight stay of execution until the afternoon on the following day.  I don’t like to think of them in that concrete cell listening to the dying of their fellow animals and knowing that inevitably their turn would come.  Like a short term death row.

Pigs are the most delightful animals.  Funny, naughty, friendly and affectionate.  Actually, all our animals are like that.  Each with their own unique personalities, very few without a name. Every soul on earth deserves a name.  The animals are not lesser than us (on the contrary, they don’t have to work for a living, and are peaceful, joyous, living in the moment highly evolved beings).  And yet we kill them and eat them.

I have long held a theory that there is a scary dichotomy in the fact that the holocaust is seared into our memories (and rightly so) as the most horrific atrocity ever committed on earth, and yet we cram animals into cattle trucks every day, all over the world, without telling them where they are going, and execute them en masse.

My only consolation is that I know that my animals have lived a good, healthy, fun life on pasture.  They have been loved and well cared for.  And I see nature’s brutality and arbitrary cutting down of animals – the perceived waste when an animal dies of natural causes and is left to decompose and just feed the wild dogs, goannas, eagles and other scavengers.

Still, I wrestle with my conscience when I eat meat even though I do feel it is good for my physical body.  I wrestle with my soul beliefs often, and especially when I have to look an animal in the eye as I load it for its final journey.  No one wants to die – human or animal.  We all buck at the very idea, and fight to the bitter end.  Animals are no different.  They deserve a lot more respect, dignity and thanks for what they sacrifice for us.

Every meat eater needs to visit the abattoir once, and farms many times, to force themselves to become acquainted with the animals they feast on.  We have become so divorced from our food sources and as a result have become gluttons for artificially coloured, pre-packaged meats from supermarkets, with no thought for the lives they have lived or how they died.  Animals offer us such love and joy in their lifetimes and the ultimate sacrifice to fuel us.  My five year old is such a little carnivore and he knows he is eating ‘Harry’ (steer) or his pigs ‘Lilli Pilli’ and ‘Blackie’ and tells lovely stories about their lives.

Next time you tuck it into meat on your plate, spare a thought for the animal it came from, and please start asking where it lived, how it died, what it ate, where it roamed, or if it was able to roam at all.  Get to know a farmer, familiarise yourself with the animals, bring some consciousness to what you eat . . . please.

The Carnivore’s Conundrum

by . Posted on
03 Mar

I don’t eat meat but my little pickle does which means that I have had to get a lot closer to meat and a lot more involved with where it comes from, and, as a farmer, where it goes.

I believe that if you must eat meat you need to have raised it, fed it, loved it, looked after it, and attained its agreement to the kill.  And then you kill it or at least be there at the end to ensure it is killed humanely, kindly, with compassion and care.  After all, these are living, breathing, feeling beings with soul.

This week two of the boys went to the fat sale.  Hector has been avoiding this for years.  Mainly because each time my resolve has failed or the river has flooded or the bank balance has been boosted some other way.  Each time I have gone and talked to him and cried with him because his ending has always been inevitable yet somehow he and I had to make our peace with it.  At the end of last year he told me that he gave himself in the ultimate sacrifice and I understood that animals do this for us – not willingly, not happily, but nobly they give the ultimate gift in service to us humans.  For love of us.

And I understand and ‘get’ that – I really do.  But to get cattle to the table, first they are separated from the herd and mustered which can be long, hot, hard work and confusing to yards which often are places of fear – what happens next?  Then they are loaded on a truck – where am I going now?  There is grief at leaving their home, the land they love and their friends and family – both human and herd.

Road travel must be terrifying and then they finally arrive at the saleyards where strangers prod and poke and sometimes hit them.  They are tired, hungry, thirsty, dazed and confused.  And then they are loaded into huge trucks, crammed in together for often long journeys to the abattoir where they will smell the blood and fear long before they are stunned and killed.  Imagine how terrified they must be, how their last moments are filled with fear and the killing frenzy before them.

And yet when Hitler did this to humans it was called The Holocaust – a blot upon our human history never to be forgotten.  I remember it well.  In another life I was in Auschwitz where I scrubbed floors and the lust of two SS officers kept me alive longer than most.  But before we got there we were herded, isolated, starved and prodded and poked and cramped into ghettos then cattle trucks as we travelled to unknown destinations and destinies.  We too were full of fear.  No one, no living sentient being should be treated like that.  It isn’t right that we do this to cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens.  What have we become that we think this is OK?

We have legalised horror and industrialised death and it is not OK. We have to get back to grass roots and get involved with where our food comes form – where it is grown and nurtured and raised, where it dies and how it is treated every step of the way.  This isn’t just about chemical free or biodynamic food or farming, it is a moral dilemma and soul choice.

If we eat meat we have a moral responsibility to those animals we feed off to ensure they are treated with dignity, compassion and yes, love.

I have cried so many tears for Hector this week.  First he sulked and refused to speak to me.  Finally I reikied him on his way to the abattoir and he said ‘I have lived a good life, a happy life, I have loved my life and my ‘girls’ .  Everyone has to die eventually and I have lived longer than most.  I love Ben and would do anything for him’ and finally he and I were at peace.

It doesn’t stop the tears because I miss him and probably always will and the girls are so so sad without him.  He was the best babysitter and the proud and constant friend and protector of his herd.  Hector the Protector, rest assured that we loved you so much and this was not the end I wanted for you.  You have served us in your ultimate sacrifice and for this we sincerely thank you.  Hector, my darling, rest in peace and thank you from the bottom of my ever more vegetarian heart.