Tag Archives: vegetarian

The food journey begins . . .

by . Posted on
01 Apr

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

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
New lamb 2013
08 Jun

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 . . .

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.