We live in harmony, but it's not what you think.
Our goats, Esther (the cinnamon-colored creature in the foreground)
and Simone
(the black critter in the background) are destined to give us milk
-- and, ultimately, offspring for meat.
HARMONY, balance, symmetry. That trilogy sounds oh-so-California. Yet it's true: raising animals on a farm is to understand the basics of the seasons, of wet and dry, of cold and heat, and the turn, turn, turn of days and nights. Animals exist in time and seasons (they have fallow and fertile periods, just as the different crops yield at different rates at different times of the year). So it goes with our livestock. We know their rhythms and exploit them for nourishment in different seasons and times of the year. We thus become their masters, and our animals come to serve us as creatures who respond to the natural order, whether it be super-productive chickens who lay an egg a day in spring and summer or fattened sheep who, come spring, fill our freezer with chops and roasts for the dinner table, or goats, who give us milk year-round once their kids are weaned. We use our animals for milk or meat or eggs or (in the case of Gertie) protection against predators, and every animal we have here has a purpose. Even our recalcitrant cat, Ella, has a job -- ridding our home of mice, and we try not to fill her food bowl with kibble if we notice mouse droppings anywhere.
Such a philosophy implies that the animals are subservient to us, their providers. Accordingly, we feed them the best alfalfa and grain and green pasture grass we can provide, or layer crumble and garden greens for the chickens, or (in the case of our dog and cat) table scraps or the best manufactured chow we can afford. We vaccinate them against tetanus and rabies and other diseases, and we worm them so that they can eat what they do without getting intestinal bugs. We give them plenty of fresh, clear water to drink, making sure they also get minerals and salt and other essentials (like calcium, in the form of oyster shells, for the chickens, or copper for the goats). We give them ample shelter from cold and rain and blistering sun, yet we don't limit their access to wide open space even during inclement weather. We accept their dependence on us as both a privilege and a duty. But we don't buy into the whole "guardian" thing. We own our animals outright; they are our property. That sounds imperious and even cruel, but it implies a huge responsibility, because we are committed to humane practices in their care and feeding and well-being. We raise them to give us something (in many cases, their very flesh) and we respect them for that and treat them well -- even up to the last moment, when we slaughter them (many farmers today call it "harvesting," and though that may reflect humane practices, in terms of the deed, it still means taking a life -- generally without sedation).
Our animals are valuable to our existence; otherwise, they'd just be pets, and we'd indeed simply be "guardians." Treating our animals as pets would mean that all the time and money and sweat and effort we expend on their care would ultimately turn our place into one big shelter or petting zoo, not a real farm or ranch or anything more than a vanity enterprise for the owners to pretend that the animals have the same standing as humans. (Not that such a place doesn't exist -- check out any number of homes where some weird cat lady harbors a couple dozen cats under unsanitary conditions in her garage, or the crazy neighbor down the street who has ten dogs barking in squalor in his backyard -- all tolerated because we have this dumb idea that animals are the same as people.) Sorry, but animals are animals and people are people and we have animals precisely because we are people, with consciousness of our power over them and also human feelings toward them. Ever since we evolved from apes into people, we have kept animals for food, to harness their strength and stamina in labor, to use their territorial instincts for protection and, indeed, for companionship. Which roughly equals husbandry, but that's a college degree we won't go into here.
What we will go into here is to recount two stories about the human/animal interaction that happened within a week's time, and how it taught us about humane practices -- both in terms of what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong. One involved our first trip to the slaughterhouse in May 2011. The other involved our efforts to save a badly wounded goat from a potentially life-threatening wound a few days later. The death/life dichotomy is a valuable lesson that merits a little space here, for it says a lot about what Joe and I want to give our animals.
Such a philosophy implies that the animals are subservient to us, their providers. Accordingly, we feed them the best alfalfa and grain and green pasture grass we can provide, or layer crumble and garden greens for the chickens, or (in the case of our dog and cat) table scraps or the best manufactured chow we can afford. We vaccinate them against tetanus and rabies and other diseases, and we worm them so that they can eat what they do without getting intestinal bugs. We give them plenty of fresh, clear water to drink, making sure they also get minerals and salt and other essentials (like calcium, in the form of oyster shells, for the chickens, or copper for the goats). We give them ample shelter from cold and rain and blistering sun, yet we don't limit their access to wide open space even during inclement weather. We accept their dependence on us as both a privilege and a duty. But we don't buy into the whole "guardian" thing. We own our animals outright; they are our property. That sounds imperious and even cruel, but it implies a huge responsibility, because we are committed to humane practices in their care and feeding and well-being. We raise them to give us something (in many cases, their very flesh) and we respect them for that and treat them well -- even up to the last moment, when we slaughter them (many farmers today call it "harvesting," and though that may reflect humane practices, in terms of the deed, it still means taking a life -- generally without sedation).
Our animals are valuable to our existence; otherwise, they'd just be pets, and we'd indeed simply be "guardians." Treating our animals as pets would mean that all the time and money and sweat and effort we expend on their care would ultimately turn our place into one big shelter or petting zoo, not a real farm or ranch or anything more than a vanity enterprise for the owners to pretend that the animals have the same standing as humans. (Not that such a place doesn't exist -- check out any number of homes where some weird cat lady harbors a couple dozen cats under unsanitary conditions in her garage, or the crazy neighbor down the street who has ten dogs barking in squalor in his backyard -- all tolerated because we have this dumb idea that animals are the same as people.) Sorry, but animals are animals and people are people and we have animals precisely because we are people, with consciousness of our power over them and also human feelings toward them. Ever since we evolved from apes into people, we have kept animals for food, to harness their strength and stamina in labor, to use their territorial instincts for protection and, indeed, for companionship. Which roughly equals husbandry, but that's a college degree we won't go into here.
What we will go into here is to recount two stories about the human/animal interaction that happened within a week's time, and how it taught us about humane practices -- both in terms of what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong. One involved our first trip to the slaughterhouse in May 2011. The other involved our efforts to save a badly wounded goat from a potentially life-threatening wound a few days later. The death/life dichotomy is a valuable lesson that merits a little space here, for it says a lot about what Joe and I want to give our animals.
A Trip to the Abattoir
Lorena in the snow, winter 2011
THE FIRST story involves our introduction to that most necessary duty: the trip to the slaughterhouse. Despite the modern-day euphemism of "harvesting," let's call a spade a spade: we took our two sheep (whom we'd named Lorena and William, though that was ill-advised) to be slaughtered and butchered for their meat. They were gift animals, a couple of lambs our goat shepherdess friend, Marti, had given us to raise for our own consumption, and although we had warmed to their presence around the Christmas season (who wouldn't, given the connotations of lambs and the Christ child?), we turned indifferent to them in the "third" pasture (the one most distant from the house) as the winter dragged on. In that contained acre next to the chickens, they became what most lambs do: wool-heavy blobs indifferent to anything but their evening ration of alfalfa. (They were "easy keepers," a rancher's dream because they required little care as they munched on pasture grass by day and slept in the cozy shelter Joe built for them by night. But they also had the "life of Riley" -- no expectations, no frequent displacement, nothing beyond just being sheep in a field.) Despite any number of books or movies to the contrary ("Babe" and "Sweetgrass"), sheep are not given to bonding with humans. They are herd animals, and (even as humans have raised them for hundreds of years) they don't really "like" people. That was hard to accept at first, but it became easier as we approached D-Day. We had known all along we would raise these two for their meat, and so we limited our contact with them (not that they would have liked us to stroke their woolly coats or hand-feed them grass). So we were not especially fond of them. Still, we wanted to treat them well in their final hours, and we decided that the best way to do so was to take them to a "humane harvesting" outfit in Dixon, southwest of Sacramento, whose website showed lambs feeding in green pastures and a bucolic setting for the operation overall. (In retrospect, I'd call that false advertising.) Anticipating a struggle to get them into our Ford Ranger, Joe built a ramp for them to walk up into the back of our pick-up. Somewhat to our surprise, they complied, finally filing in one after the other with only a bit of struggle. Then we drove a hundred miles to Dixon, in the Central Valley, with only a few hairpin turns to make the journey trying for the sheep. It was a perfectly glorious spring day, acres of exploding green all around, and we arrived on the outskirts of Dixon, expecting we'd deliver them into a grassy field (just as the website showed). But what we found was a sterile, whitewashed lot, with a huge shed covering a series of holding pens, everything ordered and tidy and gruesomely impersonal. We pulled the disoriented sheep out of the back of the truck -- one of them unfortunately landed on the cement on its knees, poor thing -- and then onto the weighing platform. Separating them was a melancholy affair -- for the first time, I noticed how attached to each other they were, and how they rushed to touch noses between the fence that divided them. The woman who "received" them noticed this as well, and she marked their backs with a green stripe -- "to keep them together," she said, implying that the next few hours would be traumatic (in spite of how "humane" the website promised the "harvesting" of our animals would be) and that they would be calmer together. There's no question about it, this was a sad moment. Two workers in white jackets and shower caps on their heads passed by, inquiring if we were the owners of the two lone sheep on the huge weighing platform (it should be noted that the place is set up to handle hundreds of incoming sheep a day); they gazed at me and Joe in a kind of respectful silence, and then disappeared into the labyrinth of the abattoir. Joe and I went to the men's room and washed our hands in silence in its antiseptic surroundings -- that was a moment full of metaphoric portent -- and then we got in the truck and drove off. It was a quiet trip back to Lake County, filled with reflection at what we'd just done. At various moments that afternoon -- John on the return home, the straight, flat highway the perfect setting for some reflective puddling up; Joe just before taking a nap after we got home -- both of us dealt with the emotions such a trip prompted. Of course, our two sheep were not aware of what fate awaited them -- how could they be? They don't have the consciousness of humans -- but it was a hard lesson nevertheless to let them go in this way, after such a long drive and then under such sterile conditions. (John picked up the neatly packaged meat a couple of days later, and had no "flashback" effects, even finding the trip therapeutic in a way.) But next time (if there's a next time, for sheep at least), we'll explore "harvesting" them on our property -- either by hiring a butcher to dispatch them behind our woodshed or by finding a means of doing the deed ourselves (though that is difficult to contemplate). Whatever we decide, it's important for us to keep in mind that the decision to slaughter is for all intents and purposes a foregone conclusion when raising animals for meat. We can at the very least know that the sheep whose meat we consume was raised by us, under humane conditions, a hundred yards or so from our table. That is a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.
Healing
Simone before her mishap, spring 2011
A MORE life-sustaining moment came a week later, when our beloved little kid Simone cut a gash in her lower jaw that needed medical attention. John saw it and was shocked, believing the flesh hanging off her lip needed sutures. Joe took a more practical approach, reasoning that it was best to try a little home remedy first before making an expensive (and perhaps unnecessary) trip to the vet -- in this case, a bit of Krazy Glue surgery. We sequestered our little black kid in the milking pen, and John held her tightly in his arms, grasping the struggling, kicking Simone as Joe applied the stinging gel to her open wound. Her bleating pierced both their ears, and John breathed heavily as he struggled to hold the fidgeting kid tight to his chest. "Doctor" Joe talked calmly and serenely as he applied the astringent glue to Simone's lip, announcing his movements as he pulled the flesh together while John held the wiggling goat to him, wishing Simone would succumb to his rhythmic breathing and beating heart, now pumping more urgently as he exerted more force in restraining her. At last, she surrendered; Joe applied the gel in successive layers, noting his progress as a physician would during a surgical procedure. John breathed hard, rhythmically, his eyes closed -- hoping Simone would interpret his elemental functions as a sign that he, too, suffered with her and wanted her to receive the healing Joe offered. Magically, Simone stopped struggling, almost as if to signal that her "surrender" was her way of letting us know she trusted us. She began to pant lightly, in accord with John's breathing. That gave Joe the precious moments of repose he needed to finish his "Krazy" stitching, and after five minutes, Simone was back to (relative) normal. Within half an hour, she was slurping her nightly ration of milk, lustily lapping from the bowl that had been her preferred means of feeding (she had never taken to the bottle, oddly -- yet she is the most affectionate, human-friendly kid of any bottle-fed goats we've seen). Joy and relief returned to our farm as we watched Simone frolic in the field following her "operation." Score another one for Joe's brand of super-glue surgery. (He used to say that he used the stuff in the neo-natal ICU; such training has obviously served him well "in the field," so to speak.)... Several weeks after the incident, Simone's lower lip is healing nicely. The glue failed a couple of days after Joe applied it, and we decided not to reapply it, as Simone's lip had begun a kind of split healing, with the lower lip healing upward and the upper lip healing down. A small wart-like bump formed from the torn flesh on this junction of her upper lip, and this has continued to shrink as both lips heal. Once it heals completely, there will likely be a small bump, resembling a mole or (as we like to think of it) a beauty mark. An unfortunate side-effect of this minor wound has been that Simone leaks cud, which smells nasty and gets on her chin and thus on the other goats (they "nuzzle" each other frequently). But as the wound heals, the leak has slowed, and we anticipate that Simone will return to complete normalcy in a couple of weeks.
Healing, Part II
AS WE expected it would, Simone's lip healed just fine, the "bump" less prominent than we'd anticipated. We look at her and think of it less as a scar than a reminder of how all kids (goat and human) have mishaps from which they survive, in spite of the terror they inspire at the moment. She doesn't leak cud, so there's no nasty smell to make the other goats ostracize her, and she is a most enthusiastic chomper, devouring most any plant entirely--flower, leaf, stem and root.
Healing, Part II
AS WE expected it would, Simone's lip healed just fine, the "bump" less prominent than we'd anticipated. We look at her and think of it less as a scar than a reminder of how all kids (goat and human) have mishaps from which they survive, in spite of the terror they inspire at the moment. She doesn't leak cud, so there's no nasty smell to make the other goats ostracize her, and she is a most enthusiastic chomper, devouring most any plant entirely--flower, leaf, stem and root.