I was going to become a vegetarian, I became a small farmer instead, here is why.
4 years ago my husband and I were looking to move to a farm from our suburban home, after three years in suburbia we had realized city life was definitely not for us. At that very same time my parents were entering retirement and were residing at my childhood home, a 7 acres hobby farm.
The farm was always a hobby farm growing up, consisting of rescued animals and a few rare breed chickens that my father fancied that provided farm fresh field raised eggs for the family. In the more recent years they were given a Rare breed Tamworth piglet named Rosie and decided to breed for meat and to help preserve the breed, but nothing more then that.
With the sudden forced retirement of my mother at the young age of 57 joining my father in the ranks of the retired in the large 8 bedroom home, we decided to join forces and move in my young family of 5 to live as one big unit.
I was struggling with my health at this time in my life and had decided it was best for me to become a vegetarian. The decision was based on two factors, the inability to find good quality meat without antibiotics, hormones and full of optimal nutrition by being grass fed etc, but also for ethical reasons. To be raised with love, caring, compassion & freedom to roam and truly live as any animal should. Not in a barn, cram packed with 100's of other livestock, fed a limited diet of grain and nothing else and often just babies when slaughtered. To be just another number in a barn mis treated and unloved.
I just could not find anything that matched my criteria so therefore decided to make the jump to vegetarianism.
But when we moved to the farm it gave me the opportunity to try my hand at growing my own meat. If I am going to eat it I will be responsible for what I eat and know where it came from, what's in it and how it was treated.
So I placed my order for 30 roosters from the local TSC. (Why Roosters you ask, roosters aren't in as high a demand and are often killed at hatch) With lots of love and tenderness we raised these 30 boys to 22 weeks old, all 30 big boys grew up outside, on grass and each had a personality of its own. It was a magical time for us. Bittersweet.
Then came time to say goodbye to our boys. They had lived a longer life then they ever would have anywhere else, with freedom, empathy and love.
My mother and I cried the first time we sent our chickens in for harvest. One of the hardest things we have ever done. The emotions were flooding our hearts. It was so overwhelming.
We now have a beautiful bountiful garden, various meat offerings, eggs, canned goods, jams, dried herbs, our own sheep cheese and milk, honey etc and anything extra we have we are able to share with our family, friends and community.
We focus our breeding on rare heritage breeds, trying to bring back the breeds. We sell breeders, babies and meat for these breeds. "We must eat them to save them" is one of the sayings heritage breed farmers have, which is exactly right on to us. All these other mass farmed modified breeds are not only not capable of natural reproduction or natural survival but are not expected to live longer then a certain time so tend to die at very young ages due to various reason such as weight gain!
Basically anything we can find that can be used by either us or by others we put to good use! We barter and trade with other farmers with manure, eggs, hatching services, we offer things like rabbit pelts to local artisans so as not to waist any of the animal that spared a life for us. We offer various educational programs such as camps, in school hatching and homesteading lessons.
We have built a community surrounding our farm, we have brought community back into our lives. Something that is sorely missed in our modern day society and severely needed.
Our harvest time is October, we clear the garden and store all we can to last as long as we can from winter squash to any preserves and freezing we can fit.
We then reap the garden and feed it to the animals to help prepare them for the coming winter.
Our Neighbours all receive a thanksgiving turkey for the support and understanding of the trials and tribulations of farming. It truly is thanksgiving! We understand and have a deep sense of what thanksgiving means. It has changed my families whole life, way of thinking and given us the true sense of what it really is to live a life of gratuity.
Our lives are more enriched then we could have ever imagined. My children have an enormous amount of empathy, compassion, kindness, gratuity, respect and love for all things. They understand the facts of life from reproduction, birth to death and we share as a family every night at dinner the events of the day. Sometimes tears of joy, like being able to deliver our sow Wilma's litter of 17, and having 3 bottle fed runts, (whom would otherwise parish) inside for months living amongst us, watching my 5 year old daughter feeding them with a bottle every time they squeal. Our bottle baby sheep Lyza sleeping in our beds and getting up every 2 hours to feed her,
watching her suck on my 8 year old sons ear for comfort. The day our baby Lyza had her very own first baby Auburn, watching my 8 year old feel like a proud papa was one of the most defining moments in my life. Or the care and kindness watching my 11 year old help in the hatching and delicate care the first few days after require, or if the chicks need a Spraddle leg fixed, ensuring they have available water and food while in "chicken traction". Watching the kids give an uncomfortable very pregnant 700 lb Tamworth a mud bath by transporting the buckets of mud to her while she rolls over and sleeps in bliss. Or opening the animal pens in the early morning to let all the animals out and the pure joy they have to run, fly and swim and eat grass.
Sometimes tears of sadness, when we have a death, by predators or for harvest or just the facts of life, when a piglet is born dead, or was rolled on by mom ever so careful she tries to be, or when a chick is born with and un fixable deformity, or old age...
We eat less meat then we ever did, we know how much work goes into making that meat and the sacrifice the animals make for us. We respect meat and think about it every bite. We are grateful. It's hard, very hard. We have had some trying moments, heavy hearts for what we do. Some days I feel like I'm going to break and that can't go on as a farmer. But then I remember the responsibility we owe to these animals. To be responsible.
