Life and Death on the Farm

It's been so great to have so much response to the photo's I've posted on facebook so far about our farm experience. With it being spring/early summer, there are lots of pictures of new born lambs, piglets, chickens and calves to 'oooh' and 'awww'. To be sure, I've done my fair share of lingering by the pig pen watching Hero's piglets run around in the alleyway and squealing with delight. All this life, it would unfair not to talk about the other omni-present on the farm: death.

Awwww - look at the babies!

As animal farmers, the Fryatt's are stewards over the lives of their animals and are very caring and careful with them. But nature is not always kind and we've had our share of seeing animals leaving the farm as well entering it since we arrived in May.

During our first week one of the Muskovie ducks was picked off by an eagle while it perched on a fence post near the Barn. Derek has had to deal with the disappointment of several of his Batch #1 chicks dying of unknown causes in his time are their caretaker. When Ophelia gave birth to her 11 black piglets, one was a still-born. Two weeks ago, Derek discovered a dead lamb under a tree on his way up to the house for dinner, the cause of death unclear. Last week, while Derek's friend Lindsay and her mom Judy came to visit at the farm, we discovered an old laying hen under one of the chicken wagons who was bloodied from being henpecked and I carried her to the barn for Mike to put her out of her misery.

The scene of the crime: a muskovie duck gets made into dinner by an opportunistic eagle.

Even last week, we had two very sad days.

On Monday, two circumstances convened to cause the death of 24 chicks in our 2nd batch of meat birds: the sudden arrival of cold, wet weather and temporarily replacing their usual bedding of pine shavings with sawdust when we ran short of shavings. Had one or the other not occurred, the chicks probably would have survived. At lunchtime, the chicks were checked on in their new bedding and seemed ok. Two hours later we found ourselves scrambling to empty to pen of soggy sawdust and lowering the heat lamps to keep the remaining 175 chicks warm and alive until Jen and Adam returned with the thicker, dryer pine shavings.  As apprentices, there was a lot to learn from the experience. Derek and I felt humbled and, in a way, grateful to be apprentices, learning so much but not yet responsible for when things go wrong.

On Friday, a disembowled lamb was found out in the pasture past the flats. It seems that a coyote got into that far meadow (the farthest from the farm house) at some point in the morning. So the sheep herd will start being kept in closer meadow at night to have the farm dogs closer to provide watch over them.

Next week or the week after we'll be faced with the other kind of death on the farm: slaughter. The Mistral Gris chickens that Dylan has been watching over are just about ready to go to Market. Derek and I have been actually looking forward, in a way, to butchering the birds. It's something we both want experience with, so that we'll know just how much work goes into it and we consider it a necessary skill for a self-sufficient home. I dream of one day serving a turkey or goose at Christmas dinner that I've raised, killed and prepared myself.

The Farm House

Out here on the farm, the necessities of life and the fragility of it all become apparent. It's not pleasant to discover the body of a dead animal in your pen or have to wring a chicken's neck when its too old or injured to continue being a useful member of the farm, but it is life.  Western culture is far removed from the reality of death. Our advertising and much of our daily activities are centered around youthfulness, exercise, eating well, to stay healthy and avoid death and aging. But it's just part of the way life goes. We forget because, in urban life, we are not confronted with it on a regular basis. When it comes to food, corporations have gotten wise to the fact that consumers don't want to be confronted with the ugly realities of eating meat. So they give us boneless, skinless chicken breast wrapped in cellophane. Or worse, hot dogs, fish sticks and breaded chicken nuggets to keep the thought that our food was once a live animal far from our dinner plates.

Cows grazing on grass, enjoying shade and the luxury of social interaction.

I don't think it's a bad thing to eat meat. But I do think that as a meat eater, I should feel some responsibility for the way the animals I eat are treated when they are alive.  I'm thrilled to be living on a farm and eating only meat that has come from the farm itself, to be able to see how these animals live, that they have access to pasture, fresh water, sunshine. They aren't kept in cages and cruelly kept away from all natural elements and social interaction and then given antibiotics to protect them from the illnesses born in their unnatural environment. As consumers, we have a direct relationship to these practices. I can vote with my dollar and buy meat from responsible farms and meat producers and refuse to support corporations that trade the ethical treatment of their animals for a lower cost per pound. I hope you will consider it too.