This is just a note for all of you local to the Eastern Shore of Virginia folks, reminding you to sign up for our CSA. Starting in May and continuing into September, you will receive a weekly box of seasonal vegetables, herbs, and fruit. I grow each of the vegetables from seed all the way to harvest on your table, and each box is a labor of love designed to generously feed a family of 3-4 or a couple who eats a lot of vegetables. You don't want to miss out. Shares are going fast, so sign up today!
Last Monday, we took our steer, Baby, to the butcher. It was time. He was next on the docket, so to speak. In age, he is just ripe enough, past the 36-month, three-year period, when the meat finally begins to take on more fat, producing the lovely marbling effect that those of us who are carnivores know and love in a good steak.
We loaded him up into the trailer late afternoon on Sunday because he was scheduled to be at the butcher by 9 am Monday morning, and it's a three-hour drive to get there. It's never easy loading up the animals into the trailer to get them to their final destination. Or perhaps I should say, it depends. When you're trying to load an animal that weighs 2,000 plus pounds, it has to be their choice to step up and go into that tight confined space. There's truly no forcing them, and sometimes they simply won't go in despite all your best efforts of cooing and coaxing. Occasionally we’ll load them in mere minutes. More often than not, it takes quite a bit longer. This time it took close to two hours. There's something rather macabre about it all as I'm trying to coax animals onto the trailer, offering food, their favorite treat, coercing them into a choice that will lead them to their own death. My Scorpio moon craves the macabre and dark side of life but please believe me when I tell you that the days when we are loading cows for the butcher or slaughtering any animal really, are the very days when I rethink being a livestock farmer. Then I remember my mother's stories from her own father about why his father, my great-grandfather, simply could not farm: he hated killing chickens and could not bear to ring another neck, even for his own sustenance.
The blood running out from a freshly slaughtered cow or lamb stains the very earth where my own blood, sweat and tears have run, creating an odd kinship, completing a circle I wasn't even aware of. If I am going to eat meat, I want to be aware of where it came from, fully encompassed in both life and death.
Despite my discomfort, I stubbornly refuse to be disconnected from the intrinsic value of death, inherent in each bite we take, whether it is a steak wrapped neatly in plastic and styrofoam from the local grocery store or the one I cut carefully and lovingly from a steer I raised from birth. In each case, blood covers my hands, though it is hardly perceptible wrapped and sterilized from a big box store. The blood running out from a freshly slaughtered cow or lamb stains the very earth where my own blood, sweat and tears have run, creating an odd kinship, completing a circle I wasn't even aware of. If I am going to eat meat, I want to be aware of where it came from, fully encompassed in both life and death. I want the animal to have lived well, happy and carefree; running through pasture, fat on hay and grass.
The entire point of raising cattle is for their meat, and let me tell you, I absolutely love a good grass-fed steak or burger almost as much as I love these cows. I could not afford to keep cattle simply because I love them, despite any rose colored protestations to that effect, it would just not work. I'm not wealthy enough to keep cows simply for pleasure. If I let my herd grow without taking two to three steers to the butcher each year, they would quite quickly grow exponentially, ruining my pasture, degrading the land, and causing damage that would take years to repair.
So, each year, we take the oldest steers to the butcher. I wish we could slaughter them on the farm so I could be in control of every second of their lives from birth to death, but USDA regulations prevent me from being able to resell our meat to the public unless we take our animals to a USDA-certified slaughterhouse, which is a frustrating topic for another time. Let me just say what a privilege it is to raise these animals from birth to death and to be able to consume something imbued with so much intention and love.
Last Sunday, when we were loading up the cattle for the butcher, we were actually trying to get two on there, but if you noticed, only one made it to the butcher that Monday morning. As I said, it's quite impossible to force one of these beasts on the trailer. Some small part of them has to want to go. The other steer we were trying to load on, named Little Boat by our farmhand, simply refused. We tried again and again to no avail. We coaxed, bribed, cornered, and prodded, but he would have none of it.
Afterward, I joked that perhaps I'd jinxed us when I'd pondered just a few days prior whether we should just take one cow now and let the other graze on the lush spring and summer pastures. Then we could take him later on in the summer once he was fine and fat. Perhaps he heard, or the universe agreed because he simply refused to get on that trailer. Suspicious of us from the beginning, he jumped the corral several times before we finally gave up. He was granted a last-minute reprieve. One cow would have to be enough for now.
Wherever there is life, death casts her shadow. Nature is a brutal god who claims many lives, often in bloody, violent ways.
Can I tell you that I cried when my husband told me that he didn't want to get off the trailer when they reached the slaughterhouse? And then, as I walked back toward the house, I found myself sobbing even more. Being the arbiter of death is not easy. I'm not quite sure I'm cut out for it but are any of us really? Baby — who I named Baby — was the sweetest steer. He'd come up to me every time I walked out into the field, expecting a chin rub. He loved being petted, and he especially loved a good rub underneath his chin or behind his ears, often leaning so hard into them that I'd have to really brace myself, or he'd knock me off my feet. I loved Baby, just as I loved Toby and Brisket and the other steers that had come before.
Death. It happens to all of us. As soon as we make our way into this world, we are destined to leave it. Blood flows, coursing through our body, necessitating the opposite as well: one day our hearts will cease pumping, our blood will stand still. The fact that we are alive today, demands us to confront the outsized reality that one day we will die. I find, quite consistently, that our modern society is very uncomfortable with death. We tend to view death externally — inconvenient and messy; something to be avoided at all costs by a strict workout routine or a perfect diet. We create and live in sterile environments where death cannot exist. We move away from family and shuttle our elders off to nursing homes and the care of others so we don't have to engage in the long and painful process of decline and death. But death is still there, lurking around each corner whether or not we acknowledge her. She hovers just above the crunch of our shoe, smashing an insect on the concrete sidewalk or the spider in your bedroom that simply must go. We, each of us, are angels of death, aware or not, complicit in another's demise and suffering.
As a farmer, whether I like it or not, death has become a close companion, always waiting at my door, ready to strike. Wherever there is life, death casts her shadow. Nature is a brutal god who claims many lives, often in bloody, violent ways. If you farm long enough, you will experience nature's justice and will shed many tears over lost animals: lost to chance, disease, conscious decision or mistake, it doesn't really matter, it's never easy. Even if it's time, it's hard.
I've come out (more than once) to a field full of dead chickens senselessly slaughtered by the neighbor's dog. I've awoken to all of my ducks that I raised by hand from birth, killed in the night by a raccoon. I've discovered lambs left out, forgotten by their mothers, frozen to death. The list goes on. I'm not going to lie and say each death gets easier. It doesn't. But I feel like death and I understand each other far better now than when I first started farming. We've come to a mutual agreement, a respect of sorts. Everything comes and goes; life is cyclical. Death is an integral part of that cycle. Death is what binds us together.
Gratitude flows from my heart to these creatures I tend. When our animals trust me, I try to reciprocate that trust by remaining open to them and to what they are trying to tell me. Taking care of these animals is an honor, and I learn from them every day. To care for these noble beasts is an immense privilege. To raise an animal with intention and love while knowing that one day they will be food in your belly is no different than the breaths we unconsciously take: each breath a reminder that one day we will cease breathing altogether.
I'm not here to convince you of the rightness of what I'm doing. All I'm trying to say is that we, each of us, are gods and arbiters of our own fate and quite often someone else's too. Yes, I raise these animals for food and yes, these animals are my companions. Raising animals ethically feels complicated but, at the same time, is quite simple. It is difficult to understand how simple it is to connect to these dear animals unless you've had the chance to raise, love, eat, and lose those animals yourself.
To raise an animal with intention and love while knowing that one day there will be food in your belly is no different than the breaths we unconsciously take; each breath is a reminder that one day we will cease breathing altogether.
In his book Earth and Man, Karl Koenig writes that we should not raise animals primarily for profit nor food nor even for manure, but rather so that we can remain close to the spiritual “wellsprings of existence.”
“Question: Is it right that domestic animals are eaten or consumed by men, and not returned to the earth?
Dr. Koenig: But through man, they do return to the earth. I have the impression that one must leave this to the decision of man. There is no other possibility, and I have never worried about this. If we provide the right type of animal, we will gradually know what to do with them. I don’t think we should keep animals in order to have food; we should keep animals in order to be near the wellsprings of all existence and creation.”1
These animals are the lifeblood of our farm; they are as much a part of the farm as I am. The land would be a mere husk without each and every one of its creatures. I am so grateful to them and for them for sculpting not only me but for forging the land I care for and call my home.
There is nothing on this earth that lasts. Impermanence invades every aspect of life. We get to keep nothing, all of it, eventually, fades away. While we might feel belonging to a particular place, we can never quite feel wholly at home, because it is all temporary. As Rilke says in his Duino Elegies, “the sly animals see at once how little at home we are in the interpreted world.” To have a vocational sense of purpose alongside a contingent feeling of place, yet to hold an empty space within, that is life. To love anything is to open yourself up to pain and heartbreak. To carry that balance is the difficult task of the farmer.
Death and I now understand each other considerably better than when I first started farming. In many ways, I have come to feel an apprenticeship of sorts form under her. Rilke describes death as “our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” I'm not going to lie and say each death gets easier, but perhaps love grows faster than death. Everything that rises also falls, and life is no exception. Death we can always trust, for she never fails to arrive. Whatever is mine for a season later belongs to death but then becomes mine again once more. It is here I am reminded of Octavia Butler's poignant words, which have become a mantra of sorts over my farming journey:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God
is Change.
// Octavia E. Butler
I am grateful for Mother Nature’s gifts: food, energy, life itself, the tall beautiful oak behind our house, the first ripe persimmon tasting of heaven, the lambs and piglets thriving on open pasture and mixed woodland. I am also grateful for death which frames these experiences, without which, I wouldn't be able to perceive the beauty nearly so well. Initiating these holy cycles of birth and death anew each year requires courage. Even in death, we see the animals giving back. Their fur, skin, and bones feed our compost piles, our orchard, feed the land itself; nourishing the microbes and worms, giving the plants and trees vitality, while still feeding us as well.
To love anything is to open yourself up to pain and heartbreak. To carry that balance wholly is the difficult task of the farmer.
Farming takes courage to often simply keep on and start again. It is not for the faint of heart. It will break you and remake you into something else entirely. Death and life are such close companions, the guideposts along our journey. You can't have one without the other. Am I open to learning the lessons they have to teach me? I hope so. I hope I have enough courage to face these lessons and learn. It is in the act of trying and learning these hard lessons that I am whole again, forged into the farmer I am continually becoming.
xxxxx Natalie
Karl Koenig, Earth and Man
I had a tight feeling in my chest reading this, and faced my own complicated feelings about my on again/off agin consumption of meat. What an absolutely beautiful and compelling essay on the cycles of death. You can't get much closer than the farmers who raise the animals. Thank you Natalie, for making me feel and think today.
insanely beautiful cow photos