For lunch, my mom made pizza. She called it "Four Farm Pizza," because the tomatoes and the shredded zucchini (the latter was used as a topping) came from our garden, the mozzerella cheese came was made with milk from our friend with the goats, the onion came from a farm stand down the street, and the wheat in the crust came from Thorpes. Unfortunately, it was kind of bland. We can't use any Parmesan cheese on the pizza during the Locavore Challenge, so the cheese on the pizza didn't have any bite. In addition, my mom followed a recipe for the tomato sauce that called for dried herbs, so the sauce lacked the wonderful flavor of fresh garlic that I always try to feature in my tomato sauce at this time of year.
We ate lunch late, so we only had a light dinner later on. We all had boiled potatoes (garden) and corn on the cob (farm stand). My dad also grilled some frozen venison steak from a deer shot next door, but only my parents ate that. I just don't like steak.
The reason my mom made lunch was because Saturday was butchering day. We had a group of ten two-year-old laying hens that were just starting to molt. Chickens lay best in their first year of laying, and egg production often falls off a lot after two years. Every year, chickens stop laying for a few weeks while they molt, instead putting all their energy into replacing all their old feathers with new ones for the winter. In my experience, egg production just doesn't justify the feed expenses after two years. So it was time to butcher these two-year-old hens.
My dad and I were hoping to get started around nine in the morning. By the time we were done setting up, it was after eleven. As my dad and I were plucking the first two chicken, our friend with the goats showed up. I sold her chicks last year and again this year, and she learned how to butcher chickens last year by helping us. When she heard last week that we were planning on doing stewing hens, she volunteered to help again.
Her offer was gratefully accepted, as we've found butchering with friends to be so much more pleasant. We end up getting so busy talking and joking that the time just flies, which isn't the case when it's just my dad and I. Between the social aspect and the fact that many hands makes light work, I'm pretty sure I've discovered why so many tasks on farms, like threshing wheat and raising barns, were often community events.
As expected, our friend's presence made the three hours it took to butcher the hens feel like no time at all. My dad never likes butchering, and always gets grumpy in anticipation. After my first couple of times butchering, I got somewhat used to the process and starting to become competent at my tasks. Since then, butchering hasn't usually bothered me nearly as much as him. Still, some days are rougher than others, and I found myself feeling melancholy after butchering.
When I was young, I was a vegetarian for about two years. Eventually, I found the lure of meat too hard to resist, and gave up on trying not to eat meat. Still, it was quite the exercise in will for a kid in elementary school.
I never did become a big meat eater, and to this day I much prefer meat as just one element of a dish (like chili) much more appealing than a big hunk of plain old meat on my plate. I started learning a lot more about factory farms when I was ten, after my dad got turkeys. I was glad the birds I was going to eat at least hadn't suffered a horrible life, but I sure didn't want to be around to help kill them.
Wanting nothing to do with butchering is rather human, I think. Long before the days when chicken came chopped up on meal-sized boneless, skinless pieces, five year old Laura Ingalls Little House in the Big Woods hid inside on butchering day. She didn't want to hear gun shot that kills the pig or its squeal as it dies. Laura knew that pig, once chopped up and preserved, will help keep her and her family alive through the winter. She knew this, but she still doesn’t want the pig to die.
My avoidance of butchering lasted until I was thirteen, at which point wanted to start selling turkeys. My dad said there was no way that he'd butcher all those turkeys for other people without any help. If I wanted to sell turkeys, I'd at have to start plucking feathers. I've been doing that ever since. I have expanded my resume to include scalding (a step that loosens the feathers in preparation for plucking), but I draw the line at anything that involves blood. This leaves my dad stuck with the actual killing, along with evisceration. It's something that I feel like I should at least try to learn, but I keep putting it off.
Perhaps it's because the seven-year-old vegetarian is still alive and well deep inside of me. Yet it isn't just little children who find the something about idea of killing animals wrong. Hindus won't eat beef, while Jains, whose religion is an offshoot or relative of Hindusim, are such strict vegans that they even try to avoid crushing or swallowing insects.
Where is the line that separates rightful killing from wrong? Most people would easily say that that line is drawn at humans. Upon further questioning, that become much more fuzzy. There is, of course, the whole abortion debate, of whether life begins at fertilization, implantation, a certain number of weeks, or at a baby's first breath. There is a sizable percentage of the population of the United States believes that certain criminals deserve to die for their crimes, and hardly anyone would call a soldier who killed an enemy soldier in war a murderer.
So when I participate in the killing of my turkeys and chickens (for butchering is just a euphemism for what is truly going on), do I take a step closer to the class of murderer? After all, I have cared for and and even approached loving these birds. With so many of them, I've gasped at seeing their heart beat or leg kick as I candle while they're still embryos in the egg, I feel the surge of victory as I watch each new exhausted chick finally make it out of its egg, I get excited as I watch my fluffy baby chicks grow long legs and wing feathers so they can run and fly, and I feel as though I'm a mother sending her children to college when they spend their first night in the outdoor chicken coop. How can I then, mere weeks or months later, laugh with my neighbor as we pull feathers of the bodies of recently killed birds? My mind can't help but think of the genocidaires in Rwanda, who decided that their lives would be better without their neighbors.* My life is certainly better when I'm eating delicious chicken stew instead of feeding old hens who hardly lay any more. Is it a slippery slope from chicken plucker to the International Criminal Court?
I eventually pulled myself out of this train of thought, as I always have to do at some point. Moral codes in societies change over time. Who knows what we do today that will one day be viewed as barbaric? In this time, we call ourselves "civilized" for quashing our instincts to murder and rape, but we do still eat meat. If I'm going to be the omnivore I evolved to be, the only way I can do so in good conscious is to make sure my birds have the best life I can provide them. I find it ironic when people who eat factory-farmed Cornish Rocks are horrified that I'd eat an animal I've met. We each have to figure out how to live our own moral codes. When it comes to meat, I've found a way to eat that doesn't feel too hypocritical to me. Really, questioning it now and then probably doesn't hurt. If I weren't at all bothered by killing chickens, then I'd really be worried.
*I'm not trying to be cavalier about genocide here. As someone with a deep interest in human rights, such thoughts really do cross my mind. However, I must say that the mass killings of human beings really should not be compared to the butchering of a few chickens. To do so would disrespect all those touched by genocide. What I wrote about was an attempt to figure out where my moral ideals and life intersect. Trying to figure out one's ethical boundaries and duties should be something that's important to anyone concerned in human rights, which is why I wrote what I did. I was merely trying to be honest about my moral struggles, but I apologize if it came across crass. It was not my intent.
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