Why a blog about death and decay? Isn’t that a little morbid in this culture of bread and circuses?
Morbid isn’t really my thing. If you know me, you know that I am in love with life. Having walked through the valley of shadows many times, I treasure life, revel in it, do all I can to protect and nurture it. I believe that life and love ultimately triumph over death. But “ultimate” is not here yet, and that is why I write about death and decay.
I am an American. America is shiny. America is NEW, IMPROVED, IT WON’T LAST LONG AT THIS PRICE! We live in the land of lights and bright colors and so many choices—creating the illusion that we have more control over our lives than we really do. We grow up thinking that we can dance around death, and it won’t get us.
Not so—just read the papers. While we anesthetize our hearts with a blanket of stuff, and blind our eyes with glitter, a whole aching world is going on around us, screaming just beyond the iPod earbuds.
Death and decay have touched my life. It may have touched yours as well. I write from experience because I know there is hope. Love and life really do win, in the end.
Where Does Your Meat Come From?
For many years we raised sheep. In the spring the newborn lambs quickly outgrew the gangly stage and bounced around in the sunshine looking like cute little stuffed animals from the toy store. We didn’t give them names, because I knew they were not going to live past the fall. The purpose of their lives was providing meat for the table.
Raising the lambs year after year also raised issues to consider. When you go to the market and buy meat in neat packages, you don’t think about what you are doing. That sirloin was once part of a living, breathing, individual animal. An animal that was born, that had a personality, that interacted with its fellow creatures. Now that animal is dead—killed in the prime of its life so humans could eat its flesh.
I was bringing these lambs into the world, feeding them every day, petting them, laughing at their antics, knowing that soon I was going to lift them onto a truck and take them to the butcher. They would have short happy lives and a quick death, but something about that still bothered me. Maybe I am still an American city girl at heart--a farmer, a person raised in a rural economy, or someone in a developing country would have no qualms about raising animals for meat.
I am a carnivore—most humans are, when given the opportunity. Some people choose to be vegetarians because they do not wish to live at the expense of another animal’s life. Some choose a vegetarian diet because of their religious beliefs. But for most of us, meat is an important part of our diet. So an animal has to die.
What do you do with that? If you buy meat at the market, you are promoting an industry that treats animals in a strictly economic way. The feelings of the animals are the last consideration, and their lives are so horrific that death is a mercy. And I do buy meat at the market. I do participate in this corporate cruelty to animals.
For a few years, my way of handling this sad dilemma was to raise lambs and give them the best possible life I could, as far as it was under my control. No stress, no fear, all the food and water they needed, kind words, clean bedding, plenty of fresh air outside. The lambs nursed from their mothers until the day they died, and never had to go through the stress of forced weaning. The male lambs were left intact, so never felt the pain of castration. The weak link in my plan was the trip to the butcher and whatever stress they went through there before the blood was drained from their throats. That still bothers me. I regret that I didn’t have the stomach, the know-how, or the right tools to butcher them myself, so their last memory on earth would be tucking into a bucket of grain.
I don’t raise animals for meat anymore. And to this day, none of my four kids will eat lamb.
Raising the lambs year after year also raised issues to consider. When you go to the market and buy meat in neat packages, you don’t think about what you are doing. That sirloin was once part of a living, breathing, individual animal. An animal that was born, that had a personality, that interacted with its fellow creatures. Now that animal is dead—killed in the prime of its life so humans could eat its flesh.
I was bringing these lambs into the world, feeding them every day, petting them, laughing at their antics, knowing that soon I was going to lift them onto a truck and take them to the butcher. They would have short happy lives and a quick death, but something about that still bothered me. Maybe I am still an American city girl at heart--a farmer, a person raised in a rural economy, or someone in a developing country would have no qualms about raising animals for meat.
I am a carnivore—most humans are, when given the opportunity. Some people choose to be vegetarians because they do not wish to live at the expense of another animal’s life. Some choose a vegetarian diet because of their religious beliefs. But for most of us, meat is an important part of our diet. So an animal has to die.
What do you do with that? If you buy meat at the market, you are promoting an industry that treats animals in a strictly economic way. The feelings of the animals are the last consideration, and their lives are so horrific that death is a mercy. And I do buy meat at the market. I do participate in this corporate cruelty to animals.
For a few years, my way of handling this sad dilemma was to raise lambs and give them the best possible life I could, as far as it was under my control. No stress, no fear, all the food and water they needed, kind words, clean bedding, plenty of fresh air outside. The lambs nursed from their mothers until the day they died, and never had to go through the stress of forced weaning. The male lambs were left intact, so never felt the pain of castration. The weak link in my plan was the trip to the butcher and whatever stress they went through there before the blood was drained from their throats. That still bothers me. I regret that I didn’t have the stomach, the know-how, or the right tools to butcher them myself, so their last memory on earth would be tucking into a bucket of grain.
I don’t raise animals for meat anymore. And to this day, none of my four kids will eat lamb.
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