The Cycle of Life

The other morning, I made the chore rounds chopping a thin layer of ice from the water tubs.  When I got to the calves pasture, they both came running to greet me.  August bottles should be a distant memory for them, by now.  As I petted them and showed them I didn't have any bottle for them, but had made their fresh cool water available, a thought crossed my mind.  I've raised these calves from the time they were three days old and they are destined for the freezer about this time next year.  Most of the time, I keep those two thoughts as far apart in my mind as I can, but the other morning, they collided.

The fact that I can bottle raise an animal, then serve it for dinner sometimes causes me to question my softer feminine side, as in "do I even have one?"


It's easy to be impersonal when it comes to processing Daddy's deer.  I didn't raise the deer and it's dead when it arrives.  Preparing wild game seems right for a tribal woman, even hunting is completely acceptable, although I haven't gone hunting in years.  Preparing wild game is a practical matter of honoring my father and not wasting what has been hunted, both of which are Biblical principles.  Hand raising my meat, though, is a different matter.  The land of Goshen has the perfect layout for raising different kinds of animals, so having calves in the west pasture is definitely a good use of the land.  I don't like to waste anything!  The west pasture is not goat tight, and I do not have what it takes, physically, to build fence.

For the most part, I embrace my practicality, as well as enjoy being creative and improvisational.  I am creatively practical which many find to be an annoying paradox, while others find the dichotomy to be curiously intriguing.

As I walked back toward the house that morning, I quickly set aside my collided thoughts.  Even in writing this, I feel my brain pushing these two facts to opposite portions of my awareness.  Intellectually, I know I'm raising organic grass fed, non GMO beef and I also recognize the fact that only one in 25-30 dairy bulls has a future as a herd sire, and the rest are headed to someone's dinner table.   Emotionally, on the other hand, I've raised these guys from the "get go."  I tell myself, they are just coming to see if I have a bottle, but the bottles stopped in August and they are still coming to me.  Realistically, even if they now like to be petted, they are not pets.  The day is coming, these young bulls will more than likely become aggressive and dangerous.

Throughout history, this conflict did not exist.  Until the last century, raising one's own food was just part of life.  As I continue to ponder this, I find myself sad.  Not about grass fed calves, but sad that it is no longer the way our society operates and has become, basically a part of American history.  Our food is produced and processed, rather than raised.  I still remember the morning I heard on the news, the President saying, "we are no longer an agrarian society."

And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetch a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man:  and he hasted to dress it.  And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by under the tree, and they did eat.  Torah of Holy Scripture