Throughout our wayfaring across America, we have come to know numerous small farmers. This lunatic, organic, farm-to-table, entrepreneurial, farmers’ market, “yeoman”* movement manifests itself in different ways depending on the local climate and economy, but these agricultural adventurers share certain traits, chief among them a longing for self-sufficiency. Another is a firm grounding in the nature of life and death, the role of animals on a farm, and some sense of reality about the material world. Farming seems to instill, even in the most ardent and stereotypical “crunchy granola” birkenstocker, a sense that these animals have been placed here for a reason. The better we treat them, the more beneficially they serve their purpose as provision and sustenance for us.
One of the diminutive farm families we have known (the acreage was small, not the people) owned a charming little place of ten acres or so in southeastern Wisconsin. In addition to their acre garden, they raised chickens, turkeys, ducks, goats, and a few pigs to round out the menagerie. One early spring morning, their single sow delivered a litter of screaming piglets. The most vibrant of the little pigs was set aside and raised to be the star of the community theater’s run of Charlotte’s Web. It was a wonderful drama, and the actor performed marvelously.
Post-production, our friends pampered this particular hog, and it did what pigs do, it grew–fast. Six months later, Wilbur (and yes, he kept that name), went to the butcher.
As I also described in one of the last chapters of the book, friends in Central Missouri put us to work as “substitute farmers” for a few weeks while on summer vacation. My wife and I put our boys to work caring for their chickens, sheep, goats, and ducks. That creature, the domesticated duck….now there is a militant bird; if unhappy, he will let you know. We came to know their temperament, quirks, and feeding preferences. As thanks, we were gifted one of these birds for Thanksgiving dinner.
Weep not for the piglet or duck, for as Joel Salatin explains in his book The Pigness of Pigs, these animals had value and dignity in serving their purpose well. (I will refrain from trying summarize his theses in that book. I happily encourage you to read it for yourself.)
Some have a hard time with the realities of farming and animal husbandry; that’s understandable, given the constant drumbeat of some extreme philosophical and ideological food movements. But even brief exposure to raising animals convinces me that this is the cycle which feeds humanity and, done correctly brings honor and health to both the creatures and ourselves.
* – All of these adjectives fall short in some fashion, so multiple modifiers are necessary to (at least try) to describe the worldwide small farm movement.
