I read a few blogs but not many, and I love my “girls” who comment, who I should point out are also a few guys in there, and I have rarely had to not approve comments, typically they are not posted as they are spam, only a few have been dealt with privately that were because they were anti-farming or anti-meat eating.
I like blogging and there are times that family, or friends have privately commented that I am just a little to open about the things I do, Personally I try and find a reasonable balance, I talk about growing my animals for meat but I try to not overwhelm in regards to photos or to much detail, while still sharing some of the feels and or work that goes into it.
So when I decided to pop over to a blog that one of my “girls” have on her site, I started reading the posts and the comments, and then I started reading backwards, and I felt like I had been transported from a farming blog to a Dr. Phil moment, the back and forth and the tone, I felt shocked to a point at the comments being made, and so I went further and read more, and read more.. and little red flags went up, and up and up, and things I had read that made little to no sense at the begin started coming more into focus.
Now, I am not going to comment on some of those red flags that as a older, longer term farmer, others have expressed -in far more negative terms, then I would ever do online or in person, out of sheer respect for another person.
I will say this, when you are first starting out and for the rest of your life, there is a learning curve, there will be bumps in the road, there are up’s and downs and not all animals born or bought will thrive, not all older critters will pass peacefully in their sleep, that we as the human care takers of those animals on farms, we make the calls and the culls..
It sucks, it really does, and there is part of us that want to try just one more med, one more test by the vet or one more feed or one more thing in a book or a website that might give them a better quality of life and the newer you are to farming, the more you want to do this..
The longer you have farmed, the less you will do this to a point. That point is a different line in the sand for every farmer but the line gets drawn a little tighter, a little harder as the years go buy.
You learn when a lamb is not thriving, that its better to to end their life and butcher useable meat for your dogs or yourself, then to treat, and treat and worry and spend sleepless nights in the barn, only to either have them pass or be put down and then have to pay to have them taken off the farm because either a) they were sick so you can’t eat them, or b) they are on meds that have withdrawl time, so can’t eat them.
Its total waste, a waste of life, a waste of time, a waste of money, a waste of energy, because you can’t help but give it to them, you can’t help but spend time with them, you can’t help but spend hours trying to read and research anything or anyway to help get better or do better..
And as mean this is going to sound, that time is needed for the rest of the farm.
There I said it, it reads just as hard sounding as it did in my head when I thought it.. and it comes with a sense of shame and angry..
Shame that I had to admit that I can’t always make every single part of my farm that picture perfect version that folks think of in a small family farm.
Anger that I can’t keep every single animal bought or born on my farm in perfect health from the moment of birth to the moment of death, I wish I could, I really do, I wish that there was never a weak chick born in a clutch, I wish that you never saw a stiillborn lamb in the barn, that a cow can never step on a nail and take two month of treatment to heal, I wish I never had a turkey pullet come with a crooked neck but they have..
The weak chick died, the lamb was butchered and I keep the hide, and the turkey grew slow but grew and made a fine meal when the time came..
We have a urge to control nature, and it will not happen as we want it to.. its life, never ending, always renewing, always changing life! It is not in our control!
As a farmer, we can provide fresh air, sunshine, pasture, bedding, shelter, water, minerals, and quality feed, we can provide health care, be it de-wormers, vaccines, antibodics and when needed we call the vet for expert help which can include tests to pin point issues and treatment plans..
Farmers write that they control the life cycles of their animals, and to point, we do.. we can plan their birthing season, we can decide when to send them to the butcher, but its an illusion, if we think we truly control the life on our farms, they share their lifes with us, but apart at the same time.
At the factory farms, I don’t believe that the the animals have a good qaulity of life and I don’t support it. The sad fact is that most modern farms don’t keep their critters from birth to old age anymore, they move that cow as five or six years of age, they won’t keep a chicken past the age of a year.
So many small farms today are being started because of this backlash about where and how our food is raised, and thank you for everyone that raising animals that get a life before they end up in freezer camp!
So here is my final wish.. lets have many, many! more small farms, but can we find a way for the ones who have more knowledge to share it with those on very steep learning curves and do so in a way that the information can flow in a postive way!
Cuz right now, the new farmers, the ones still on a very steep learning curves are the most vocal, the more out there, the so called “expects” holding the seminars and teaching the up and coming new farmers.. and it needs to be a mix.. old and new blended for the betterment of the farms and the animals share their lives with them.
Enough said.. I’m going to collect eggs, and then wash floors again cuz its that muddy season on the farm..
Just another Day on the Farm 
You and I have had some long chats about farming, and your farm in particular. I do not think you should feel angry or ashamed for being a good farmer. You do have what I would consider a picture perfect small family farm.
The problem is that so many people outside of the farms are completely disconnected from the realities of … well, eating. It’s not just with meat, milk and eggs. You know, as I’ve learned from L, that only the “perfect” vegetables and fruit get bought. Consumers expect tasty ripe tomatoes all year.
Once we get a small bit of land and a few animals, we’ll start building our small farm.
Hi Doomer
It will sound strange but I think the odds are good that when you have a couple year on the farm, you will have felt those same two emotions as well.. When you have spent hours and weeks bottle feeding a baby only to have it pass away anyway it breaks a part of your inner soul and you can’t help but feel shame that maybe if you had done just a bit more, or angry that you gave so much and it didn’t matter and the list goes on.
I hear your point, and I agree with it totally, I know that most folks are truly out of touch in regards where their food comes from and they don’t even understand the idea of 2nds, and I will contiue to STRIVE to be a good farmer on a interactive closed loop small farm 🙂
I think I must be hard to shock, though I did nurse for a couple of decades, so that tends to make you quite pragmatic :-D. It’s not just farm animals that people go to ridiculous lengths for, pets are even worse! I am often left in wide eyed amazement at the lengths and expense people will go to for a pet. Dont get me wrong I have had some brilliant cats and our current dogs are great and add a really enjoyable dimension to our lives. I am not, any time soon, going to be feeding them $80 a sack organic food ( or even meat free coz of an allergy like one owner I know) ! Nor will I pay $1000s in vet fees. A line will be drawn if needed. It will be very sad, I will probably cry and then I will get over it.
I love that people are trying to farm to make their world and others a better place. I also am pretty sure that as a result of all these beginners, some animals will suffer unnecessarily, simply through ignorance. You cant learn everything from a book. Reading this blog reminds me of that at least once a week.
I know that when I get chickens, I will make mistakes, I will miss things or submit them to the wrong treatments, or conditions or miss something in their food. Those poor first chickens run the risk of some tough times as I ride my own learning curve. Any subsequent chickens will have it better and after a few years, I might even be getting good at keeping them. No doubt nature will still throw one of its infinite number of curve balls from time to time.
For now I am restricting my own personal learning curve to gardening. Many plants have suffered, some have even died. This year there may be less casualties. In 10yrs I might have got the hang of it enough to have a little confidence. I am not deterred, I shall continue to blunder forward and enjoy the things that work. I will keep reading and listening and looking.
You dont sound harsh to me, I am always impressed by your pragmatism and you strive. Every day we see you strive, to be the best keeper of your critters that you can be and to continuouslly improve. No one can do more than that.
Hi Queen
Thanks for your letter, it meant alot to me to read it, and I will continue to strive..
For some reason my mother in law could not get her post to go though, so I am posting for her.
“I could feel your anger/shame/hurt in your post. I am sorry you are having to deal with this. As you are aware, I was born and raised in a big city. Although I come from farming stock on my mother’s side, I have commented to you before that I was not raised in any way other than that of a city girl as far as where my food came from. There was never organ food placed before us, other than liver. My son’s father being of an English family was used to liver and kidney but I did and do still dislike preparing or eating these. I had/have the city person’s view of what a farm should be as well, particularly where animals are raised and butchered for food/hides, etc.
It has been difficult for me to read some of your current posts where you have spoken about using all parts of the animal, how to butcher and the photos/recipes. I must admit I skim over those. That is the squeamish side of me showing. I would much rather go to the butcher to get my steak, chicken, etc. I am, however, a realist and understand what you have been saying in these recent blogs. It would be like you to give thanks to the animal for its life in order for you and my son to be sustained.
I am continually fascinated by your wealth of knowledge, whether it comes from your upbringing, research or whatever. I know how you care for your animals. I have seen this when I spend time with you and my son. I laugh at your description of some of your experiences with Girl and the other animals.
This was a good post that you wrote and I, like you, hope that more experienced, knowledgeable farmers will share and mentor and that you will continue to do so. With respect for this particular post, D.H.’s mother and your M-I-L.”
Hi MIL
As I said to Nancy, I have not had a issue with comments myself, I truly was talking about what was happening on a different blog. I just think that if folks could share information on how to do things in a more postive way that perhaps it could go easier for everyone.
New idea’s are good but sometimes truly, there is no point in remaking the same wheel over an over again.. learning from the lessions of the past is very good thing.
I know that alot of what I do on the farm is very different then the choices you have made in your lifestyle, but I do thank you for truly to put up with your “hippie” Daughter in law 🙂
I have enjoyed reading your blog and want to encourage you to keep writing! Something I heard Joel Salatin say was that people “humanize” their animals. They are raised for a purpose. I had to laugh when a friend found out I had chickens and she asked “You don’t eat those eggs do you?” She forgot that eggs come from a chicken and not the grocery store. Hopefully you won’t hear much from those haters..
Hi Nancy,
Thanks so much for your kind comment, I will keep writing, As I said i the post, I have only had a very few folks write negative posts, it was at the other farm blog that I was reading where it had totally gotten out of control, she is a newer farmer and is very open about what is happening on her farm. I can see that she clearly cares and works very hard but I can also see “red flags” in some of her choices that could have impacts on her farm down the road.
Have you got your friend to try you fresh eggs yet? then she won’t want those store eggs anymore.
I too am enjoying your blog, I have been farming at this farm for 13 years now, I raise meat animals for our family and my customers. I also have a market garden and sell at a local Farmers Market. I applaude you for your honesty in how you raise and deal with your animals. Having been raised with animals, I know they have their place on the farm and in our lives. I am a realist, the reality is after having a doe give birth to 3 healthy kids one day, a few days later my other doe had a stillborn kid. That is life, as my son who is 15 and has been raised on this farm said, it’s sad but you don’t feel as bad as you used to because that is farm life, animals die period! You do the best you can everyday, but sometimes that isn’t enough, and as a farmer you need to be ok with that, or you will never make it for the long haul. That is why we have so many feel good people who don’t want to face the hard reality, farming is hard, dirty and sometimes thankless work. I wouldn’t give it up for anything and it doesn’t sound like you will either, again love the blog and keep up the good work!!
Hi Toni
Thank you for your comment, and so glad you are enjoying the blog, I don’t plan on stopping any time soon, but things can change and flex , in this day and age, you move where the work is and then build your life around the area.
This is lovely in its honesty. I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I married a man who did and as a result my city lot is now a tiny farm.
The hard decisions you are talking about are difficult for folks who are disconnected to understand. And I don’t think you have to be a farmer to be connected – having recently had a baby, looking back on that experience of birth, which was very very very long and difficult, I see the links to those hard decisions. Many of us are disconnect from birth and death in general, not just when it comes to our food.
We are sentimental. We have a dream of the way these things will go. I dreamed of a quiet dark room with soothing music and a water birth. I got three days of labour and an emergency c-section. You can’t afford to be sentimental when it comes to birth and death.
When I first met my husband we visited a local farm that sells cheese and allows visitors to tour the stalls. A ewe had just given birth, but she wasn’t cleaning her babies. My hubby hopped the fence and rubbed the circulation back into the only one showing signs of stirring. He explained that really, the ewe should be culled – that if she won’t mother she shouldn’t be allowed to breed, her babies would likely be poor mothers as well.
It struck me as harsh at the time, but really that is the most responsible thing. Nature is unsentimental. As a good steward, you have to be too, for the well being of your animals and your farm as a living whole. It’s hard, but necessary. Such is life.
Thank you for your post, I look forward to reading more of your blog.
Stacey
Hi Stacey
thanks for your lovely post, I do have to agree with hubby, unless its a first timer or a mother that has had a very hard delivery, lack of mothering is indeed a reason to cull from the herd, I had one goat, that would have twins, she would always take the white kids and refuse the colored kids.. If she had twin white’s, she would raise them, if she had one white, she would raise it, and kick the colored the edge of the pen, and if it was two colored, just walk away.. Great goat in every other single way and once you can figure out to breed only for white kids, there was a way around it but it was the strangest thing..
I hear you about the birth of your child, we do indeed have a dream of what will be, and life sometimes throws us curve balls..
Wow, so much said, where do I start?
It’s a sad fact that most people these days have no idea where food comes from or, that starting from the moment life enters this world, it will eventually come to an end. Doctors like to think that they have all of the answers and everyone/thing should live regardless of the circumstances of its birth or health and sometimes this is simply not realistic.
If we don’t make good use of food by eating it in a timely manner, then something else will. In the wild, the weak are culled by the strong and any leftovers are disposed of by scavenging birds and animals, all nutrients are eventually returned back to the earth to start the cycle again.
Life is about balance: light and dark, night and day, sickness and health, strength and weakness, good and evil, joy and sadness. Sometimes reality sucks and there’s not a blessed thing to be done about it (other than make lemonade out of the proverbial life’s lemons; )
There was an excellent program on public television recently about mummifying a man called “Alan” . The whole program was very sensitively presented and very moving. Being an ex nurse married to an ex policeman, we are both unphased by the appearance of a dead person. The kids were very shocked. Such a commentary on the modern age, that a teenage child should never have seen anything bigger than a song bird, dead. The fact that I also regarded the show as “brave” for showing clear pictures of the dead man also shows how the world has changed. I have, on many occassions, intervened in conversations to reassure, often mature adults, that dead people are not scary, just dead. I think that it’s all a symptom of our disconnectedness from the world of nature. Birth and death of our own and other kinds is hidden from view and often regarded as unpleasantly messy, dirty or distasteful. Until we can embrace these things as natural events it will be difficult, I think, for societies to connect with the food that sustains their life.
No one who’s ever had to dispatch an injured/sickly animal would ever make the decision lightly. When I was just a kid I watched my dad cry after putting our family dog out of it’s misery and I know that as a hunter the same decision applied every time he pulled the trigger: that only a killing shot was acceptable and anything less was cruelty. Even though I don’t live on a farm now, I’ve had to find that same kind of strength more than once to dispatch a puppy-mauled bunny and injured songbirds. Having to kill an animal hurts; but better that, than to prolong suffering.
You are a good steward for farmers and the farming movement by setting the bar high, and doing a great thing by sharing your always conscientious knowledge with others.
Hey FarmGal, I admire your blog and skill sets immensely. I actualy use your posts on animals to teach Monkey about how farmers care for their livestock. At six, he understands where his dinner comes from in the abstract, although there is currently an amusing disconnect. He sees a chicken on TV being plucked and put in the pot and he is angry and says it should be allowed to live. As he says this, he is knawing on a drumstick. When asked when he is eating, he’ll tell you chicken. This disconnect is amusing in a 6-yr old but less so in an adult. Its like the 8-yr old girl who reads “Charlotte’s Web” and then goes through the “Wilbur the Pig” phase and won’t eat bacon. Amusing in an 8-year old, annoying in a 36-yr old. Or like the Northern hunters who get hasseled by a people from a nameless organization for selling the fur of an animal they have eaten and fail to see that their “objection” to the economics of the sale are tied up in the hunter’s need for healthy low cost food to feed his family and that sale pays for the part of the diet that has to be purchased – flour, butter, etc.
Really the sad part is that education is impossible with those who put a political or “humanizing” spin on the realities of farm livestock. So save your breath and continue with the excellent work you have been doing both on the farm and the blog.
I think one of the problems is when a blogger posts their failures, instead of just their successes.
There will ALWAYS be others who think they could have saved the day, but they were not there. There will ALWAYS be others who would have done things differently, but they were not there.
And there are some people who have to learn by doing, even if that includes mistakes others can see coming.
The point is to not judge too harshly, since we weren’t there.
And as someone who would spend thousands of dollars on vet bills for my companion animals (total vet bills in 2010 were somewhere around $1200, last year, for two healthy dogs, around $500), I’d like others not to judge me, as well. Because it’s my money, my animals, my decision – just like it’s another option to spend their time and money as they see fit, without having to worry about me judging them simply because they make different choices.
Just because someone chooses to do something we wouldn’t do doesn’t make them wrong and us right. And we shouldn’t judge – because we are not there.
I think some of the issue is that a lot of us newer farmers (and I certainly am one!) are trying to extrapolate our experiences and expectations from the pet cat and dog we had as a kid to the goats and chickens. You treat a cat or dog (to a point), whereas we’re discovering that, in general, it’s better to just humanely put the chicken down. As well, you become “friends” with a pet; you name them and love them and let them sleep in your bed…that attitude makes it hard to distance yourself from livestock that you will kill and eat someday. It’s a learning process. Hubby and I have a little advantage, be because we both spent some of our summers on working farms as children, so we “get” that you raise animals to kill and eat, but even so it is a big adjustment for us. I can’t imagine having to overcome the “pet” mentality towards animals if I’d never had any exposure to a farm before.
I cannot get over how disconnected many people are from the realities of life in general. I grew up in a small city in a farming province, so I was never that far removed from birth, death, and a strong understanding of where my food came from – Mom grew up on a farm, and was very pragmatic about those things. I also spent time on my Auntie’s acreage (they raised their own chickens for eggs and meat), and while I wasn’t around for butchering, I knew it was going to happen. Back then, kids were taken to open-casket funerals, and nobody thought much of it. I’m really glad I was not sheltered from these sorts of things, and I just shake my head at folks my own age who thing “eggs from chickens (rather than the grocery store) are yucky” or “how can you kill a chicken you raised from a baby?” or crap like that. Fortunately, we’re back in a rural area where even the “city” folks I work with are grateful to get access to farm-fresh eggs or fresh ricotta or home-made jam – there is still a mentality here that home-grown and home-made is better, thank goodness!
I really agree that it’s really important for the seasoned farmers to share these sorts of insights with the newbies. I’m so new at this that I don’t even know what I don’t know, and I’m always glad to hear from folks who know what they’re doing. Even if it seems harsh, it is valuable knowledge, and I sure hope you don’t hold back in sharing it, even if it might make some folks uncomfortable…
You just keep doing what you do best, and don’t worry about the naysayers or critical folks. Not everyone wants to know where their food comes from. You are further along the path, and a stronger person than I. I learn from you, even if I don’t want to. *grin* Someone has to teach we “newbies” how to farm properly.
Keep up the good work!
Great post! You summed up an issue that seems to be popping up all over. Just out of curiosity was the blog you were reading CAF? Because that one set off a firestorm of debate recently and i found myself caught up in it far more than I meant to.
I just want to say “amen!” Those are the harsh realities of farm life, and ones that I know as a suburban girl turned hobby farmer will have to deal with eventually. My hens are now a year old, and I will probably keep them for another year or two until their laying days are over. I still have not decided whether I will let them retire and live out their days or take advantage of quality meat raised how I would want an animal to be raised.