Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.
~Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington (1787)
~Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington (1787)
I grew up in small towns and rural areas. I went to school with children of farmers, some raised crops, some livestock, and some both. Even the businesses in those small towns relied on the farmers, one of which was my uncle's hardware business and another a furniture store owner, our next door neighbor when I lived with my aunt. My high school boyfriend was the boy next door, who delivered furniture for his family's business and worked on farms. His grandfather and uncle were crop farmers and he also worked regularly on the farm of one of his best friends, a hog farmer, but he would get work around any farm he could. I remember one year that his car always smelled like hog manure which was not that appealing when you are dressed up to go to a dance, but that just was the way it was.
At some point, as I grew up, I must have come to the realization that the meat bought in stores was once an animal raised on a farm for the purpose of providing meat to be stores and that every "Happy Meal" at McDonald's had some beef in it. Even if my mind would have liked to fog the details of how the cattle ended up in cellophane wrapped packages, it really could not. I must have, at some time, come to the realization that how that happened because my father loved fishing and we all observed the cleaning and filleting process of a lake bass. I do not know when these realizations happened but I found to my surprise that I was not one to shy away at dissecting frogs in biology either.
That is not to say that I am heartless or take great pleasure in carving things up, I am just rather practical about fishing, hunting, and livestock. We were concerned, though, in how the Princess would handle the situation. She has always been more curious than grossed out by anything a cat would drag up to deposit at our door. Her father had hunted deer in the fall, although they eluded him, and we all watched videos on how to field dress and process a deer, which she watched with more curiosity that disgust. Still we knew that hunting a fairly cute animal unknown to you is one thing, raising the cute furry things yourself is quite another. It would be an adjustment for all of us, and I was concerned about the Princess.
This was how we explained it to our daughter because she has been up close to Jersey cows on the farm where we get our milk and has looked into those soft cow eyes: Every hamburger you eat came from beef, which is the flesh of cattle. Most of the cattle you see grazing in fields are being bred and raised for our food. Someone somewhere had to process or butcher the animal to sell it as meat. You may not have seen it, but you are a part of that because you have chosen to eat the hamburger.
She said she understood that part, but she just did not think we would be the kind of family that would "kill things." You see, we have lived in an area that used to be farms but because of the fast growth, the farmers have been pushed out and it is mostly patches of subdivisions and woodlands. The Princess has not had the same experiences I had growing up. Most people, who live padded in populated communities away from farms, do not really want to think about from where the meat in the stores comes. Some that do, choose to be vegetarians and I appreciate their convictions; I have friends and family members who are vegetarians of varying degrees. (Honestly, most people think I am a vegetarian because I just do not eat much meat or that is what they expect because I am an health advocate.) Some meat eaters understand and accept the process as the natural course of things. However, some chose to still eat meat while shunning or even condemning those who do all the dirty work to provide it. That is one hypocrisy that I do not easily tolerate and one that obviously had been brewing in my own child.
It is not an easy thing to take a life so its flesh will be used to sustain another life, but it happens in nature every day. I don't know why the Lord chose to require animal sacrifices, except perhaps to remind people of how grievous and costly our sins are because taking the life of an innocent is a very hard thing to do. I think in Western society, we have become too far removed from all of it, but it is still there. My husband and I have taught our daughter that some Native Americans thanked "the spirits of their brothers" for giving up their lives that they should have food to sustain their own and they were not wasteful, not taking more than what was necessary for them. We have taught her life is to be revered, but also that life is taken to sustain life.
I have not told her a fallacy that I was told that all things in nature only kill what they need survive, because there are stark exceptions: the domestic cat is a prime example, as it is an animal that kills for the fun of it without need, which introduces a certain irony to the forefront of my mind when I see a vegetarian owning a cat. Actually, most things in nature thrive because they take every advantage available to do so. That is why some baby animals are pushed aside while the stronger have their fill nursing. No matter how cute they are packaged, animals are generally selfish beings.
Our first kindle of nine all died and my daughter observed the mother rabbit closely. After a while, she said with a disappointed tone, "They really do not have feelings like we do." I hated losing all the kits, but that was an important lesson for my daughter. We all tend to humanize animals, especially in children's storybooks. Do not get me wrong, I have pets that I dearly love, appreciate, enjoy, and weep over, but also I believe they are more creatures of familiarity, habit, and opportunity than emotion and higher understanding.
I have written this for the benefit of those you who are curious. I feel no need to defend what we have chosen to do because we feel it has been blessed by our Lord so it needs not to be defended. We are doing with what we have as I felt God has been telling us to do and I feel like I am working towards that homesteading woman that I have always wanted to be, even with our little plot of land. So, now you all know that we have just started our small rabbitry as part of our plan toward greater self-sufficiency with plenty of ready-to-use rabbit manure for fertilizing our gardens.
~ My Lord, thank you for blessing us with our bit of land and our home. Help us to be even more responsible in using the land and resources You have provided for us. ~
