Eating Animals

Last week, while I was gently tucking cabbage plants into the field, I heard a gunshot. I knew at once that somewhere nearby an animal had just dropped to its death. Without notice, a family had arrived at the farm seeking beef for their church’s weekend festival. They needed to feed 200 people- tomorrow. So out came the shotgun. The entire slaughter happened while I was a half-mile away, but I felt an eerie shift in my body at the sound of the bullet. 

The death was quick. “Happened it a split second,” Nate explained when I ran up to the back of the yard where her body splayed on the grass. Everyone said the other cows didn’t flinch when it happened, but as they moaned and tossed in their pasture, I doubted that. I realized that the real pain of the slaughter was not felt by the fallen cow as much by her kin who scowled at us with what I intuited as bovine rage. 

I loved that cow. I’d look into her deep, dark, watery eyes while I slid the hose through the fence and she’d look back at me with the dreamy gaze of a newborn baby.  

The other farmers here wouldn’t see it this way, of course. As the one of the most sensitive souls on the farm, I am keenly aware of the daily cycle of life and death here. Even in the vegetable field we are squashing slugs, tossing slugs into hawk-hunted fields, and ripping weeds out of the earth as if it were good therapy. Death is part of the life of any farm.

As someone who eats meat, I am giving a lot of thought to the space between the gunshot and the feast our new friends will enjoy this weekend. The slaughter of animals is something I’d always agreed every carnivore should witness, but as I watched them butcher my cow friend from the kitchen window, shit got real. 

I’ve seen many dead animals during our first month on the farm, and each time it feels like the split-second moment of death saps the dewy-eyed soul from the animals and all that’s left is their cooling body on the grass. Matter and spirit are seemingly no longer one. More than the blood and the bullets, it’s this startling transformation that spooks me the most. 

Witnessing regular animal slaughters is informing my instincts about what it means to be a person who eats meat. I was a vegetarian for years and my health suffered even more. It seems my body thrives best on a carnivorous diet after years of experimentation and trial and error. So, instead of making drastic changes to my diet, instead of being reactive, I am paying close attention to how living on a livestock farm is changing my relationship with animals, those living, those freshly slaughtered in my backyard and those served on a plate with a pickle.

Here’s the best I can come up with for now: I make sure to give thanks every time I bite into a piece of meat, honoring the spirit of the animal which I believe is still alive, just morphed into a different form. I think of how that sweet cow will be present at the church picnic, offering those feasting nourishment in the form of -I have to say it - some delicious burgers.

I reflect on all of this with curiosity and openness to changing my stance on being a meat eater. I am open to anything. Until then, I’ll maintain my practice of only purchasing and eating ethical meat, and making sure as the resident Highly Sensitive Farmer that all our animals live an abundant, happy life…and only one bad day.