It is interesting when we have people out to our farm for the first time. Most of my peers buy their food from Walmart or Whole Foods, and it is rare for them to have stepped foot onto a farm, unless you count places like petting zoos or pumpkin patches. There is an inevitable moment that occurs when they come to the realization that the sheep, goats, and chickens they think are so adorable, that they see their children and my children affectionately pet and hold, will one day be food.

I can see them wrestle with this in confusion, struggling with their opinion of me. Don’t my children get attached? They ask, isn’t it hard for them? It’s not a yes or no answer. The truth is layered like an onion and there is nuance and nuance is a thing people just don’t have much time for these days. 

My children are very aware, from the beginning of an animal’s life, which ones will be food and which ones will not. If my farm guests are not already convinced of my monstrousness by this point, they most certainly are when I let them in on the fact that it is not uncommon for my children to be present when these animals are butchered, that the older ones have even helped and with smaller animals, like quail, they can actually butcher the entire thing themselves, and, although they love the animals, they are happy to do so.

They know we raise our own animals to give them the best possible life and then someday eat them. Many people cannot grasp the fact that I can love these animals: relishing the day they are born and mourning when they meet their end too soon or unexpectedly, checking on them when they are brand new just like a mother, even bottle feeding some of them; but that I would also eat them. They judge me silently for my icy black heart.

Then they go buy meat from a supermarket, or pick up fast food on the way home. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people say they love eating meat, but they could never take an animal’s life, as if their sensitivity proves them to be morally superior in some way. 

Unfortunately the byproduct of their “sensitivity” is the horrific reality of massive amounts of confinement operations. If people were willing to raise or hunt their own meat, millions of animals a year would be saved from factory farming. Their disdain for blood on their own hands is directly responsible for the torture, neglect and abuse of the very same animals they claim to love.

Why is there such a disconnect? And why is it so pervasive in our country? My family didn’t stumble into this life by accident. It is a result of years of research and learning and careful decision making. When you start to actually grow food and bump up against the reality that there is indeed no life without a certain amount of death you begin to seek out ways to do the least harm. We use no till or low till approaches to growing food, rotate our grazing animals and seek to build soil.

Vegans are sad about meat being on plates but the reality is massive mono crops to grow foods like corn and soy are responsible for a massive amount of animal death. Indeed people who farm mono crops literally kill everything else, vegetation, animals, and insects alike, to ensure their one crop can grow unimpeded.

Animals are a part of a healthy ecosystem and when they are in overabundance they will damage and even destroy land. In nature animals have natural predators to keep their numbers in check and when they don’t it becomes a problem. Good animal agriculture consists of curating an environment that simulates what an animal would experience if they were not being farmed, with the added bonuses of veterinary care and protection from predators.