The Slaughter

It has now been 5 days since I killed my first chicken, and I haven't yet blogged about it in part because I have been busy, in part because I was processing the event, and in part because I've been unsure what to make public and hedging bets about who might be squeamish to read. But at the encouragement of a vegetarian friend, I've decided to include a more detailed account (which means this is inevitably a longer post...be patient O Children of Twitter).

So...my disclaimer is here: this post is more graphic, and will include some photos of a chicken dying, and me with a knife....

If you do choose not to read or take a peek, I simply ask that you ask yourself one question: Why not?

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As mentioned in an earlier post, Daniel and I had the opportunity to participate in slaughtering and preparing two roosters for food.

We had a great teacher who was patient and kind in all he taught us at the farm.

The first step was actually to cage the chickens the night before so that the crop was clean (the first stop on the digestive tract for chickens).

We then hung the chickens upside down by their feet from a tree (they grow amazingly still while in this position) to kill them. Paul explained how he goes about slaughtering the chicken. To minimize pain, he first piths the bird (basically scrambles the brain so that it is no longer able to process pain). You do this by sticking the knife through the roof of the mouth into the brain and wiggle...

Then you make a cut in the throat so that the chicken bleeds out; it will move but it is reflex at this point. There's actually a telling way to know when the chicken is dead. At first, it flaps it wings together in tandem, and then starts to flap one at a time alternately during the last throws of death. We stood there watching the chicken lose its blood and then plucked one by hand (to cook with the skin) and skinned the other before gutting both.

  

I was curious how I would feel throughout the entire process, especially given my previously stated phobia. Interestingly, I had an experience similar to my experience of reading Michael Pollan's account of slaughtering chickens. As a reader, I waited with anticipation for his description of it, but at the end thought, "that was it?"

We can rationalize the question about whether to eat meat, or not, either way - that is not the question I tend to get caught up on. There are many examples of the ruthless nature animals display simply to survive, and we are no exception. But death and consuming another animal (if thoughtfully done) is very different from inflicting cruelty on these beasts. In fact, all life must consume some other form of life to exist.

Barbara Kingsolver reflects on this question and her own processing on the farm in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:

"Most nonfarmers are intimate with animal life in only three categories: people, pets (i.e. junior people); and wildlife (as seen on nature shows, presumed beautiful and rare). Purposely beheading any of the above is unthinkable, for obvious reasons. No other categories present themselves at close range for consideration. So I understand why it's hard to think about harvest, a categorical act that includes cutting the heads off living lettuces, extended to crops that blink their beady eyes. On our farm, we don't especially enjoy processing our animals, but we do value it as an important ritual for ourselves and any friends adventurous to come and help, because of what we learn from it. We reconnect with the purpose for which these animals were bred. We dispense with all delusions about who put the live in livestock, and who must take it away" (p. 224).

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As I stood there wielding my fish fillet knife, I knew this rooster had happily grazed the earth, tackled plenty a hen, and run from the rooster-chasing-farm dog, Mica. It had lived a good life as far as chickens go (in fact it had lived several months longer than most do, it was at least a year old), and just as my body will one day feed other living things, today this chicken would feed mine.

A Rooster fleeing from Mica

One of the reasons I wanted to have the experience of slaughtering something I would eventually eat, and the reason I decided to post so many details about it, is our growing distance we have from our food supply. I grew up with many a friend who didn't want the food on their plate to look anything like the living creature it once was. (While this was generally a reference about meat, it's becoming more true of plants and vegetables as well. How often do we think about whether our chip was made of corn or potato? Or where the sugar in our cookie came from: corn, beet, cane?)

This farm child flourishes amidst life and death on the farm, and taught us to be less squeamish!

Rather than being more difficult to eat a chicken I had looked into the eyes of hours before, it was easier. I knew his quality of life, the method of death, and the processing that went into the preparation of the meal. And in the Quaker silent prayer before supper, I gave thanks for the life of a bird whose driveway antics of squawking, pecking and crowding would otherwise cause me abnormal heart palpitations.

Anniversary

Five years ago I married someone who I become more grateful every day to call my partner. He and I have begun several new "life phases" together, and he has been my security, my best friend, a place to be held when lonely, a place to express my unedited joy and anger. He has been, and is, home for me when I don't feel home.

He has taught me to stop, slow down, and savor life more, which has in turn fed me daily, and informed my practice of Sabbath. I am exited about where our summer will lead us, and grateful to have someone who seeks to be so intentional about our life decisions by my side.

Time & Space

“We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things.” Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, pg. 6.

I’ve been reading The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the leading Jewish theologians of the 20^th century. He opens his book with the bold claim that “technical civilization is man’s conquest of space.” In other words, the more we build, own, and even create and collect things the more we have controlled the space around us. We need space to survive, he allows for this, but he criticizes the lengths we go to to own and control more space than we need.

There is a security in space, we especially like our spacious homes and privacy, and look for other things to fill that vacuous space to ensure we’ve claimed it as our own. Space is power and borders are guarded heavily; space is comfort when it has been tailored to fit wo/men placed in the center.

Daniel and I have experienced the discomfort of not having a space to call our own home, to leave behind many of our things that fill space, and live in a space that in unknown to us and governed by another family’s customs. Though they are a family that in many ways lives simply in comparison to many Americans (heat with wood in MN winter, limit their water use, limit their appliance and electricity use, and reuse every piece of plastic, glass and tin available) they too seem just as bound by things as any other family. And indeed, Heschel talks about how many people are liberated from many things, but few are liberated from the lure of owning space.

You may notice I’ve been talking about things as space, a delineation Heschel uses in his definition. He does not go so far to say that all things unnecessary for life should be omitted from life, but rather we should be independent of such luxuries. Simply put, “to have them and to be able to do without them” (p. 28). This is one goal, I think, of the Sabbath, to practice time rather than space.  To use the historical practices as examples, to stop use of transportation, light, stoves, etc., and to dwell in a kind of time that is different and less dependent on things in space. This is one aspect of Sabbath and Daniel and I are modestly attempting to practice.

As I continued to read I thought about how I also treat time as a thing, a commody to be bargained and gained or lost. But Heschel has a much clearer understanding that time is in fact one thing we cannot conquer or possess. Furthermore, it is not as monolithic as we mistake it to be. Time is not just one minute, or hour, or day that marches steadily on. There is a diversity to time, one that Heschel claims the Jewish faith is built around. The festival days are markers of events in time rather than signifying a triumph or space or number. The Sabbath is the ultimate example of a differentiated time, it is holy time, time that will be holy with or without us, but time in which we may choose to dwell.

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As I’ve entered into my Sabbath time, I have thought a lot about sanctification and how I participate in my own and in the world’s through my practices. But Heschel redirected me by returning to the Genesis text. God hallowed the day in Gen 2:3, creation (space) was declared good after the first six days, but on the seventh, God created and blessed time, a particular time.

And so perhaps it is that simply by being in that time, within the Sabbath rather than achieving Sabbath, I too become sanctified. In my active cessation I have enjoyed the bliss of creation, the wonders of life, and have glimpsed the eternity Heschel describes as the climax of living in the holiness of Sabbath.

Heschel’s daughter wrote the introduction to the book saying, “The Sabbath appeared at a time when American Jews were assimilating radically and when many were embarrassed by public expressions of Jewishness…For them, the Sabbath interfered with jobs, socializing, shopping and simply being American” (p. xii) I’m afraid much hasn’t changed for many Americans, Jew, Christian or otherwise.

When do we stop and submit to time set apart for matters of the spirit? When do we stop and submit to time at all? When do we leave our spatial conquest to dwell in time that reflects a world where space is no longer an expression of greed and pride, but an expression of the beauty of creation and a God who loves us regardless of space acquired.

Even as I take three months of intentional time, time I know will end, time for which I have been hungry, I can feel my grip on space, on things, on security and comfort grow stubborn. I must remember that the Sabbath is not idle rest for the weary, not a day that depends upon me to exist, but a holy time blessed by God for the sake of life and the celebration of it.

New Life

Today we welcomed two new calves to the herd of cattle. Paul awoke to the screech of a little one and rushed outside to the herd to discover a coyote lurking in the pasture. Evidently the calf born overnight had come close to having a short life, but the herd quickly came to his defense once the coyote wrapped his jaws around him.

Later we went out to castrate and tag the babe.

At the end of the day we began to move the herd to the south pasture for the a new rotation in grazing, and we discovered yet another calf, born probably within 30 minutes of our arrival. The placenta was still on the ground next to the mama, and the little one could barely stand. This time, Paul tried to tag the calf in the pasture with the herd, and in doing so got head butted by mom and surrounded by the rest of the cows (these guys have longer horns...remember?) He walked away saying, "that was intimidating, no?"

An older calf from earlier this spring nursing on mama.

It was pretty cool to see the herd care for the little ones and watch new life learn how to nurse and walk - all within a very short time of their birth. The mama actually eats the placenta to protect the newborn from threatening carnivores (such as this morning's coyote).

Between the time we greeted each of the two new calves, I discovered a new flock of chicks prancing around in the driveway; add another six little fuzzy ones to the mix! We stood there trying to count the chicken total, I asked Paul if he knew how many he had but he said he'd stopped counting. I think he's approaching 100. A few are wreaking havoc on the vegetable garden so he moved them to "the top of his list," and sure enough two were caged tonight. I think Daniel and I will have our hand at ending life for the first time tomorrow. After today it somehow seems fitting.

Continued pictures from Northern lights

One of the other happy tasks I mentioned earlier is moving manure, some nicely composted resembling soil, and others that are a bit more.....fresh. Most of it ends up in the new beds we're preparing for veggies, but we also tromp though this pile to herd cattle. It's also been pouring here recently, which makes this task even stickier. 

Most of the cattle are pretty skittish, especially the baby calves, but this yearling is Milky Way. She had to be bottle fed for awhile last year and comes to greet people relatively easily. 

                                                

This is one of my favorite shots so far.

(If you click on it you will see a larger version)

                                                

This is their cat Touffe. Playing with one of the six cats, one dog, dozens of chickens or herd of cattle are favorite pastimes. Touffe has been mesmerized by the barn swallow's nest in the eve of the house these last few days.

                                      

Today was the first day of their season's CSA (community supported agriculture). So we woke up earlier than usual to harvest, process, sort and package the veggies for the shares today. They do half of their shares on Thursdays and half on Mondays, so we will do this again very soon! The first share was big this year: potatoes and onions from last season, rhubarb, radishes, spicy mustard greens, lettuce/spinach mix, lamb's quarters (another green), and fresh tarragon and chives. 

We're in the transportation business

The more we complete tasks on the farm, the more it seems we actually don't do much of the work that actually makes the food we eat grow. The earth, plants, and animals really take care of most of it, we just transport particular things at a particular time. Think about it...the growing of both flora and fauna happen on their own. Their waste feeds each other, and their reproduction of seed and babe happen independent of human hands. Most of the work we do is to transport seed to soil, manure to bed, cow to new pasture, egg to counter, weeds to mulch, animal to slaughterhouse, harvest to table. It is important work; increasing production of plants and organizing them in a way that eliminates foraging makes our human survival more possible. It is humbling to realize, however, that that is in fact all we are doing - moving and organizing. The work of creating sustenance for our bodies is really the gift of the earth. I think we often forget this relationship, believing instead that we have somehow created and grown the food on our dinner table - when in fact all we're doing is orchestrating and gathering to grow our own bodies.

The cow is a good example of how nutrients get transported from the earth into our bodies. Cows eat grass, one plant that we don't digest so well. They are able to survive solely on this green because they have an extra stomach called the rumen, which breaks down the grass and converts the plant into protein. That protein becomes the muscle and fat of meat that we in turn are able to digest.

Some of you have asked for more pictures and details about what we're doing here. So here they are!

We started our week by helping plant the tomato beds. They are still dinky lil' things, but will eventually be several varieties of yummy heirloom tomatoes! They have cutworms here which come an take one bite of the stem (they don't eat the plant otherwise), but their one bite will cut the plant from it's roots. So we learned to wrap the stems in aluminum foil before planting the seedlings in the beds. A few of these rows are also eggplant, peppers, and the back will eventually be summer squash.

We've also been working on some fencing to prepare new pasture for the cattle to chow down. The cows actually help manage the growth of the grass, and the ideal rotation will happen so that the cows go through the pasture and take one bite on the grass, and then the herd gets moved before the second bite is taken so that the grass can recover and continue to be a diverse and healthy pasture the cows will come back to. So fencing and herding is where most of the work happens for the farmer who does rotational grazing (or management intensive grazing). And as Paul said, when working with the cows, you must be on cattle time. One of the harder tasks was separating the yearlings from the rest of the herd (more specifically the bull) because they should not be bred in their first year. Since we've separated them they have been talking (loudly) to one another across the pasture! Momma misses her baby.

I'll continue another post after this...I'm at the max for pictures here!

On Chickens

It is Monday night, and we arrived at Northern Lights Farm Sunday afternoon. As we pulled into the farm, we were greeted first by the chickens - all 50 or so of them - and I realized my pseudo-bird phobia was going to be challenged even sooner than expected. As we stepped out of the car amongst squawking fowl, we began to search for where we might find our hosts. A heavily bearded and half balding man with long wiry grey hair popped his head over the tall grass just beyond the dirt drive.

Paul, the one who spends most of the family's time in the garden, gave us a tour of his 160 acres of beautiful Minnesota country, starting first....with the chickens. After some discussion about not killing enough roosters and finding hatchlings walk out from behind hidden trees with their mamas, we moved on to see the cattle. The farm raises Highland Cattle, which are a breed originally from Scotland who withstand the cold well and are relatively mild tempered and small animals. They've got somewhere around 30 cattle I'd say, 8 calves this year already (!) and unlike the chickens....only one bull (Ruby).

After the pasture (and some chit-chatting about the management-intensive grazing method Michael Pollan talks about in Omivore's Dilemma) we moved on to the garden, where Paul really spends the bulk of his time. It's split into two sections, an extensive (low-maintenance) level with corn, potatoes and winter squash. And an intensive (high-maintenance) field where they grow their lettuce, beans, parsnip, herbs, tomatoes, summer squash, garlic and more.

Lastly, Paul showed us the busiest part of the farm (though the chickens are a close second)...the honeybees. About an hour and a half after we arrived, we were out working in the upper garden on the tomato rows and Daniel and I were ready to get our hands dirty and fill our lungs with the fresh air.

Today, we continued our work in the upper garden, but on my breaks I would actually find myself wandering toward the chickens. They are really an amazingly beautiful bird, and it's sad to me that I never fully had an appreciation for the animal, nor an understanding of it's beauty until now. "Chicken" to me has meant mostly "lean meat," and unfortunately I'm not the only woman so far removed from these curious creatures who has lost such a sense of the animal.

This morning as I followed Paul on some morning rounds of the animals, he came upon one of his younger heritage chicks (Chanticleer) laying sick in the pen. He scooped it up and she was barely breathing, but opened her eyes briefly to see where she was. We brought her inside under a heat lamp and fed her sugar water, but Paul didn't have high expectations. He said chickens don't usually show any sign of illness or injury until they're about to go ker-plunk. We came in later to check on her, and she did die shortly after.

These are the two (yellow) Chanticleer chicks (roosters...again) left

Thinking about these chickens and trying my hardest to not spase when they come running toward me to peck my feet, I thought about Paul's comment about chickens not showing any signs of weakness until they're about to break. Now that I'm out in open space and can actually see the sky, I can only help but see myself and so many people I know as these frantic chickens mowing down each other non-stop, ignoring any pain or weariness until they finally go ker-plunk.

I've come a long way in 24 hours, from fowl-phobia to imagining myself with a backyard somewhere stocked with a few chickens, not only for the fresh eggs, but for the laughter they spontaneously inspire and the reminder to slow down before I find myself ker-plunked.

"Where are you moving?"

The question of the year. As we prepared to leave Boston, closing out both job and school, selling bookshelves and tables and trinkets never used, people kept asking, “where are you moving?” And even as we loaded the oversized Penske on Waldo St., our neighbors (who we never met until our last month in Boston) came out to ask, “where are you moving?” Our reply these last months, spoken with both a sense of uncertainty but also a quiet excitement was… “we don’t really know yet.”

We drove out of beantown headed to my parents’ house in Michigan (aka WaechterStorage USA) and realized we were technically homeless – entering into a liminal space (yes, I can heard all you seminary folk groaning) unsure of where that big yellow truck will eventually take us.

In the meantime…we are traveling. Volunteer farming in short.

We have registered with the organization called WWOOF (the World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and will be setting off as woofers to farm. The deal is, we received a book in the mail of registered farms from WWOOF, and we directly contact those farms to stay for a period of time offering our young backs and eagerness to learn about food production for some shelter and farm fresh grub.

I realize the irony of this commitment, given that I have boldly claimed a summer Sabbath. I am breaking a few key rules according to traditional Jewish practice, namely plowing the earth and driving all over the U. S. of A in an automobile. But Reformed Jews claim that work is defined differently in this age, and so tending to a garden may be a method of connecting to God and self for someone who does not regularly sweat or get their hands dirty at work. (More reflection on this coming from Mr. Berry…) And since I am a captial R-eformed Christian (some days) something about this reformedness exception must transfer, right?

We have had the opportunity to soak in some family time, both with D’s at graduation and mine this week. And now we’re ready to get to it! First stop… Solway, MN.

A Sabbath Poem

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and disappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Wendell Berry
A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
1979: II 

A Summer Sabbath

This summer, I am again invoking an ancient practice that I have only done so intentionally once before: Sabbath. It is a practice still vaguely familiar to many people of faith, and related to a perhaps more familiar practice in our culture (at least in academia), the sabbatical. However, both the professor’s sabbatical and most people’s typical weekly day of Sabbath lack many of the qualities, or at least the intentionality, of Sabbath’s origins.

The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew (“Shabbat”), meaning rest or cessation. The weekly practice of Sabbath is tied to Genesis 2:2 where this verb is found describing God’s rest on the seventh day of creation. God’s rest was not a lazy one, however, but an active cessation in which God sanctified creation. Thus, our Sabbath is indeed a cessation from work, a rest from daily activities, but it is also a time for the active engagement in spiritual matters. A time for blessing, cleansing, perfecting, making holy all that is overlooked in our otherwise hurried lives.

For Jews, this meant/means (depending on the brand of Jew), a set of rules that allowed demanded, one cease work and celebrate life, God and family. Examples of these rules include: no plowing of the earth, no cooking/baking, no washing, no use of lamps or artificial light, no use of technology, not travel or use of automobiles. It also meant saying prayers, breaking bread, time with family, playing games, napping, even celebrating “marital relations” (one of the few healthy religious practices that recognizes and celebrates sexuality). 

While the professor’s Sabbatical is an example of resting from the daily exhaustion of teaching and in theory having more time with family, it has lost a very pure understanding of rest, particularly the rest from one’s normal work. It is expected that our scholars produce during their time of rest; produce new studies, a set of lectures, and always more books. Some have even begun to trade their sabbatical from teaching for a time abroad in a professor’s exchange between universities.

Our Sabbath days as people of faith have also been eclipsed by our need to be busy and “perfected” (sanctified) in the eyes of anything but God. We may rest from our salaried position or hourly pay, but we rush home from services of workshop and prayer to mow the lawn, clean the house, finish an application for the next big phase of life, finish a book only so it’s done for book club next Tuesday, and generally “get things done.” How often do we set aside an entire day to tend to our souls, our relationships, and the creation that surrounds us?

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It wasn’t until I became completely overwhelmed with life that I began to understand the importance of this practice. Summer of 2007 I was lined up to do my Clinical Pastoral Education after my second year of seminary. It was promised to be a grueling emotional summer that would also change my life – one that I couldn’t be a successful pastor without (according to most Presbyteries).

But I was tired. Not just your average end of the year – finals week – eventually crash and get sick tired, but I was bone tired. Heart-tired. Mind-tired. And I couldn’t even attempt to come up with energy to dig deep and do the emotional and spiritual work that CPE requires.

So I stepped off the yellow-brick road to ministry, and got a summer job slicing meat at a sandwich shop in town. I rested from theology (the study of it anyway), from writing formally, even from reading. I gardened, exercised my body, cultivated new relationships in the community through a new job, and prayed.

I have again come to a wall. A wall where I face exhaustion, but also an emptiness spiritually, emotionally, vocationally, and even intellectually. It is time, again, for active cessation. Time for tending to God, to Daniel, to family, and to self.