Village Squire, 1975-04, Page 34Keith's Kolumn
The day I learned I'd never be a farmer
The day we sat do'•: n to eat Martha I knew I
was never going to be a farmer.
Martha was an old friend, you see. She'd
been around for years when I was growing
up. She was already middle-aged when I first
began to see her but in her good-natured way
she'd go along with my horsing around. Even
when she began to get old, she never got
ill-tempered like most people.
But she got too old and wasn't what she
used to be and so that winter with the farm
prices low, as they often were, father decided
Martha was of more value on the dinner table
than out in the stable eating up expensive hay
and grain and giving out little milk that
wasn't worth much anyway. So, Martha, the
old jersey cow became Martha the roast beef,
the steaks and the hamburgers.
I tell you, that wasn't the most enjoyable
winter of eating I've ever had. Besides the
fact that the old cow was far from the tender
morsel the food freaks like, she was also very
unappetizing to me because with every bite I
could see that sad old face with those soulful
big brown eyes. I felt like a cannibal.
That was just an inkling, of course, of the
knowledge that grew stronger than ever that I
just wasn't cut out to be a farmer.
There were uncomfortable moments for me
in the pig pen when it came time to turn the
young male pigs into...well, something other
than males. The other farm boys I knew
seemed to take sort of sadistic pleasure in the
task. Me, 1 almost fainted.
And when it came time to send the pigs off
to market, I can remember as a wee tyke
heading for the woodshed to hide behind the
woodpile and cover my ears so I couldn't hear
the screaming of the pigs as they were driven
out of the barn and up the ramp into the
truck. But anyone who knows pigs knows that
simply hiding in the woodshed and covering
your ears wasn't enough to keep out the
sounds of pigs: they've got lungs on them
that would make any opera singer envious.
Chicken often graced our table. By the time
it got there, however, I was often too green to
care. We always killed our own chickens and
after comparing my father's method of
sticking a knife up their throats and the usual
habit on other farms of chopping their heads
off, I concluded that there just wasn't a nice
way to kill a chicken.
I never got as attached to a chicken as to old
Martha, though, so it wasn't as bad when it
came to eating. We also killed the chicken on
Saturday when we planned to have it for
Sunday supper, so I got a day to recover my
appetite after watching the slaughter.
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Much later, my father took up raising
rabbits as a hobby. I was away at school by
this time, but one time when I was home we
had a meal of rabbit. It's an excellent meal,
by the way, though I admit I'd have enjoyed it
better if I hadn't thought of the cute white
bunnies with pink eyes, twitchy noses and
long ears.
I've always been an advocate of
self-sufficiency: the more you can do for
yourself and the more of your own food you
can grown, the less dependent you are on the
whims of the economy. If you get tired of your
job, or your business hits the skids, you can
always get along with very little money if you
can make your own food.
I'd love to have a little farm in the country,
but I know from sad experience that if I was to
be self-sufficient I'd have to end up a
vegetarian. Oh I might be able to get along
with my own eggs or my own milk from an old
cow, but I just don't hink I could bear to eat
my own meat, even if I did have someone else
do the butchering. I'll take my meat in the
nice little packets from the meat counter
thank you. It may not be as wholesome or
tastey, and it certainly costs a lot more but I
can enjoy it a lot more when my conscience
lets me be.
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