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4 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Losing touch with our basics
Sometimes I wonder if my
children and grandchildren think I'm
speaking a foreign language when I
come out with an expression like
"madder than a wet hen". I use
phrases handed down to me by my
parents. who in turn probably learned
them from their
parents — a long
line of people
with rural
backgrounds.
But my
children have
little farm conn-
ection and my
grandchildren
will have less.
For that matter,
how many of
today's farm
children would
understand the
origin of a meta-
phor like "pecking order-. It } ou'' e
ever kept chickens in a free-range
situation you know exactly how the
expression came about but how many
people, especially modern farmers,
keep loose hens in these days of
biosecurity. And few people know if
a pig in mud is really happy either.
Of course I never really
experienced the situation that gave
rise the the comparison "bleeding like
a stuck pig" myself, since our family
didn't do its own butchering except
for chickens, yet I still know the
expression. I wonder if I've passed it
on to my own kids, and if they, as
they move on to more urban settings,
will carry the language of their
forefathers with them.
It's another small example of the
influence of rural life fading in our
increasingly urbanized society. Rural
themes have been part of our
country's culture for a long time but
now a new urban culture dominates
even in rural areas. Kids are more
likely to dress and speak like the
suburban kids they see portrayed on
television than to respond to the
realities of local life. This is most
obvious in winter when you see teens
dressed as closely as they can to
California conditions, wearing
summer jogging shoes instead of
boots, going bareheaded with open
Farmers, not
just urbanites,
have lost touch
jackets through the blizzard.
We bemoan the way urban people
have tnisconceptions of farm life.
especially when these people then try
to foist their ideas of how farmers
should be conducting their business
on the real country people. Animal
welfare is an area sure to make
farmers burn as activists want
animals to be able to express their
natural tendencies.
But most farmers don't really
have much evidence with which to
defend themselves. Let's face it, very
few today know what the natural
tendencies of their livestock are. As
efficiency has increased, fewer and
fewer animals are living anything
like a natural lifestyle. Often, we've
seen these natural tendencies as
problems to be overcome.
And some of them are. Sows,
before the age of farrowing crates,
were prone to kill their own piglets
during the simple act of lying down.
In crowded situations, chickens will
peck at, even kill, each other.
In my own little hobby operation,
I know that if I want to collect eggs
from my coturnix quail, I must keep
them in slope -floored wire cages
because they simply won't lay eggs
in nests like chickens. I also know,
however, that the birds are much
calmer if they're kept in cages with
litter floor where they can carry out
their natural habit of scratching.
There are compromises that must
be made if we are going to have
domesticated livestock. The problem
is that as we focus on one thing —
greater efficiency — we tend to
ignore the realities of the animals'
lives. Farmers constantly being
squeezed by economic factors feel
they have little option but to follow
the trends. Except for the few rebels
who chart their own course, people
convince themselves animals really
don't care.
Like our rural language, we're
losing the knowledge of the basics on
which our rural lifestyle is built — of
the way the world was before we
thought we could do it better than
nature could.0
Keith Roulston is editor and
publisher of The Rural Voice. He
lives near Blyth, ON.