it's what's for dinner

As a teenager, soon after I came to the realization that Jesus would not be returning before I was old enough to vote, I started to think about things other than the impending Armageddon. One of the things I began to think about was food and where it comes from. We had a garden and I knew that milk came from cows and all the basic stuff, but I had never really ruminated on the finer points of how the world was fed before. Now, this is a question that you can really spend an entire career thinking about (see Pollan, Michael), but I think the first thing that comes naturally to many American teenagers is the question of where meat comes from. I think this is because one thing certain American teenagers become attuned to easily (and rightfully so) is a sense of fairness and justice. And if you have developed a concern for fairness and justice, once you realize where most meat comes from, you are fucking outraged and become a vegetarian. I did. You might even take it a step further and realize that even milk and eggs usually result in the suffering of animals and always in their eventual death and become a vegan. The production of inexpensive meat also results in the suffering of many many people who have to work in horrible feed-lot operations and slaughter facilities, or, worse yet, must go hungry or thirsty because land is being used to grow grain or give water to animals while they suffer.

And so, for 10 years, I didn’t eat meat. In the course of those years I found out more about ethically raised animal products and about different kinds of farm land – kinds that were good for raising plant protein (like beans) and kinds that were better at raising grass for animals to graze and then give us milk and meat. I thought about things like the fact that agrarian cultures had almost always had animals, which were viewed as valuable companions and valuable resources. Also, anyone raising crops will need fertilizer and if you’re not going to buy chemical fertilizers and if you’re not going to live close enough to the ocean to use seaweed, you’re gonna want some shit.

Then, I came to work on a farm, a farm with animals. I realized that if I wanted my animals to have a natural, pleasant and productive life, I also needed to be able to give them a swift death and to not let their bodies go to waste after their spirits had left them.

So I found someone to show me how to butcher a rooster. I wondered if I could do it. I had never killed anything bigger than a large spider. I don’t think I ever even ran over a mouse or a squirrel with my car. But I thanked the rooster for it’s life and took the rooster’s head in one hand and the knife in the other (its tied upsidedown) and cut its head off. (The person who showed me also showed me how to slit the bird’s throat, but if it were me, I’d rather someone cut my head off than slit my throat any day.) With the aid of a scalder and a plucker he went from something you would see in the pasture to something you would see in the oven in 10 minutes.

Even something a small as a rooster can feed you for several meals. The meat, of course, can be prepared any number of different ways. The fat can be rendered into a spread for bread or cooking called schmaltz. http://www.sadiesalome.com/recipes/schmaltz.html The heart and liver are okay as well. Sad to say, I can’t bring myself to eat the gizzard, but some people love them. I gave it to my cat. The bones can be made into stock for soups or stews. And all the bits that you can’t eat can be composted into fertilizer for the land.

I hope the rooster knows how much he was appreciated for everything he brought to the farm in his life and in his death.