Earning their keep

Several times a year here on the farm we have to decide which animals are good producers and which are not. With the hens, the best egg layers will avoid my axe, while the hens who are caught eating eggs will be first in line for Sunday dinner. Ugly roosters have long ago found their way to the supper table, with no remorse from the Farmer or the Gatherer. It's just a simple fact, on a farm we all need to earn our keep.

While it is true that we can afford to keep some "pets", the whole subsistence farm system works better if we have healthy and productive animals. If we find that a doe goat has given birth to a single kid, has given less than a good amount of milk, and fails to be bred back, it may be time to cull that animal. Now to most people the term "cull" is a dark and secretive word. I have imagined that a goat vanishes some night on the farm, where did she go? Did some wild dogs drag her off? Was she sold to some unsuspecting neighbor? No, she was culled. Very simply put, culling around here means that the animal probably became a meal for our family. I believe that an animal that is a poor producer should not be sold but should be put to their highest and best use, and that may mean slaughtering. I clearly don't mean to say that sick animals would be turned into food, but just those who, for some reason or another cannot earn their keep.

From our kids earliest days have tried to truthful with them about where our food comes from. With the vegetables that we grow or the apples that we pick there is a clear connection between the garden or the orchard and the table. While the idea of having some "meat for supper" is an American tradition, most families don't want to know where their Black Angus came from. Not us, we like to know that our beef was raised on our grass, drank clean water from our pond and was carefully prepared for our consumption. We have taught our kids that God put animals on this earth to be our helpers, maybe to haul a plow, maybe to provide us with milk, and yes sometimes to provide us with meat. You will be amazed how your kids will accept this fact of nature if you are honest and compassionate about your animals giving their life to sustain ours.