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| Here I am cleaning them up while Brother and Grandma look on... |
Some also believe that meat is “made” in the store, and
always comes from plastic or cardboard packaging.
As a child, I was not ignorant to where meat came from because
I lived on a farm. We raised two beef
cows that I can remember were so small when we brought them home, my father
could carry them in his arms. We fed
them bottles of bovine formula and crinkled our noses as they slobbered all
over us during the process. Cow slobber is
gross.
When it came time to butcher them, I remember being
directed into the house as the butcher showed up to shoot them. We were spared viewing the shooting, slicing
and dicing, but I do recall how fascinated I was when the meat came home all
nicely packaged in butcher’s paper. It
was hard to believe these little white packages contained the two cows (though
mean little bulls they’d become) that were just out in the pasture not long
before. I had no reservations eating the
meat. And I wasn’t sad to see the cows
go. I understood what their purpose on
the farm was.
Also, when I was a young kid, I was taught to catch and
fillet fish. So I knew that fish did not start
off in the form of a perfect fried square on a McDonald’s bun with tartar sauce,
or finger-food friendly “sticks” in a box in the frozen food section. Real fish started off with gills, guts, bones,
scales and fins. And slime. Slime is gross.
This past Saturday, I had family visiting the farm. And I had some chickens to butcher. After some discussion between the grown-ups,
and then finally with my five year old niece, we decided to let her take part in
(whatever way she chose) the butchering process. We all thought it would be good a good
experience for the “city kid” to see first-hand how a chicken makes its way to
her dinner plate, start to finish.
My chickens are free range, and my niece gets the
opportunity to hold the little chicks, and observe how the older ones make
their way around the farm eating bugs, laying eggs, and roosting at night. She loves to collect the eggs. She sees what a happy, good life the chickens
live, so I was curious to see how she would react to their lives ending.
She chose to help select the three chickens we corralled into
the trailer to wait for processing time.
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| A determined little girl choosing the first chicken to process |
My husband decided on the “break the neck” killing method
that day, and once the first chicken was dispatched and hung up to bleed with
its head severed off, my niece was okay with it all. I believe it was the first
time she had ever seen an animal die. We
had to explain carefully why the chickens continued to move even without heads
attached. Whether she had nightmares
about any of it that evening I have not heard, but somehow I think she was
fine.
Proudly, my little niece went home that day with her
chicken that she helped butcher, a lot more knowledge about where meat comes
from, and one hell of a story to tell her kindergarten classmates.
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| Standing beside her beheaded chickens, with one left to go! |
