Knowing all too well the indirect horrors and brutality attributed to factory farming and its massive detrimental effects on the environment has led many of our population to risk their health by going entirely vegetarian. But the aversion to meat is not going to solve the animal welfare problem. What it will do is further stress our medical provisions.
Needed now is the return of the once-was small, mixed farming operations where they raise their own chickens, pork, beef, lamb, rabbit, turkey and eggs in a more humane, free-range manner.
The protein derivative of meats and their micro mixture of trace elements gained from grass-fed, free-ranging animals are important to the human diet, with no one source specifically more superior than the other. Variety is the spice of life. Diversity is the answer.
Every meal you eat that supports a sustainable farm changes the agricultural world. This is a point that cannot be overly accented. Your fork is your ballot. When you vote to eat a steak, a leg of lamb or sunny-side-up eggs nestled beside a sizzling slab of free-range-raised bacon, you are showing the industrial system you are actually opting out.
The same goes as well for your fruits and vegetables. Failing a backyard kitchen garden, where you can grow, in majority, your own, buy from the farm-gate vendors or farmers’ markets, but just avoid the questionable chanting chides of the hucksters who sell products they bought and brought from you-don’t-know-where. Far away pastures are definitely not known as organically pesticide-free-grown.
Buy close to home.
Here on the farm front, the realization of the August 2009 tornado’s demolition derby, enacted in less than three minutes start to finish, flattening the barn, outbuildings and fencerows, has gradually sunk in. Though at first devastatingly heartbreaking, it has, perhaps, actually done us a favour. If you’ll pardon the pun, it left us on a level playing field. The only direction from down was up.
Now that the barn and drive-shed have been replaced, the home and workshop repaired and the yard cleaned up and, in part, re-landscaped, the desire is there to start fencing paddocks and pasture fields.
As soon as that is accomplished, it is hoped that mixed livestock, in sustainable numbers, will be added to rotate and romp in each field as proper fencing is completed. This I am really looking forward to, as I started out life on a family-feeding, 50 acre mixed farming operation and my thinking today, as back then, is that there is nothing more pleasant than to watch a flock of sheep, goats, cattle or horses as they frolic and wander freewill in pastures, knee-deep in clover, with the blue sky, white clouds and sun high above.
Knowing they lived a good happy life makes it easier to accept the ultimate butcher’s block.
And now, once again, a gentle reminder. It’s bluebird time, folks; time to put up another bluebird house. They will be coming back from the south at the tail end of this month, so I hope you have marked your calendar. Greenspaces for Wellington is holding its ninth annual March Break Bluebird and Bat House workshop at Greenway Blooming Centre, 2000 Shantz Station Road, Breslau, on March 16, 17 and 18 from 10am to 4pm. Five toonies will get you a birdhouse and ten will get you a bat house. This is your opportunity to help Mother Nature bring back the once endangered bluebirds to your area. See you all there.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105