"How Can YOU Care For Animals, Knowing What YOU Will Eventually Do to Them?!"
We get asked this question quite a bit actually and we would like to share with you perhaps a different light on farming.
It may be obvious to some of you and maybe not so much to others that farming is not always sunshine, loving the outdoors, driving a tractor, snuggling a cow or pig and experiencing the miracle of birth.
Sometimes… well... it…SUCKS!
We are outside in ALL weather- RAIN, SNOW, WIND, COLD, HOT, and sunny.
We have to work from sun up to sun down, and some days even longer.
We have not only the physical farming but also the paperwork, tracking, auditing, recording, typing, advertising, marketing, emailing, driving, towing, delivering and running errands side.
We HAVE to work 7 days a week and be watchful and ready 24 hours each day. Our animals depend on us and we cannot “take a day off” from caring for them. We are restricted as to how long and how far we can be away from home. We have to calculate in when and how long it will take us to care for the animals in order to plan venturing off farm.
Animals die.
This is a hard topic to discuss but it is a part of farming livestock.
In the past we had a 2 month time span that was exceptionally hard. We lost 1 pregnant cow and her unborn calf, 2 Lambs, 1 pregnant ewe sheep where the lamb also did not survive, and our newest (at the time) bottle calf.
Let me share our feelings on this for a moment.
We LOVE our animals. We choose to dedicate our whole lives to them. We mourn for them when they pass unexpectedly. We even cry at times (Heidi was a blubbering mess about the newest bottle calf). It hurts Jeremy- the big burley farmer- to his core when an animal has to be put down or dies. To say it’s hard would be an understatement. We also get sad and say goodbye when we take animals for their planned and expected processing day.
Some people might view our lifestyle as barbaric, mean, insensitive, callused or even inhumane.
I want to share with you a brief snip it from one of those hard days, as mentioned above, when we lost the bottle calf.
Just after sunrise the morning was cold around 34* and raining. Jeremy had left an hour before headed to Richmond for the Market at St Stephens. Heidi and Cole mixed the bottles of milk replacer and went out into the piercing rain to feed the bottle calves. They found the youngest calf nearly lifeless in his hut and quickly brought a dying bottle calf into the kitchen… yes, they brought the young calf in the house. They proceeded to work on this sweet boy for hours and even called upon a fellow farmer friend to come and lend a hand. Despite their best efforts he sadly passed away, in Heidi’s arms while she lovingly petted and hugged him.
WE CRIED. WE MOURNED. We buried him. We cried some more.
This was an orphaned beef bottle calf we took in after a neighbor’s mother cow had catastrophic labor complications. One who’s ultimate purpose would have been for human nutrition.
The ultimate destination doesn’t make the loss hurt any less.
You can make your own impression and interpretation of how we “can do this.” But as for us it goes like this…
We feel that humans NEED meat to sustain optimal and God intended health and nutrition. We believe that God placed these animals on earth for our consumption. We believe God gave us the responsibility to care for the animals. We find comfort and peace within us that we know without a doubt that our animals are LOVED and CARED for to the best of our ability and have the BEST life possible. We do everything in our power to provide them a happy and healthy life until their God given purpose is fulfilled.
We became farmers because we believe that our society and world needs a change in the food system. A change that provides clean, nutrient dense foods. A system that places top priority on the husbandry of the animals and environmental stewardship, not just profits. A system where you the consumer can be connected to your food and trust your farmers, and not have to rely on some shiny corporate label with no transparency.
We are going to consume meat regardless and we would prefer to know that the animals were treated well and cared for appropriately. Wouldn’t you?
So bottom line…
We LOVE our animals. We do not ENJOY processing them but feel it is an inarguable necessity to sustain life and nutrition. We cry and grieve if they have untimely deaths. We are sad to see them go no matter the reason.
Thank you for taking the time to read and we hope this was not too grim but we feel so strongly about this matter we wanted to share.
We want to thank each of you for your continued support of us, our farm, our family and our calling to provide sustainably sourced and LOVED meat.