hello, spring

and the farm year begins anew

Allegory of Spring and Summer, Bernardo Strozzi, 1600s

It’s spring and all of life is buzzing and popping and bursting forth with determination and joy. We come again! We made it! Let the celebrations begin!

Our little farm, just under 100 acres, teeters on the craggy rock shelf known as the “Canadian Shield”, that covers a huge swath of Canada. The soil beneath our feet is vastly different from one corner of our farm to the other. Massive ponds managed by industrious beavers surround us as do the actual lakes themselves. Forests envelope us and pastures, long ago cleared of their rocks by the hands of those no longer here, are now carpeted in all manner of grasses and legumes and wildflowers.

The tasks at this time of year are unrelenting and frenetic. It’s easy to get consumed trying to outrace the pace of spring, but it’s folly. She’s a quick one and there’s no doing it. Still, one must put forth a solid effort. There are early spring plantings that must get in the earth while the temperature is still cool. There are fruit trees to prune before their buds explode into life. Old rose bushes to be moved. Wild lilacs contained before they swallow us whole.

All around our home the debris of a winter that coated trees in ice and then snapped them like toothpicks. All the broken limbs have surfaced from under their icy graves and need to be cleaned up. The electric fences that were collapsed in the fall have to be resurrected. Sections of wire fencing squashed under old fallen dead elms need to be mended.

Wreath on a Ground of Flowers, Birds and Rabbits, tapestry circa 1490-1550

The cattle, waiting impatiently for the grasses to get “boot high”, always watch for that moment when we appear with fence posts and electric wire under our arms. The oldest of the cows, my beloved Bea runs to the fence of her winter enclosure every time she sees us. She’s looking for that orange round thing, the reel of fencing that promises grass and freedom. The day she sees it, all hell breaks loose. She runs back and forth along the perimeter of her winter home yelling to the rest of her herd, “GRASS! THEY ARE BRINGING US TO GRASS!”

The great grass gluttony of spring has begun! Our lovely, docile cattle turn into bellowing, begging, maniacal beasts, bawling incessantly. We just can’t move fast enough for our bovine overlords! They want out of their winter pasture where they’ve eaten dry hay all winter long. They want those sweet, juicy blades of spring’s luscious offerings. And boy do I want to give it to them. There is no sound like the sound of cattle feasting on grass. It may just be one of the most mesmerizing sounds on this planet.

Every year, as the songbirds start filling our forests with their beautiful music, my anticipation builds. Soon, I think, I can let the cattle back onto the grass. And when that day comes, expect little of me. I will be with them, sitting on my rock, listening with my eyes closed as those magnificent, powerful beasts use their nimble tongues to wrap around and tear away the offerings of the land. The stuff we could never eat but they are built for. Mouthful after mouthful, exhalations of exaltation and I, a feeble lass of the human persuasion, in the middle of it all.

It’s quite a thing, to know that my actions, my work and determination to do what is right as best I can, is able to bring these animals, all of our animals, joy in a way that animals experience joy. What does a cow want? Well in spring on my farm a cow wants grass. Now the bull, on the other hand, has higher ambitions.

I say, dear ole’ gal, would you be so kind as to allow a gentlemanly bovine a wee taste of that succulent grass you’ve been growing? Perhaps just a sliver or two? And if I may bother you a touch more, please let it be known that should the heifers care to join me, I’d be most amenable to the possibility.

I might pause here to mention that not all of my cattle are fine English aristocrats. Only some. Just like us, they all got their own thing going on. But my bull, Leroy Brown is, in my imagination at least, upper crust to be sure. He is, most definitely, a gentleman if ever there was one.

Flora in a Cartouche, tapestry, 1660

Spring around our farm is a busy time. In the fall we will harvest a year’s worth of food to feed ourselves everything we need to live on for the coming year. What it is that we sit down to eat at this time of year was started and tended to a full year ago, if not longer, now. Take my breakfast today. I had sourdough bread with beef liver paté smeared on top of it with a good dollop of my homemade marmalade on top (don’t knock it ‘til you try it). With it I had some raw cheese, a duck egg, and a slab of venison from a big chunker of a deer my husband hunted last fall. Some canned summer peaches and homemade yogurt with maple syrup and all was well in my belly. None of that food came from this day except for the eggs, but all of it came from many days before on our generous homestead.

The beef was from an animal that was born here. He had a name. He had a mother he nursed from and grew big alongside. His mother showed him the choice areas of the pastures and the forests where he grazed and escaped to when the summer heat became oppressive. He scratched himself along the barks of oaks and reached into the branches of all manner of shrubs and bushes and trees to add diversity and nutrients to his grassland diet. He stood in cool, muddy bogs when it was hot and took shelter under the tree canopy when the rains came down. For all of his life, the same herd. That matters, that herd. It is their security and their bonds that nourish their wellbeing.

Same with all animals, yes?

The strong hierarchies in a cattle herd are continuously reassessed and reinforced. Add a new member to the herd and the great reshuffle commences. Each animal vies for dominance anew. Don’t confuse that with them all wanting to be the lead cow. That is not at all the case. The lowly animals near the bottom of the hierarchy will challenge one another, but wouldn’t dare think of taking on the lead cow. The lead cow may have a few other boss cows around her that might test her out every now and then, but for the most part, all is copacetic and peaceful with a sound lead cow.

People like to think we’ve evolved out of hierarchies as if they’re a construct overlaid upon us. We’ll accept governments, a work boss, and other institutional governors over our lives, but other than that, we like to think we’re all perfectly equal across all capabilities. Cows are entirely more honest. I suppose that’s what I love most about having the honour to work with the beautiful animals in all the world - they teach me more about people than I could ever sift through on my own. There is no pretence or polite manners to hide what is true beneath. All the riddles and idiosyncrasies are laid bare in the barnyard dramas.

But I was eating this cow when I started this missive, not telling you about its hierarchies. And it may be at this point that you are wondering how it could be that I am eating an animal that was born, lived, and came to die at our hands, literally, on this farm.

Madonna in Floral Wreath, Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1619

“Don’t name the animals you want to eat.” That’s what I was told by an old farmer many years ago, long before we had our own farm.

That was one of the worst pieces of advice I have ever received. It’s entirely upside down and backwards.

The greatest gift I have ever been given through our years farming, growing and raising our own food, have been the lessons and relationships I have had with our animals. In our disconnected, storybook fantasy way of looking at animals, we’ve come to think of them as either dumb creatures here just to eat or as some humanoid species that wants to live to be old and to be pet by humans and loved by humans and who has human-like needs and desires and passions. Both of those ideas are perverse and an affront to the marvelous creatures that nourish us.

Let’s take a cow. You may know of my adoration for the sacred cow. For that, I will not ask for forgiveness. They are the most perplexing and wonderfully interesting animal on the whole of our farm (and we have a critter of every persuasion here).

A few years ago, I had a young woman say to me from behind a screen “Your cows love you unconditionally and you betray them”. By eating them, she meant. I betray them by eating them. At first I let out a loud guffaw, but that comment wormed itself into me and I had to really sit with it. I’m grateful for what she said now because I think she represents what many people, often younger people, rightfully horrified by factory farming, come to adopt as their personal creed - eating animals kills animals and by not eating animals the horror stops. And people who have been raised disconnected from the land and animals only know these creatures through pictures and disney-fied versions of them, replace actual knowledge with fantasy-like ideas of these creatures. Reality is misrepresented with what the human values instead of the reality of what the animal actually is.

I think it’s the saddest thing of all to know something so little that all we can do is give it value by attributing human characteristics to it. What an insult to a cow! A cow doesn’t love me unconditionally, a cow knows little of such things. A cow has better things to do. A cow given the environment and conditions that she will thrive in lives bonded not to me but to her herd mates. They have their own motivations and instincts. Their unconditional love for me is not one of them.

And what about the betrayal part? Is it betrayal when we bring our cow or steer to a field and lay down alfalfa for it to feast on while we aim a gun at its brain? Your instinct may be a “yes”. That’s okay, I felt the same way at one time. I don’t anymore. Did I become some callous killing machine, unaffected by the death of an animal that I had a relationship with over many years? No. No, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. And the truth is what lies in choosing right over easy.

The easy part isn’t in just the physical act. That easy is infinitely more straight forward than the right over easy that comes from challenging our own limitations. I strongly believe that God put all of us here in this time with our own unique talents and gifts because we have a contribution to make. Sometimes what we offer delights people. Sometimes it makes people angry. Sometimes it’s easy to put forth what we have to share. Sometimes it takes a great deal of courage. No matter the case, the ‘rightness’ of a thing trumps our fears, our emotions, our egos. I answer to my higher self. Therefore, if I think it’s right, I will choose hard over easy every time.

There was a time when it would have been easier to load our animals up on a trailer and have someone else kill them. I could close the trailer gate with a dose of guilt and then get on my way, distracting myself by doing whatever else needed to be done with my day to forget about it. “What’s done is done.” It’s easier to let someone else deal with it. I could tell myself stories about being too sensitive or having too little time or whatever I needed to patch the ache bubbling up from my spirit, the one that saw the incongruence in my behaviour. We humans have all sorts of tactics for dealing with such things.

And we think that’s “easier”.

It is the hardest of all, to raise an animal you love and to be responsible for its death. It’s a heavy load and a solemn, sacred act. I didn’t come up with it. A being of infinite light and wisdom did. I have faith in that. I have faith in living within that Creative force, just as it was given. I’m not big enough or wise enough to assume I know better. And if I’m here, in this world as it was given, I trust that my Creator knows I am capable even when I’m not sure.

Nature is not just the flowers and the bumblebees and the wind song in the forest. Those are sweet pleasures that bring reprieve and a softening for the open wounds.

Here is where these thoughts find me, when life is starting anew. There’s been two calves born so far this year. The orchard geese are starting to drop their eggs randomly about the orchard seemingly surprised by this new talent they’ve developed. The pond geese and ducks have returned to their watery home now that the ice has receeded and they spend their days dipping and bobbing around, quacking their pleasure to the returning, migratory ducks that often stop in for a quick visit on their way to the nesting ponds that await them. Grass is greening. My puppy is growing. Fruit tree buds are plumping. And in amongst it all is Bea - always watching, waiting to sound the alarm the moment she sees us with those fence posts. I don’t know who’s more excited for that day - me or her.