Serenity Yoga Farm

Warning: this post may trigger vegans, vegetarians, city folks, and probably some groups of people I’m forgetting about.

On Wednesday, our goat friend Maggie who we met when buying our first three goats, Kissy, Kerrygold, and Peaches, came over with her daughter to hang out with us and see the farm. She also came for another reason; we asked her to take our drakes (male ducks) home with her to butcher.

As you know if you’ve been following us for a while, we call ourselves a vegetarian farm, not because we are vegetarian ourselves, but because we cannot fathom killing anything ourselves and we feel that killing on our land will energetically change things here at the farm. I also promised my vegan teenager when we were moving here that we wouldn’t kill anything; perhaps I’ve broken this promise now, it’s hard to know.

I’ll first state that I was vegetarian and vegan with the occasional fish exception, for ten years. Two months before my thirtieth birthday I started badly craving meat. I mean, BADLY. And the vegans will tell you that means something in your diet is missing, a nutrient you could find in a plant-based product. I know because I was one of those judgy people (it is totally judgemental to tell someone else what their body needs) at one point in time. But instead of feeling guilty or trying harder to find a plant-based substitute, I decided I would go out and have an antibiotic-free chicken salad at Agava. And I did. And it tasted GOOD. I didn’t even feel guilty; I felt like I came to life again. My boyfriend was kind of horrified; he too was vegetarian and all of his closest friends were vegan farm sanctuary volunteers. But I did what I felt I needed and I never have gone back to being vegetarian. I notice red meat doesn’t sit well; I notice I need meat maybe 2-3 times a MONTH to feel good. I don’t overdo it. I take what I need, as we all should (whatever your own needs may be). What I basically learned is that we all need different things and we should not judge others because we don’t know what their own bodies require. My teenager has never eaten meat in her life, save one accidental hot dog incident that she thought was a tofu dog, and she never wants to try it, either. She is a very healthy size and shape, something I’ve never managed to be on any diet I’ve ever been on. I think she’s thriving on her diet. It’s interesting how different we are.

Now, back to the story. We did not want to kill any animals, nor did we want anything to die here if we could help it. But we also will not tolerate bad behavior from animals, like when the rooster attacked me for simply petting a hen (as far as I know he’s still alive and well guarding another flock of hens on a neighboring farm). Our ducks would never attack anyone (human-wise); we got the most docile varieties we could. We ordered them from two online hatcheries; only one allowed us to select “female” rather than “straight run.” So we knew four of our ducks might end up male. Luckily two of those four are female. The other two were fine as babies and they’ve been decent up until their hormones kicked in. We noticed the raping going on (it’s animal sex, yes, and animal sex is rather unpleasant and definitely not consensual) more and more frequently. The drakes pin the female ducks down and then also pin their heads down so they can’t squirm at all. Male ducks will even drown females doing this in the water because when their heads are pinned down they can’t get air, obviously. So that was disturbing but luckily our ducks only go in the pond for baths and live 99.9% of their lives on land. No deaths in our backyard pond. But the other day when I was on the phone in my room and looked out the window I was horrified to see that both the drakes had separated one female out (do you want names? I think the girl was Quackers that time) and they both held her down together and you know… Seriously, an animal gang bang. It disturbed me to no end (maybe country people don’t bat an eye and this is how you know I’m still a city slicker) but I was on a phone call upstairs and could not do anything about it at the time other than feel deeply disturbed. What kind of energy is this raping stuff adding to our property and is it worse than death when it’s death for the dinner table? Is it not bad energy because it doesn’t have a negative connotation for them; it’s just a primal drive? That’s two of many, many questions we discussed.

In the end our sweet friend Maggie, no stranger to butchering animals, agreed to drive down and get them, take them home alive, and then do the deed at her own house.

There have been so many arguments going on in my head. What would a vegan have done? This is how nature works in the wild…animals have sex and it’s not pleasurable. Would they have just separated them out into different enclosures? I think then the males would fight. What do they do at the farm sanctuaries since animals aren’t actually 100% peaceful all the time like in their brochures and videos? Do they secretly toss the “mean” animals and just never tell the public? Do they separate them? Do they leave them so people can see how cruel animals can be to each other? I doubt that last one to be true.

I am so glad the drakes had a peaceful death; my friend wouldn’t do it any other way. I am also very glad their death is not for nothing; they will be consumed. That is the circle of life for those that do join the circle.

If we eat meat why don’t we kill our own? We’re just too sensitive, to be honest. Does it make sense to eat meat and pretend death isn’t involved? No, it doesn’t. I can justify it and say I feel better eating the few animals per month that I eat. I can also say that I *should* learn to kill things if I’m going to eat meat. But in the end I’m just not there yet. And I don’t really desire to be there. I’m sure we all have values that are not congruent; this is a struggle I have and it’s real.

We went on a date yesterday to Target (woohoo, that’s what old people do!) and we ended up sitting in the car and having such a long philosophical conversation about all of this. Were we sad knowing these birds we had raised from the second day of life onwards were now dead? Yes. Did we regret our decision? No. Was there anything else we would do differently next time? Not really; we still don’t want that raping stuff going on. The only thing we’d do next time is only order from places that will let us order females and not a mixed bag, so to speak. But what is it you think the hatcheries do with so many unwanted male birds? They kill them. Is it better that we gave them almost a year of life? Maybe. Is it okay to kill for food? Yes. But is it sad to us? Yes. What does death mean and why does it bother us? For this one I spoke of how dying to me is the worst part…the pain that could go on in a death, and knowing the birds were not in pain is a relief. They had a good life, they didn’t know death was coming. They are gone now, not suffering. Is that okay? I’m just not sure.

Have vegans and vegetarians risen above the circle of life and are they “higher beings” to be able to do this? Or are they ignorant and avoiding what *is*, that humans are animals too and that this is all part of being on this planet. Is it ignorant to eat processed foods shipped across the planet that use our precious fossil fuels when they could be eating chickens from their own backyard? Is it ignorant that we are just eating our neighbor’s chickens (so to speak) and not our own? Are we higher beings for knowing that this circle is a part of us, or are we lower because we can’t quite get ourselves *there* to honestly and openly take a look at what is involved in getting food to our table? Isn’t it nicer that we eat only grass-fed humanely raised free-range organic etc etc meat and not the meat from factory farms? That we don’t give money to the pain and suffering that is involved in factory farm life but that we also do know a difference? Vegans tend to lump it all together and think it’s all cruel. It’s so varied. In the end, death is death though, is it not?

I’m sure there were more questions that we had and talked through; most have no straight answer and we are left not knowing exactly what is right.

I think it’s good to know we don’t have all the answers. We’ll never pretend to, either.

I would love to hear thoughts on all of this if anyone wants to share either in comments here or in a message to me personally. Keep it kind 🙂