It's taken Willow a long time to adapt to our chickens. She was attacked by a cat several years ago (that's the scar you might notice above her left eyebrow), and she's slow to warm to animals as a result. She's finally comfortable enough with the chickens to pick them up, and we take any threats to that relationship seriously. As such, we have a hard time keeping roosters around.
A few weeks ago, Jeremy found three Rhode Island Red roosters on Freecycle. We brought them home intending to eat two and keep one if he proved to be a good rooster. The best that I can say for him is he's proving to be a weird rooster. He's very solitary, spending most of his time alone. The girls dominate him and he shows no interest in mating with them. He certainly doesn't bother protecting them or leading them to food. He doesn't even crow. If it weren't for his glossy green tail feathers I might think he was sexed wrong.
While we were deciding what to do with this guy, Jeremy found another rooster on Freecycle, a Delaware, so pretty we named him Fancy Pants. We planned to eat this guy right away because the grower said he was extremely aggressive. By her account, she was more afraid of this rooster than a rattlesnake. But we didn't see any of this aggression with us, and he immediately adopted our flock. He was protective of them and led them to food, and very virile. In response the girls' ovulation kicked into overdrive and we were flooded with eggs. We were very cautious around Fancy Pants, but hopeful.
That hope came to an end after spending a long hot day canning with Isaiah, when we went outside to spray each other off with the hose. I had just turned on the water when Fancy Pants came running at us out of nowhere. He screeched to a stop before us, and I swear he scraped the ground like a bull, one foot after the other, before charging full-bore at Isaiah. Let me tell you, he scared the shit out of me. Chickens are small and mild, so innocuous it's hard to believe that they can be aggressive and yes, even dangerous. I know several people from farming families who have the shin-scars and phobias to prove it. I'd never seen a rooster like this, though.
I grabbed Isaiah's arm and whipped him behind me, keeping my body between him and the rooster, looking for a weapon while Isaiah screamed and the rooster advanced. Finally I found a stick and used it to menace the rooster while Isaiah, in a complete panic, jumped over the creek and ran up the hill, stark naked in the brush.
Fancy Pants barely seemed to register my stick. He jostled and parried, trying to see a way to evade my hand so he could tear my ass up. Then he noticed Isaiah on the other side of the creek and moved in that direction. So I went after him, trying to turn his attention back to me while yelling at Isaiah to run to the road that leads back to our house. Finally the rooster backed down. I ran across the creek to Isaiah, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “We need to slaughter that rooster, I want Papa to kill that rooster TODAY.”
So we did. Fancy Pants was a huge chicken and we made two dinners of enchiladas from him.
And then there are the rabbits. Jeremy has wanted to raise meat rabbits for a long time. Recently he found a grower and acquired four does and a buck. For home-scale meat production it's hard to argue with the efficiency of a rabbit. A doe can birth three litters of eight bunnies every year – about forty pounds of meat. Rabbits require very few inputs and almost no maintenance at all, and their manure can be directly applied to the garden.
Having never spent much time with rabbits, I did worry that their adorable fuzzy cuteness would penetrate my crusty layer and I'd be too attached to consider eating them. After all, I live in a culture where rabbits are pets, not food. As it happens, rabbits don't seem to have much in the way of ostensible personality. It's nearly impossible to tell them apart, and they're not very affectionate. Basically they seem like oversized rats. (Friends who harbor fond memories of childhood pets do not appreciate that characterization.)
And, perhaps surprisingly, rabbits are vicious. Does are aggressively territorial and may kill trespassing females. Nursing does must be isolated because bucks will slaughter their babies to make the doe available for mating.
For some reason, imagining our bunnies' snow-white fur stained with the blood of infanticide makes it easier to imagine eating them.
But I still struggle with the ethics of meat-eating. It never seems like anything but an act of violence to kill an animal. When I refer to this sense of violence, though, Jeremy is inclined to point at the wine grapes that dominate this area – their vines clenched to metal posts in fascist lockstep – and say, in his mild way, “That's violent.”
We live two hours from the Central Valley where a quarter of the nation's produce is grown. When we have to drive that way, we pass through the Valley with the windows rolled up, vents closed, usually in shocked silence. The bounty coming out of that wasteland seems impossible and contradictory. The “farms” don't match the perception of that label at all. The acreage is infinite, flat, desolate, and planted uniformly with solitary monocrops, bracketed by fertilizer tanks, irrigation ditches, and processing plants where no human activity is visible. Sometimes enormous combines can be seen circling the fields, a speck of a man riding aloft half a million dollars of debt, or migrants in haz-mat suits spraying chemicals. On very dry days, huge dust-devils of topsoil – that which holds the nutrients and matrices essential for food production, and needs hundreds of years to develop – are mercilessly lost to the wind.
That's violent.
It's a cliché, but a true one nonetheless: life feeds on life. The only thing we can do – and indeed our duty – is to mitigate our impact. Increasingly I lack hope that this is possible on a mass scale. Human population is on track to reach nine or ten billion by 2050. Can we feed all these people without pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizer, genetic engineering, migrant exploitation, export-dependent economies, transnational corporations, or grain-heavy diets?
We must, because our agricultural system is quickly bumping up against natural limits in all of these. Last time that happened, the Haber-Bosch process was discovered. Maybe a similar technology will emerge just in the nick of time, but I'm not putting any eggs in that basket. I want a different world altogether, even though I know we just can't have everything we want, all at once. We have to cherry-pick what sort of violence we choose to support, what hand we will play out of so many available to us. We don't get to “opt out” in any real sense.
Still, in my more optimistic moments I visualize progressive agrarian communities. That's the future I'd like to realize. In the long run I hope to raise or grow most of the food I eat, drawing the remainder from small farmers in my community, plus small imported luxuries like chocolate and coffee. I'd like to produce for the community, too. But there's no sense of success in this as long as I'm dependent on Cargill and ADM for organic feeds – which is the case for nearly everyone. My dollars fund the unbearable violence these companies perpetrate. My pastured organic meat, the darling ideal of every Michael Pollanite, will only be marginal in impact so long as the input is externalized.
I choose this path anyway because the benefits outweigh the costs. But I'm watching experimental local grain growers with interest.
This is the point at which I should conclude with some thoughtful insights into the context of violence. I should say something about how it's better to raise and slaughter a flock of chickens than a hundred thousand acres of wheat. I should say something about the importance of taking responsibility and being a producer and recognizing our genetic heritage, and maybe something about sentimentalization and how we're animals and a part of nature which builds on the cycles of life and death, of which we are not exempt. A few digs at vegetarians and people who buy meat at Walmart might be expected, too.
But it never gets easier. I do feel stained.
Still, I am a practical person. I understand the consequences of our food system. I feel a strong responsibility to do what I can, and to raise up my children with that understanding and that sense of responsibility.
As such, I project my sensitivity on to my children, worrying that they will be afraid or horrified by the violence of food production – but they are not. They sit on the deck railing and watch the killing cut while I cower inside the house.
They've taken me at my word that a death feeds new life and this justifies our hand in it. They believe me before I do.
This is a simple, easy dinner that would probably be better suited for the winter, but it works well in the summer with young potatoes. Though we live alongside cattle here, I don't know if we'll ever raise a steer ourselves. Luckily there are several excellent pasture-based ranches in the area; in this case, Magruder.
The rest of the ingredients are simple things that you probably have in your refrigerator or pantry. I used these zucchini pickles -- they add a nice sweet & sour note to the savory meatballs and potatoes.
Paprika Meatballs with Smashed Potatoes and Pickles
1 lb. grass-fed ground beef
2 T. smoked paprika
2 T. parsley, minced (plus more for garnish)
1 pastured egg
4 yellow potatoes, cubed
4 sweet pickles, chopped
½ c. plain yogurt
juice of ½ lemon
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook for about 15 minutes, until beginning to fall apart. Drain and set aside.
While the potatoes are cooking, combine the ground beef, paprika, parsley, and egg, and roll into 1” balls with wet hands. Heat a large, deep pan over medium and cook the meatballs in a single layer, turning as needed so they are browned on all sides. Test one for doneness, then remove the meatballs to a plate. Be sure to gauge doneness by taste rather than color, since the red of the paprika can fool the eye!
Heat 2 T. olive oil or ghee in the pan. Add the potatoes and salt liberally. Fry the potatoes, turning regularly, smashing them occasionally with the back of your spatula, until nicely browned (about 10 minutes).
Remove the potatoes to four plates. Pile the meatballs on top. Whisk the lemon juice into the yogurt and drizzle over the meatballs and potatoes, then sprinkle with pickle chunks and parsley. Enjoy!
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