I'm late in posting a wrap-up because, quite frankly, fair week did me in. Too old for all this busyness...
The final "big thing" we are involved with at the fair is the market animal auction. The animals that the kids have been looking after for several months are auctioned off to the highest bidder. They go for slaughter. For meat.
The kids have come to understand this basic life principle: For one to live, another must die. Now I understand that there are folks who don't eat meat. And I'm okay with that. But we choose to eat meat, and because we do, I'd like the kids to understand the whole process. (And, incidentally, I didn't invent the whole "for one to live, another must die" principle. You'll see it worked out over and over in nature. I believe it's a principle that is set in place to point us to the truth about Christ's death on our behalf. But that's fodder for another day.)
In fact, I'd love it if more people understood this principle, and realized that food doesn't "come" from the grocery store. Veggies and fruits are raised by the sweat of someone's brow. Meat comes only with bloodshed. There's no getting around it.
Life is full of blood, sweat and tears. The sooner we realize it, the better off we'll be in the long run.
"The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality." — Wendell Berry
Yep! I've sweated over many a vegetable in my life though not at this point in my life. I also remember many "hog killin' " days while I was growing up. It seemed the whole country side where my grandparents lived were doing the same thing on those autumn Saturdays. My kids haven't grown up with farming like I did but we have lived in many places where they've learned this principle also. My husband is retired AF and while we were stationed in Holland and Germany, they saw different types of vegetables farmed there. We also saw farms where the animals were actually kept right beside the homes. While we were stationed in MT he hunted. My daughter was only 4 when he filled a doe tag and she told him (emphatically) to make sure the next one he brought home wasn't a mama deer.
ReplyDelete