A Good Life

The only thing more fun than seeding a pasture yourself is watching somebody else doing it.  At least, that's what beefy seemed to think.

A year ago this ground was bare dirt, which was a step up from the weed patch it had been.  In fact, I think this exact spot was heavy in goat heads.   We plowed it up and seeded it with pasture grass.  It's doing well, but is sparse in some areas.  Today we overseeded to fill in the holes and added some more alfalfa.

When I did the west pasture, Christina, our family milk cow, was interested too.

I visited an organic farmer once and she said that what farmers primarily do is care for the soil.  It surprised me, but today it makes a lot of sense.  I can do everything else right, but if the soil isn't good then the garden won't be productive.  It's kind of the same with cows.  We need to take good care of the pasture.  A healthy pasture will make for healthy cows. 

Cows are a lot easier to handle when they're halter broken — which means that they'll follow you on a rope.  We started beefy by tying him up to a post for several hours.  After playing tug-a-war with the post for a few weeks, we started walking him.  Now he follows well.  My nine-year-old twins come running when we say it's time to walk beefy.  Christina tags along too, sometimes pushing her way in between.  She is alpha cow, after all.

Christina will hopefully be with us for a long time, but beefy is being raised for meat.  Next year about this time we'll go through the first butchering of our own beef.  We have butchered two batches of chickens in the last year and our children have had to struggle with the notion that being a meat eater means killing.  We had spent our whole lives outsourcing that grim reality.  Now we have to deal with it head on.  I told them, "they are going to die one way or the other, but the question is how will they live."  Our responsibility as their caretakers is to give them a good life.  Today I asked my daughter, “is beefy having a good life?”  She smiled and said, "yeah."

Perhaps that is a good question to take the next level — is every human being in my sphere of influence having a good life?  Perhaps it is the fundamental question for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.