I Could Never Do That ... or... The Morality of Butchering

Beefy is our six-month old steer.  Next year about this time he will be ready to butcher.  We've butchered chickens, but we probably won't butcher beefy ourselves; he's just too big.

Nothing gets more diverse, or stronger, opinions than when people hear that we are raising animals for meat and butchering. Some people are just grossed out by the whole thing.  They say things like, "I could never do that."  But these same people eat meat, which seems like a contradiction.  They're just making somebody do their dirty work.

Other people have raised animals but couldn't eat their meat.  One fellow said they raised beef when he was young but they never ate it because they were pets.  They all went to market.  But there is still a contradiction, because all those animals were still slaughtered regardless of who eats them.

I understand that aversion, it is a little creepy to know "who's" for dinner.  But I have a stronger feeling underneath, that it's the most right thing we could do.  In the end, beefy will still be slaughtered, but if his meat is for us, we will appreciate in a way that others won't.  We will remember the work we did for his health and safety and the good life he had.  We will give thanks to the Creator who made us present to the whole life and death of our animals and feeds us personally with this land.  The meat raised on our own land feels like a personal gift from God, not a mass feeding that we just show up to, but that the meat was specially created just for us.

It will hard next year when the time comes.  It will be really hard.  Raising our own meat makes us look directly at things we have spent a lifetime avoiding — our meat-eating is the result of killing. It will require compassion and hardness all at the same time.  But it will be real and it will be honest and it will be humane  ...but I'm glad it's not today.