Personal Thoughts – ethical meating

Rolling Stone Sheep Farm is one of my favorite farms, so I have been waiting to write this because I really want to get it right and there simply has been too much going on personally (the birth of a niece, friends’ weddings, vacation, and my actual day job), I was worried I would not do it justice. So here it is finally!

Shepherd Frank greeted me, accompanied by Stella, an Australian Shepherd. While Stella is technically a herding dog, the sheep naturally get excited to move to fresh pasture (and will even cross the road!), leaving Stella without work. So she is the family pet.

I have arrived in the midst of lambing season. The newest lambs are still in lambing jugs bonding with their moms. Without the lambing jugs (if lambs and their moms are immediately sent back out to pasture), other sheep in the field will try to adopt lambs and the ewes can get confused. So they stay in the jugs for a bit.

Frank is currently growing his flock. This is his third lambing season. Right after birth, the mothers are sheared in order to help keep the lambs warm. The sheep’s wool is so well insulated that if they were not sheared, the babies would not get any of their mother’s warmth.

A mother in a lambing jug with her newborn twins.

Frank currently has 2 lambs being bottle-fed at home. “There’s no housebreaking sheep” he laughed. They follow his daughter, the “lambsitter”, around the house like puppies.

Outside, Frank has fenced off two 1-acre grazing plots, with access to the barn, for the two different breeds of sheep. Each set of sheep is protected from coyotes by electrified fence netting and the llamas, who are very protective of their sheep. As I walk with Frank in the pasture, Gus immediately spots me and comes over to check me out. I am with Frank, so Gus is not too worried. However, he still inserts himself between me and the closest members of his flock.

Llama Gus, wary of strangers, gets between me and some ewes with their lambs.

Continue reading “Rolling Stone Sheep Farm” →

I have only just begun this blog and journey to only eat ethically raised meat and while I have received some great support, I am also finding it harder than I anticipated in a variety of ways.

First, it is tough having fun playing with the piglets and then discussing their slaughter. In the perfect world, I would not eat meat and I would raise all the pigs as pets. But that is not feasible. Firstly because I am not a farmer and secondly because if I were a farmer it would be financially crushing to do so, especially if we add lambs and chicken to the farm (and I would of course need a few dogs, goats, horses, and cats, and maybe some rabbits to join the pigs on the farm…). That is simply not going to happen.

But it would be pretty cool to have a farm with horses…

So I find that I often have to remind myself why I am doing this. Why visit these animals knowing of their impending death that will fulfill my (and lots of other humans’) desire for meat?

For starters, these animals would (most likely) not be alive if they were not going to be dinner at some point. Which begs the question, is it better to have lived than never to have lived at all? It certainly depends on which farm you are raised. If you are a cow and are given shelter as well as a large pasture to graze in where you eat grass and hay and kelp (for extra vitamins and minerals!), that is certainly better than living and eating in a feedlot. Being raised in such an ethical fashion also often takes more time for the animals to grow. So I am looking for farms whose animals live happier, and maybe even longer lives.

These animals are going to be raised one way or another. So, let’s support the farms that raise animals the better way. That’s why I do this.

But that is not the only challenge I have come across.

Continue reading “Harder Than I Imagined” →