Animals, Part 6 (The End)

I’m going to wind down my series on why we own animals. I don’t have much more to share about why we raise animals, except for one thing. This is difficult to put into words, but I will try.

In the Bible, caring for the land and animals was a blessing in the Garden of Eden. After the fall, it became a curse because of all the hard work (thorns, death, and all that stuff). But God still blessed this hard work caring for the land - when the worker’s heart was right with God. Remember Cain and Abel? Cain cared for a garden and Abel cared for animals. Both did hard work to bring their offering to God. Only one made their offering with a right attitude.

Combined with a desire to worship God with our very lives, tending to farm animals (as well as gardening) is a spiritual act. It is something that brings the spiritual into the physical realm. God is not gnostic. We are partnering with God to do such things as: bring forth life, bring sustenance to our families, and working hard to care for His creation (our children, the earth, and the animals in it). It is the kind of hard work that is fulfilling physically and spiritually.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of blog posts on raising animals. What it has not been, is a reason why everyone should raise animals. I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that people who don’t raise animals or have a garden are not serious about their health, their children, or God. These are just the reasons why we do raise animals. What I haven’t quite figured out yet, is how people who raise animals and homeschool and cook from scratch avoid burnout. Feel free to leave advice here.

For Families on a Budget

At least our kids will never starve.

Animals, Part 5

This is the fifth installment of my series on why we raise animals. If you want to read from the beginnning, scroll down the page to "part 1".

Here’s a rather obvious reason for raising livestock: self-sufficiency. Less dependence on “the system” to provide your family’s food. Being able to do it yourself without relying on companies that you know nothing about (How organic are they? What conditions do they raise their animals in? etc.) Less dependence on your finances. Less dependence on your vehicle. Less dependence on the gas your vehicle guzzles. (Side note: we don’t use our vehicles any less than we did before we got our animals, but I think we have more freedom to use them less if we wanted to.)

There’s something else that I think is probably at the back of everyone’s minds these days: these are very uncertain times we live in. There are many ways in which our lives could change that would necessitate becoming more self-sufficient, including but not limited to: bird flu, unemployment, electromagnetic pulse power outages, natural disasters, political unrest, increasing fuel prices causing unmanageable inflation, and nuclear war. Have I missed anything? I probably have. What would happen if we no longer had access to a fully stocked supermarket? That would be a huge transition for any of us, whether you have livestock or not. But for those with animals, the transition would not be quite so life-threatening. Caring for animals (and/or having a garden) is excellent disaster insurance.

Not only that, but it is also a sign that you are serious about providing for your family no matter what difficulties may come your way. You aren’t looking to others or to the government to bail you out when the going gets rough. This is not to say that not having animals or a garden means you are not serious about providing for your family. Not at all. But if you do want to be serious about providing, this is a good way to do it!

Why We Raise So Many Animals, Part 4

It’s probably no surprise to you, but raising livestock is work. We knew that when we started out, and now we really know it. The good thing about this work is that it is a family work. There are chores involved with raising livestock that even small children can do. When my children give Daisy fresh “hand-picked” clover to eat while I’m milking her, they are participating in the production of the actual milk they drink. This is a family work that is very worthwhile for both children and parents. We have not fully utilized this benefit yet (but do I ever have plans!), but it is worth thinking about and deliberately contriving a place where children and parents can work alongside one another and receive such tangible "fruits of your labor". There is a bonding that takes place in a setting like that which you can’t get in any other way, I think.

Here’s another benefit to children who grow up in a family that raises livestock: homeschool science. Whether you homeschool or not, biology takes on a whole new meaning when you are eviscerating home-grown chickens and your children watch your every move, asking “What’s that, Mommy? Oooooo….what’s that?”, every time you pull something out of the bird. You get the lesson and the “experiment” all in one. And dinner too. Haha. Seriously, though, learning about animals in books and learning about them in real life is just not the same. Raising animals is a great learning experience (for all of us).

One last benefit for children in raising livestock is so that they’ll have good stories to tell when they grow up. They can tell their children how they had to get up early in the morning every day to milk the goats (and cow?) and do their chores. Since we are homeschooling, they won’t have the option of telling their kids that they walked 10 miles to school every day uphill, in the snow, and barefoot. But this will be a good substitute. No doubt there will be many more stories my kids will be able to tell to their children someday. There’s a lot of story material around here. Some more violent than others. Like watching the dog chase the ducks around the pond and actually catching one. You know, stuff like that. I can’t wait to hear what they come up with.

No doubt there are more benefits that having animals is blessing my children with. I just can’t think of more right now.

Next time: self-sufficiency.

Why We Raise So Many Animals: Part 3

Here’s something that is getting lost in today’s "Wal-Mart-World": the connection between the animal and the mouth. Let me clarify this. Ask any 3-year-old where his food comes from. Does milk come from a cow (or goat!), or does it come already jugged from the refrigerator case at the grocery store? Are chicken legs an actual chicken’s legs, or do they just come vacuum packed from the meat case? How do this milk and these chicken legs get from the animals to our mouths? In the case of meat, an animal must be slaughtered.

I know that seems like common sense, but the way we buy our meat nowadays - is this a connection that we make every time we pick up a package of meat at the store? Blood has literally been shed so that we could eat our dinner. Gross, but it is reality. Blood shed so that we can be sustained….I suspect that this physical aspect of our lives has a spiritual application. I think that when we get so far removed from the origins of our food, it is a sort of sanitizing that bit by bit removes our empathy from the reality of the cross.

I realize that sounds a little extreme, but consider this: what was the purpose in God giving us meat to eat? After the flood, God was preparing to establish His covenant with Noah to never flood the earth again. God said

“Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.“ (Genesis 9:3-4)

So the blood had to be completely drained from the animal before it was consumed. My thoughts are that perhaps God gave us meat to eat as a metaphor for the life sustaining power of Jesus’ blood, shed so that we might live. I don’t know if this “theory” of mine can be proven through scripture, but doesn’t it sound like something God would do?

I’m not saying that we should preside over each and every butchering for every bite of meat we ever eat, but what I am saying is this: there is value in being closer to the point of food production than the sanitized, blood-free supermarket.

Next time I will talk about the benefits for children when their family raises livestock.

Why We Raise So Many Animals: Part 2

Well, here I am with part 2 of my series on why we have so many farm animals.

There are many reasons for raising your own food. The most important reason, in our opinion, is that you know exactly what you are getting, which is not the case when you buy from the store. Even the basics (milk, eggs, bread, meat) are not always exactly what you think you’re getting. When you raise your own, this is not an issue. You know what you feed them, and you know the way your animals have been treated. In our case, we try to raise our animals as much on grass as we possibly can (except the dog and cats, of course). Research has shown that grass-fed animals give the most nutritious meat, eggs, and milk. So there are health benefits in doing it yourself. This is the main reason we started getting all of these animals. Websites we found helpful in researching nutritional issues are Dr. Mercola’s Blog, and The Weston Price Foundation.

Here are just a few ways that home-grown, grass-fed animal foods are more healthful than store-bought varieties:

• Higher Omega 3 fatty acids (as opposed to Omega 6 fatty acids, which most Americans tend to get too much of. These fats are actually good for you. Many “supermarket” fats are not good for you.)

• Raw milk is much more healthful than pasteurized (cooked) milk.

• No antibiotics, chemicals or growth hormones added to home-grown meat.

• We know it is not irradiated.

• We know the animals have not been fed genetically modified anything.

Some of these foods can be bought (for a high price) in health food stores, but some cannot. For example, it is actually illegal to sell raw milk in our state. We believe that raw milk is so important that we have our own dairy goats. Also, it is impossible to know for sure if what a store’s products’ labels say are true. Many companies which claim to be “organic” are not necessarily as organic as they should be.

Next time I will talk about another reason we “do farm stuff”: the animal-food connection.

Goat Lady Speaks: Why We Raise So Many Animals, Part One

We now possess 3 goats, 1 lamb, 7 hens, 12 chicks (future hens), 4 guineas, 4 pekin ducklings, 13 muscovy ducklings, 1 dog, and 2 cats. It’s great fun having all of these animals around. I enjoy my time doing chores in the morning, even though they take more of my time than I would like. The important thing is that we have fresh milk and fresh eggs every day. This fall we will have home-grown lamb chops, and this summer we will enjoy the outdoors in the evenings with hopefully fewer mosquitoes pestering us as we walk around the pond. Live is really good.

Some people see this little experiment in home-grown food raising as a lot of work for something that you could get for $2.50/gallon (or whatever milk costs nowadays - I wouldn’t know), or a dollar a dozen (for eggs) at Super Wal-Mart. I’ll go out on a limb and say that cost is highly irrelevant to the food we eat. Not completely irrelevant, because obviously we cannot spend 100% of our income on food, just highly irrelevant to a reasonable extent. There is a value beyond cost in raising your own food. This applies to gardening as well, naturally; however, we were unable to have a garden this year, so that is why I am talking about animals.

I'm starting a little series here on my blog about why we are doing this farm stuff. I hope you enjoy it. More to come...