Rota-Tiller
My husband decided that the recent stock market plunge was an optimum occasion to use the knowledge of farm animals he gained by growing up on a pig farm, and to begin our conversion from "Haus Shirefeld" to "Shirefeld Farm." So we cashed in on what was left of one family savings fund, and, as my husband put it, "sold our stock to invest in livestock." With the money, we bought baby chicks, ducks, and a formidible two-hundred-pound pig, whose ultimate destination will be our deep freezer.Suburban Girl that I am, I was mostly unaquainted with live pigs (though I am very familiar with my favorite food, sausage), and I was amazed when the first thing our hog did once he came out of the livestock trailer and into his pen was to start rooting up the ground with vigor. Within 48 hours, he had reduced his 16-x16ft grass pen to nicely-tilled soil. Since we had struggled to rotatill a garden on the other side of the property earlier, our kids were quite impressed, and named him "Mr. Tiller."
It didn't take long for my husband to plot out a new, larger garden near Mr. Tiller's pen, and last week, we moved him to a new grassy spot, and he joyously began to till again. I saw echoes of Eden in his energetic activity: of the time when beasts and unfallen man worked together in harmony. It was yet another reminder not to take the food we need to live for granted: being nose-to-snout with the animal we will one day eat forces us to realize we live at the cost of a life-sacrifice, whether that life comes from a farm factory far away, or from our back yard.
May we always be truly grateful.
Comments
If I had a pig I would try to do this, but I would end up with an entire yard of churned up dirt, most likely :)
Great post for the Easter-time.. I love that you have a moral for each of your posts. ...Yes, let's be truly grateful.
Omy goodness. How lucky you are to have a rota tiller. and chicks! great for waking up in the morning when they get bigger.
love from France
have a wander-filled and artful Easter Liturgy
and love to you (and to yours of course).
ps: I saw your book in a christian bookstore in Paris. in the sixth. hooray! hooray for culture of life in Paris.
Laurence (from France) Dubois
As you said, it will be a good lesson for them in how God provides. Good for you guys that you took a leap of faith to do this.
Christy S.
Charge the neighborhood kids to feed the pig.
Maybe you could train him to find truffles as well...
When I was a girl my Uncle raised rabbits for 4H. One Saturday afternoon my grandfather got a telephone call. I was sent to the back yard to get Grandpa for the phone and just when I walk up to tell him about the call he lops off the head of a rabbit. That poor rabbit ran around without his head for a long time. Now I have hand fed each of these rabbits and I was young and did not know they were food. That night grandpa tried to tell me it was chicken. I knew it was not chicken and I could not would not eat it.
Yes, all things God gave us for food. I know, but if I know the animal I can not eat it anymore than I could eat my dog.
Blessings to you. Like I said, I am not saying you should not eat your pig. That is why you brought him. I am just saying I could not do it.
But on the other hand, I think it will be somewhat penitential to eat Mr. Tiller, a pig we saw and knew as opposed to an anonymous sow killed on a factory farm. It might perhaps begin to cure us of the carelessness we moderns have towards meat: an indifference to what we shovel into our own mouths. We like to think that we slip through life like anonymous shadows, harming no one, eradicating nothing. But it's an illusion. We all live at the cost of a life-sacrifice, and it could be that if we see that sacrifice in a more concrete form, we will be a little more thankful, a little more thoughtful, and a little more careful about what we do with our life that was bought at the price of an animal's life.
Ah, how eloquent I can be. We'll see how we fare with the next pig, who will be younger and smaller, and probably not as intimidating as Mr. Tiller.