Number 16, Reprise

In honor of the Harvest Party, Stacy's first post on #16...

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June 13, 2010

On our way out to bring the horses in, we came across our neighbor, worming and tagging his new steers. He breeds most of his own, but these four he bought at the cattle auction---they are this year's calves, and one of them is completely wild. So we got to watch as he maneuvered them through the chute, gave them their shots, punched holes in their ears for the tags, and then let them out again, onto the knee-high grass.

The wild one gave some trouble, but Dale just stood back and looked until he figured out how to get it done. I know the feeling in his head, as he turned the puzzle pieces this way and that, taking his time, until he figured out how to get the wild one by himself in the chute. We've been doing a lot of this kind of physical problem-solving lately. Again and again, we learn that sometimes you just have to step back and think about it until it all clicks, and you see what to do.

Dale had brought one of his older steers in with these young ones, because 'he's a particularly docile and pleasant steer'. This is Number 16. Now, I've had my eye on 16 ever since we moved in, because I thought, 'Now THAT is a good-looking steer'. I have, apparently, learned to judge steers from Bill and Carl, because Dale also thinks he's a particularly good-looking steer. This is all so familiar to me, what he's doing over there. I recognize it. It's comforting to see someone farm the way I remember it from when I was small. I have a level of knowledge about this that goes down into my toes, because I learned it hanging around the barn when I was too small to know better than to eat raw soybeans.

So then, we were leaning over the fence, talking to Dale and Genevieve, and I got my order in for 1/2, possibly a whole beef, come fall butchering time. (A couple of friends have said they want to go in on it with us, so it's not as crazy as it sounds!) Dale raises his beef on pasture, without hormones, all the way to five weeks before butchering. Then he feeds them grain for a short time to tenderize them. Then he has the butcher come, right there, on his property, so the steers don't get scared or dragged or beaten. They never have time to panic or get upset. They just get quickly and efficiently killed and butchered into little packages for the freezer. Our neighbors make an event of it, betting on weights with lots of friends who come around to help or heckle, as the case may be.

This probably sounds weird, but I'm ok with watching my food grow up, then watching it be killed, and watching it be put in freezer packages---I know number 16 is living a good steer life, safe from injury, accident and predators. He is cared for and husbanded. I know Dale knows him personally, as an individual. That matters to me.

And I also know that my hamburger will come from one healthy animal, instead of thousands killed all on the same day in one of America's 17 (!!!!!) slaughterhouses, ground together with meat from Mexico, Argentina and New Zealand. It's a price I'm willing to pay for my food, to watch it grow, to learn to know it, to learn it's habits and it's personality. And in the end, to make it part of me. Oh, yeah, and to help my neighbor live the life he loves, which reminds me so strongly of the life someone I love has led.

It doesn't get any more local than this. I could be vegetarian instead, and I leaned that way for a while, when I first started learning about our 'modern' food system, and felt powerless to make any changes. But I don't think that meat is the problem. Dale and his cattle are not the problem. My flock of laying hens is not the problem. Factory farms are the problem, whether they are growing beef or tomatoes. There are worse things in the world than death, and many of them can be found at feedlots, slaughterhouses and factory farms.

So I'll buy number 16. And every time I have beef, I'll think of his black coat glistening in the sun, and his contented munching on grass up to his belly, and his chasing the labrador, who gets just a little too close sometimes. And I'll be a little thoughtful, but not upset. Because I value the life my neighbor and Bill and Carl choose to live. My time on the farm when I was a kid taught me that there's value in living a good life, and there's value in sacrifice. Sometimes the sacrifice comes in the middle, as it does for most people. And sometimes it comes at the end, as it does for some people, (soldiers especially come to mind), and all of our food animals. Sacrifice comes. And there is worse to make of it than a plate of ribs shared with friends for Derby Day. Or a hamburger cookout with family on the Fourth of July. Or even just a good home-cooked meal after a hard day of putting up fence in the rain and the wind and the cold---fence to protect these steers or their kin.

Number 16. Now THAT's a good-looking steer.