Why We Shouldn’t Celebrate the Connection Between Farming and Eating
I visited the beautiful Blue Hill Farm at Stone Barns restaurant the other day with my family for my sister’s birthday for a picnic.
I have been to this restaurant once before as a vegetarian. It was maybe the most amazing dinner I’d ever had.
The food was so creative and whimisically magical.
For example, this was an appetizer.
The restaurant and grounds were an old Rockefeller house that has been converted into a farm and restaurant.
However I knew this farm was not a sanctuary. I knew they had animals there which they killed.
As we drove up and I saw a cow grazing in a fenced-in field…
And I saw a sign that said something like Welcome to Blue Hill at Stone Farms or something…
I honestly had a vision of this:
The entrance to a concentration camp.
Funny. I used to love farms.
I wikipediaed and found this famous sign means “Labor Makes You Free” and was the sign at the entrance to a number of concentration camps most notably Auschwitz. I noted this to my family and they laughed, not having Seen The Ghosts yet (read my post from yesterday about what it means to see the ghosts)
Labor Makes You Free…. what a chilling and haunting statement. Brilliant really, in how twisted it is.
At the farm, I did some investigating. I read their plaques and their descriptions about the philosophy of the farm.
At first glance their philosophy of celebrating “year round farm to table agriculture” and promoting the “connection between farming and eating” sounds lovely, doesn’t it.
I’m sure back in the day I would have skimmed over this assuming I loved the message. After all, it was on a farm! There are animals! Nature!
In fact, my junior year in high school I even spent a semester ON A FARM exactly like this one that had this same mission.
A working farm. Everything they ate came from the farm. Including the turkeys I was in charge of taking care of. The pigs, the cows, the chickens, who all added such beauty to the farm, were all raised for meat. They sent them away to slaughter when we were all away on our “solo”, a 3 day spiritual journey we spent alone camping in the woods. How convenient.
The Mountain School, where I did a semester program my junior year
Luckily, now my thinking has changed.
I see things more clearly now.
It is messed up to celebrate and promote the connection between farming and eating….
Ok fine, I am all for celebrating the connection between plants and eating.
But animals are not plants.
We walked around the grounds and saw the pigs.
They make it seem like the animals have a wonderful life. I read a plaque saying that the pigs are “raised in the woods until they are 4 months old when they are brought back onto the farm for finishing, “farm speak” for fattening.”
I saw the pigs in the woods…they were raised in a small electric fenced wired enclosure in the woods. Though they were raised “in the woods” so to speak, they did not have free reign of the woods.
A far cry from The Pig Preserve that I learned about through Anita Krajnc’s pig sanctuary tour, where they allow pigs free reign of a large piece of rural undeveloped property they bought.
As I walked through the beautiful, gorgeous trails in the woods around the estate, I was disturbed and quiet thinking of the pigs who would have loved to root around this forest, freely.
We approached a pond, and there were two ducks with a little gosling. I said out loud to my sisters how unfair it was that these little guys were free, while the pigs were not. Why love one, but eat the other, the signs say. My sisters all laughed.
Even to myself my views seem to have become a bit extreme. Comparing a farm to a concentration camp?
I think the connection though that I have made recently and that my friends and family have not made though is this:
I saw a slaughter. I saw the whole thing happen.
Even if the pigs do have a relatively nice life in their enclosure in the woods, which reminded me of a small cage at a zoo, when the day comes when they get slaughtered…they will die a tragic death.
I watch 48 hours all the time. Can’t stop watching it. It’s always about murders. It is always haunting. That’s how all pigs die!
Every animal I saw in a fenced off enclosure…I felt bad that I was free and they weren’t. They don’t deserve this. 4 month old pigs don’t deserve this kind of life.
My sisters said “they have a great life here!”
So what? If your whole life is a lie, because you are raised as a slave to be murdered by someone one day…
It reminds me of the book Never Let Me Go, which I have never read but I know is about a school of kids raised to be organ donors for their clones in the outside world when they reach 18.
Messed up! But this is exactly what we do to animals.
The bookstore had all these cookbooks glorifying butchery.
Think about the word people!
Have you ever heard about The Butcher of Auschwitz? Also known as the Angel of Death.
another butcher played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s list. I heard that one survivor who was invited to the set of Schindler’s List started shaking unctrollably when she saw him because he looked so much like the real guy.
Why do we celebrate books called like, Butcher?
I think Anita Krajnc is totally right…
Do you want to See The Ghosts?
You need to bear witness. Watch slaughterhouse transport and footage…check out Toronto Pig Save’s youtube channel.
And is it any better if they are butchered with a knife on a beautiful farm with an amazing restaurant like Blue Hill? No.
Although Blue Hill thinks it is.
Don’t be tricked by the whole LOCAL organic thing.
So it was locally murdered. Who cares. So it was fed organic vegan food. Who cares.
The fact is they are not free. They do not have the rights to their own life. They are slaughtered as babies. And they FEEL and SEE it coming. Then they are murdered.
Intense, no?
What do you guys think? Are you on board or are you more moderate?
