Firstly, I would like to apologize for not having written a blog post or updated anything for awhile. I have been fighting some serious health stuff, and with that on top of Thanksgiving preparations, it's all been a bit much lately. My plans are to get to the point of a weekly update, but we'll see how my health goes.
I have been involved in some heated conversations on Twitter lately about veganism and would like to explain my thinking a bit more thoroughly. Veganism isn't just about not eating animal products of any kind, for what it's worth, but instead a total lifestyle change focused on causing as little harm to all life as possible, and I honor those who can do it. I'm disabled, and I have a lot of health issues, at least some of which seem to stem from having weird genes. This means that what works for so many people, either in diet changes or medication, doesn't work for me. This also means that I don't tend to recommend everyone do what I have to do to manage my health because it definitely is a more personal set of behaviors and choices after years of trying things only to find they don't work. With my combination of allergies and health issues these days, I eat some meats, some forms of dairy (preferring sheep's milk when possible) in small amounts, and eggs. My husband and I have been talking more and more about the monetary costs of meat as well as the environmental costs of meat, and we are looking for ways to raise or hunt our own as well as cut down on consumption but not to a point where it negatively impacts my health. When I was much younger, I developed massive pain, and all the doctors agreed that it was endometriosis and that I had to give up meat, possibly dairy, too, in order to manage my pain. So, I did. I was ovo-vegetarian for ten years, and while it helped with my pain (that was due to chronic appendicitis, not endometriosis at that time) and allergy load, it caused other health problems that no one knew what to do about. I tried various variations of vegetarianism, but honestly, I didn't get better until after I reintroduced meat into my diet. My doctors didn't understand it, I didn't understand it, but the lab numbers didn't lie. The theory at the time was that, for whatever reason, my body wasn't processing things quite right. That theory has been the most consistently correct one ever since, as we've found that my body doesn't process medications the way they're designed to be metabolized, not to mention the weird allergies that have shown up here later in life. All of that to say, I respect those who choose to be vegetarian or vegan, and I honor that they are doing what is best for them and their lives as well as the global environment. I wish more people would choose that path, as we know that the costs of eating meat, in terms of personal as well as global costs, are just too high. For some of us, though, we cannot stop eating meat and other animal products if we want to live or be functional. There are many disabilities/health conditions/diseases that make going vegan an impossible thing, and that needs to be respected, too. On our mini urban farm, we raise ducks and grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Our ducks are rescues, starting with our first duck, Peep (the white Pekin drake). The ducks joined our mini farm last spring in an effort to try to cut down on the huge numbers of slugs in our garden. They eat the pests that cut down on our garden yields, we feed them from that garden as well as a supplemental feed to make sure they are healthy, they (well, just Petunia so far) lay eggs that we gather and eat, and we make sure they are safe from predators and have fresh water aplenty. It's a symbiotic relationship, and we plan on them living a long time. While we have been thinking of getting more ducklings in the spring to raise as meat ducks and help with the worst time for pests in the garden, we have not moved forward with those plans just yet, in large part due to zoning laws as well as concerns about whether or not I could handle the extra work. The kids and my husband hunt, and traditionally, we have fished as well. No one has gotten a deer yet this year, though they have tried, but in the event that they do, we will butcher it as a family and use every bit as respectfully as we can. We aren't the "take the horns or head for a trophy and leave the rest" hunters, and those people frankly sicken me. Hunters are to respect all of the life in the area they hunt in, and we are to honor those we kill by thanking them for giving us what we need to eat and then making sure nothing is wasted. Same with fishing. This spring, we plan on changing our pool over to a natural aquaponics pool, stocking it with local fish as well as plants. Yes, if all goes to plan, we will be harvesting both the plants and fish for food for our family, and if we have enough, we will sell some locally as well. The use of chlorine and other chemicals to keep the pool the way it's supposedly supposed to be has become more and more disturbing to my husband and me, especially given how many frogs live in and around the pool, and by eliminating the use of those chemicals, we hope to provide local wildlife with a safe water source and our family with another sustainable food source. What we are working hard to reduce is our consumption of factory farmed meats, dairy products, and non-local plant foods. To be honest, the money situation makes this complicated, but we are working on putting the funds together to buy meat from local small farms that raise their animals ethically and humanely. The costs are much higher, but the quality is better, and it's better for the local environment. We definitely want to support local small farms instead of the massive factory farms that damage everything around them, from the animals to the workers to our lakes and waterways to nearby lands. In our opinion, factory farms need to be eliminated even though that means overall prices will rise. Monoculture farming, especially as it is done now, also needs to be completely changed, and it is our opinion that local, small farms using organic, sustainable practices, especially urban and suburban farms, need to be given priority status. It is very possible to feed our population as it is now with smaller farms using permaculture practices, but that won't happen until we break the big ag businesses and monopolies. Humans have, throughout history, generally been omnivores. We domesticated some wild animals millennia ago, in part for meat, but in all reality, most of the animals were not eaten on a regular basis. The British Christmas goose tradition, for example, was just that: one goose was slaughtered for the Christmas feast on the small farm, but most farms had more than one goose. The modern practice of some farms to slaughter all their birds in the fall is a recent one. Most farms kept most of their animals all through the year, only slaughtering what they needed and only the animals they could afford to lose. Meat sources were diverse depending on the local environment, but most people did not get meat every day or even necessarily every week. Farmed animals were supplemented by local fish and wildlife, if that was allowed, and even things like cheese took a lot of time and resources to make even a small amount. The modern diet of meat and/or animal products in every meal is a very recent thing and definitely a more American thing. Most humans historically couldn't afford to eat that much meat that often and instead treated meat as a special thing to have once a week or once in awhile and more as a condiment than as the main focus. We know now due to overwhelming evidence that putting such a huge focus on meat in our diets isn't healthy for us overall, and it definitely has far too high a cost for our environment. It's time to go back to time-honored practices when it comes to diet and lifestyles. In general, we all need to cut down or eliminate our consumption of animal products, and we need more small farms that use sustainable, organic practices. In his book, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer makes a strong case for going back to smaller, sustainable farms but more especially cutting way back on meat consumption or cutting it out entirely. One idea he has is to make meat a part of just one meal a day, perhaps dinner. In reading the book for the community read this year, my husband and I have been talking about how this probably would work for my health issues and also be far more sustainable for our family and the environment. There are still details to work out (especially with a teen on the high school swim team eating enough for another 2-3 people), but we feel this is for the best for all of us. We are working toward growing, raising, foraging, hunting, and fishing for what we need and cutting way down on our consumption of anything from factory farms or imported from far away. While I understand that, for many, being vegan is more about ethics, morals, or faith, for us it isn't possible due to health problems. We respect and honor those who chose to refuse to use animals at all, and we hope that others can respect our way of life and our choices as well.
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CarinaI'm a 40s something disabled mom living the life on our small urban farm. Archives
April 2022
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