Life

I just went down to give the chicks - destined to be butchered in a few short months - some water.

I feel so compromised. I'm enjoying looking after the animals here more than any other part - the pigs are friendly, fun, interesting animals to be around, and the hens are always entertaining. While I don't find the chicks quite as cute as my fellow intern, I'm really enjoying seeing them grow. They are so different now than a week ago. They really do look like beautiful fluffy chicks, but you can see the chicken-ness of them too - the way they drink, the way they eat...

We were planting out onions grown from seed today. That was fine, though it tends to make my back ache because of all the bending over. Onions don't have much in the way of roots at this age and size, being just a single green stem-leaf going down, often as a single root. Fiddly to plant. And of course they are alive, living things in my care. But... it's just not the same as scratching a pig and seeing it enjoy the attention, seeing it be curious as you come over, seeing it hoover up plants in a new enclosure...

But of course - of course - raising animals involves harvesting them in the same way as plants are harvested. If you have annual plants, you kill them when you pull them from the ground in the same way as the meat chickens will be killed. If you have perennials, parts of the plant will be taken, excessive spreading will be stopped (as in the raspberry canes we cut back, or the strawberries we dug up), in the same way that you might remove a kid from a nanny goat to keep her producing milk.

Life leads to death; it is the one sensible outcome of it. Nothing else. I know this.

Maybe I just need to grow up and accept it. The funny thing is, I'm not afraid of doing the actual killing - I'm not that squeamish. It's just the fact that the 5 little pigs are destined to become bacon not lovely old-aged boars (well, they get more boorish as they grow, I guess!)... they feel a little bit like friends, like a pet. I keep needling Tony when he eats bacon - oh, what was this pig called? Not in spite, just to get a clearer understanding of how his mind works with this.

I can visualise me keeping a herd of goats and a flock of chickens a lot more readily than I can see me planting rows upon rows of onions. But how can I do that if I don't want to eat meat?

It's a conundrum.