While we were eating dinner last night, we were discussing our plans for the farm with the kids. We were talking about chickens, and choosing names for them (Bob the chicken?), and how we will have to feed them everyday. We then moved on to the pigs (Country Boy is thinking of getting a couple). Again, the girls were starting to think of names for them; Hannah wanted to name one Wilbur after the pig in Charlotte’s Web. The question was then asked “what are pigs for?”
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| Image: Graphics Fairy |
It’s a good question and not one with an easy answer. Chickens provide eggs, sheep provide wool (on our farm at least), cows provide milk. What do pigs do? “Well sweet heart, pigs provide meat.”
“How do pigs provide meat?”
(Oh boy, this gets harder) “Pigs are grown specially to make meat. When they are big enough, they are killed and used for meat.”
Hannah is devastated and my heart is breaking as I see a piece of her innocence fall away. She crawls into my lap, and cuddled me hard. In some ways I wish we could have fobbed off her questions, but Hannah is too smart for that; she knows when the answer she is getting isn’t the whole truth, so we tried to give her the essential information, but avoid the detail. There is no way to make her feel better about this truth.
The Country Boy grew up knowing where meat comes from and the realities of food production; I imagine most kids who live on a farm just know where meat etc comes from.
I grew up in the city and could pretend that meat comes from supermarkets. Even studying food science at university, I was squeamish about some of the less attractive aspects of food production. I confess that, beyond checking the cut and quality of the meat, I do not think too much about it’s origin.
There are going to be so many good things about living in the country, and I know that we have to take the bad with the good. I know too, that Hannah (and Meg, and Toby) will have to face many of these types of realities at some stage, whether we live on the farm or not. I know that I cannot protect them from the unpleasant aspects of life.
But today, I am a little bit sad, that my little girl has had to face the first of many hard lessons about the rhythms of life.
Have you had to have similar conversations? What have you said?
We have often wondered if Eleanor will choose to be a vego in her future, because she finds it difficult to think about the killing of animals for food. As for pigs, I always thought they were really kept as garbage disposal units!