On Friday I decided to check out the produce at the Natick Community Organic farm, less than three miles from my house. I’ve brought the boys there plenty of times to see the animals, but never bought produce. I was disappointed that they didn’t have golden beets, but picked up the chilis to make the ristra and realized that’s all I had time for anyway!
Will and Andrew love seeing the animals at the farm. There are bunnies, chickens, goats, a cow, pigs, turkeys and sheep. When I see their excitement and how much they love seeing the animals, my heart melts a little.
I just wish I could enjoy it, rather than enjoying only their enjoyment. I know those animals shouldn’t be in cages and behind fences.
I would rather see the bunnies hopping happily through our neighborhood than trapped in a caged area behind a sign that says “Bunnies, $25” which will lead them to a life of confinement and manhandling by someone’s kids.
But… the boys love visiting the animals, and it’s so close to home, and it’s an organic farm, and I want to buy some produce to preserve. So we were doing this.
Will really loves seeing the pigs, so we headed over.
Will remembered immediately that when we came in the spring, there was a mother there with her piglets. This time, the piglets were there, but no mother. “Where’s the mommy pig?” Will asked.
I didn’t see the pig.
What I did see was a sign for organically raised chicken & pork. Was that the fate of the mommy pig? Or maybe the mommy pig was happily lying around the corner in the shade somewhere, and that was the daddy pig. Or the cousin pig. Or some other pig. Maybe it WASN’T a pig that made my children laugh while it snorted around in the sunshine.
I decided not to ask.
I felt sick to my stomach. I have beautiful memories of my boys watching these piglets, and at some point, now or later, those animals are going to be killed so someone can eat them. Someone who cares enough to buy local, organic, meat… and maybe who would care enough to not eat animal products at all if they knew what I knew about how unhealthy, unnecessary, environmentally unfriendly and cruel they are.
I wanted to plaster posters for Forks Over Knives across the farm, and then I wanted to throw up and cry.
“I’m so weak,” I thought to myself. Then I realized that I wasn’t weak, I was aware. Desensitized is not strong. Ignorant is not strong. Apathetic is not strong. Denial is not strong. I used to be all of those things, and I traded them for educated, caring, accepting, and changing. Not weak.
It should upset me that the animals that delighted my young children will be killed and eaten by someone who will be less healthy for having eaten them.
I realize that my children wouldn’t have enjoyed seeing the pigs if the farm sold only vegetables, and perhaps those pigs would never have been born and lived at all. Animal sanctuaries don’t make a profit… unless they do it by turning themselves into zoos. (Hmm, slavery or genocide? Such great alternatives.)
Maybe I’d rather hear them shriek gleefully when we spot a bunny eating clover in the backyard, enjoy spotting baby loons on the lake, and keep an eye out for the deer that sometimes graze in my in-laws backyard. There were turkeys on our lawn just last week. My parents have raccoons and a beautiful red fox visit their yard. They even have a semi-tame chipmunk named “chip-chip”. I don’t need to bring Will and Andrew somewhere to see doomed animals in pens and cages in order for them to grow to love animals.
I’ll go to Land’s Sake where they sell flowers, instead.
It’s Monday… are you eating Meatless today?
“I don’t know… Will, I don’t know.”
