Thank you so much, Olivie!

Another long post. This has been a difficult week. Lyme disease took me for an unpleasant ride, with a couple of days where I felt sick, but now am feeling much better. And then there was Olive. I wrote about her throughout the week, and am copying here some excerpts I want to share:

Today (Thursday), we killed Olive, our 2 year old heifer cow, and brought her to the butcher. It was fast, and she didn't know it was coming. Ed (who does not eat meat) and Tom, our friend, shot her in the head while she was contentedly eating her treats out in the pasture. Then Ed brought her to the butcher. I was the one who got her the treats, and got her into the stanchion out in the pasture, where she was eating when they killed her. She trusted me the most. We had done this many times before, always me giving her treats in the stanchion, but nothing bad ever happened. I feel sick about it even though I knew it was coming for some time. We cannot have milk without having the cows give birth each year, and we cannot have the herd go up past a certain number of animals that our land can support. So even though none of us eats beef, if we want to eat milk and cheese, we have to slaughter some of the animals, or sell them to someone else, who will also eventually slaughter. We chose to give them the best possible life right here on our farm until the very last day, and not send them in to slaughter, away from their family and from the place they know and feel comfortable in. I think Olive lived happily until the instant that bullet hit her, but still, it feels so hard, and I really feel like I betrayed her. I have never felt this way before, not even close with the chickens. Olive was the first calf born on our farm, and I’ve seen her every day of her life. I’ve been vegetarian for over 10 years, and throughout that time I did not realize, not until now that we have our own cows, that if you drink milk or eat any dairy products, that involves killing animals in order to get that milk

I tried to have a little ceremony for her, to thank her. I did it a couple of days ago, when she was still alive, and again today after she was dead.

What feels really weird, like I said before, is that we don't even eat red meat. But we do drink a lot of milk and eat cheese, and we want to keep that in our diet, especially for the kids. And since butchering Olive was part of getting our milk, now I’ll have to learn how to cook red meat.

I must say, it’s a lot easier buying milk and meat at the store, that's for sure.

A few days after the kill, Saturday, it is still very difficult with Olive. I went to the butcher to talk about how he's going to cut her up. Right now she's hanging in his cooler in order to age the meat a few days. I got her tail and took it home with me. I think I’ll make soup with it. I was talking to her tail in the car. I told her I loved her. I never spoke to my food like this before, never felt so connected, in such a painful way.

It's so strange, the disconnect: on one hand it feels so wrong and sickening, to take a life, especially one you've nurtured and been close with. But on the other hand, eating meat or dairy products, milk, cheese, yoghurt, does not feel nearly that bad even if you're against killing animals, which I was for over 10 years of being vegetarian. I did not realize back then that being vegetarian still very much involved slaughtering animals, just not direct meat consumption.

As I see it right now, we, and I, need to acknowledge the lives that are taken in order to feed us. We need to give thanks and respect to them, and come to terms with the fact that lives are taken in order to sustain our own. In retrospect, I think that as a vegetarian I should have spend more energy and time campaigning for the rights and humane treatment of animals while they're alive, instead of saying no meat, and leaving it at that. I suggest that we all do that. I don't know if we as humans, can survive without taking the lives of animals, directly or indirectly, and even if we can, I don’t know what the environmental and health implications of that scenario would be. But I do know that it’s in our power to demand that the animals raised to feed us be treated a lot better when they're alive than they currently are. What does that mean? It means let them live in an environment as close to their natural environment as possible. For cows, it means no feedlots, instead let them live on pasture, and treat them humanely, don’t yell or kick or drag them. Take the time to know then, and treat them according to their nature. Temple Grandin did amazing work on the humane treatment of animals raised for slaughter and milk production. She is an engineer, and very brilliant animal advocate who spent years researching and designing animal facilities.

So, after all these abstract thoughts and ideas, I still feel sick and grieving when I think of Olive.

The kids took it really hard too. They cried a lot, and Sena got sick for a day. Aiyana was very mad at us and held us responsible for killing Olive, which of course we are. Now they're feeling a bit better. I tried to console them, and let them know that I am hurting too, even though I am responsible for her death. I tried to explain that this is the full circle of life, even though I am having difficulty with that myself. Sena is adamant that if we sell any of Olive’s meat (we’re considering this, since we don’t even have enough freezer space for her, plus, like I said, it would take our family years to go through her meat at our rate of meat consumption), she is adamant that we only sell her to people who respect her and will not waste any of her. I feel that we must honor that demand. It is only right.

Here's Olive as a calf in 2014, standing next to her mama, when our herd was just Jasmine, Opal and Olive.

And in this picture, which was taken last month, the herd is numbering 7 now, and Olive is the brown cow without the halter, still standing close to her mama, Opal.

Peace