Circle M Farm

This past week we said goodbye to Nappy and August – two beautiful year-old ram lambs, part of the first set of babies born here at Circle M Farm. I gathered each up in my arms, small as they still were, said goodbye and thank you, blessed them with a prayer for peace and loaded them into a white wooden crate in the back of our pickup headed to the butcher.

They were the first of “our” babies that I chose to harvest, and though the choice was one that I intended to make since that first group of lambs and kids were born, I felt quite sober when the time came to actually pick them up and send them off. I would have liked to participate in some kind of ancestral ritual or had a liturgical prayer to recite, as a way to help me gracefully and gratefully cross the bridge from caretaker to consumer. The role of shepherd is an intimate and encompassing one, involving both seasonally planned tasks and daily improvisations based on careful study of both flock and fields. Good shepherding requires a certain intuitive connection to the animals and the decision to slaughter should be based on that connection in the context of the balance and health of the homestead as a whole. I find that naming the animals in one’s care, even those set aside for slaughter from birth, makes intuitive sense in such a setting and helps somewhat to ease the burden of ending their lives.

When friends learn that I have names for the animals we harvest for meat, the initial reaction is generally surprise. My vet, who I seldom call upon but respect immensely, says that her family names pets like horses, dogs and show animals, but keeps meat animals separate and unnamed. I can see how this might make matters easier for small children. My husband, on the other hand, raised a few hogs as a child and remembers asking his mother at breakfast, “Is the bacon Princess or Queenie, Mom?” As an urban girl, I used to find that story, told repeated by Shannon to great effect amongst our Chicago friends, just horrifying. Now, I see a lot of health, and love really, in that approach to keeping domesticated animals.

Animals, like the rest of us, need to have a purpose. I’ve concluded that nourishing people is a noble purpose, and I have no qualms about raising animals to fulfill that destiny. Would that we all felt confident we served such a worthwhile cause! But I also feel that animals, like the rest of us, deserve to be recognized and respected as unique precious creatures – Named. Crazy? Maybe I am, but I think that a farmer who is capable of naming all of his animals is one who will likely take appropriate, compassionate and empathetic care of them throughout their life, however long it may be. I want to be a farmer like that. Though it’s unlikely on twenty acres, I may someday reach the point where I have too many to name, but I nevertheless hope to keep the close contact and knowing that naming implies.

Naming the animals in his care is among the first recorded tasks God brings to Adam in the garden. Whether or not you choose to take the Bible literally, I think it’s tough to ignore the sentiments embedded in a document so ancient and so woven into the cultures of a vast majority. Part of being human is to both rule over and empathetically recognize the uniqueness of animals. While the Genesis account leaves some doubt as to whether God intended man to eat flesh, there is no ambiguity that God brought animals to man and entrusted man to name them. In a metaphorical sense, I think the story illustrates man’s God-given responsibility to respect each animal as a precious fellow created being. This responsibility underlies Kosher laws providing for humane slaughter of different species. If this responsibility, this connectedness to one’s animals, is part of what we’re meant to carry as humans, our current system of factory farming and remote feeding could be a threat to our very humanity.

I do love my animals, all of them, in the sense that I find joy in seeing them healthy, happy and thriving. I could contemplate a chubby lamb, nibbling around in fresh pasture, all afternoon long. But tonight I caught up two roosters who will go under the axe in the morning. These don’t have names, and I feel less connected with their lives and less at peace with bringing their deaths. Why didn’t they get named? I’m not sure. It’s possible they came to me at a time when I was busy or when I was receiving a number of chickens at once. Within their breed, chickens look pretty much the same, and I’ve been naming them less. Still, I certainly recognize these particular roosters enough to have chosen them for slaughter. One has been grazing the pea flowers in my garden. The other lost toes to frostbite over the winter. My hens are showing signs of having too many suitors, and so these are my best choices to reduce the rooster pressure on the flock. I intended to butcher roosters last fall, but found them too beautiful to give up, and now the laying hens are suffering bare patches and bloody heads from where the roosters grab them in their spring frenzy of libido. Loving my farm and tending my Eden means losing the roosters.

Loving my farm also means I’m already looking at my flock and evaluating the spring lambs in terms of which will be the best to keep for wool and which will go in the freezer come October. Last fall I had no lambs big enough to be butchered, so I acquired some new rams that would increase the size and growth rate of this spring’s babies. They did their job, and now I’ve got Opal and Pearl, two gorgeous fat ewe lambs with nice fleeces, and the strapping ram twins Frankie and Johnny. I’m enjoying them in the field and I’ll enjoy them in the freezer, too, if that’s where they end up. Either way, they’ll be loved, appreciated and well-cared-for their whole lives long and I’ll have the privilege and responsibility of making sure that happens.