Jan 11
We shot and killed the two pigs on Saturday morning.

I held Benji up over the wall, so that he could say goodbye, and we thanked the pigs, and told them that we had enjoyed taking care of them. Then Benji went and stood out of sight while Rich shot the first pig, and I went into the sty and blocked the other pig inside its shed with a metal hurdle, to wait its turn. Even though it was dead, the first pig thrashed wildly, like a chicken without its head, until it had worked its way under the tractor. Rich finally got a loop of rope around its foot, attached the other end to the tractor lever and hoisted it unceremoniously up into the air by its hind legs, where he cut its throat and let it bleed out.
I watched, and helped when needed. The first year on the farm, I was carefully absent for the pig killing. The second year, I was here, but digging busily in the garden. This year, I was present for the whole process, and I realized something.
I realized that for me, the only great sin is not caring. It’s only a failure to love that will linger as a black mark. Callousness, and disregard for life – these are the destroyers. For me, buying a pack of bacon from a shop in a state of denial can be a sign of that apathy. When I’m willing to eat, and yet unwilling to think of where the meat came from, I am relying on my apathy to make my meal possible. And feeding myself with disregard for life is like stuffing myself with deadness.
But there is no callousness in the process that we go through here on the farm. No apathy. When you feed pigs everyday, and give them fresh straw to sleep in, and then thank them and kill them and put your hands on them to turn them into food, there is no distance. You are passionately connected. Every nerve of yours, connected with every nerve of theirs. We feed the pigs, and the pigs feed us. Nothing could be more intimate.
“So, mum,” five-year-old Benji said to me, squatting companionable against the wall, and patting the ground next to him, inviting me to sit down while Rich washed the hanging pig down with the pressure washer. “Let’s talk again about the – what did you call it? Oh yeah, the circle of life.”
Later, Rich had the idea that we could shave the hanging pig with clippers. Despite my misgivings, I went into the house and got the hair clippers that I use to cut his hair, and Benji’s and we used them on the dead pig. It worked a treat, shaving the bristles off neatly so that Rich could come behind me and scorch off the stubble with his blow torch. I felt exactly like Sweeney Todd. But I think I will now reserve these clippers for the pigs, and treat ourselves to new one for the humans. Seems fair enough…
Looking down at the second pig, who looked back at me, about to be shot, I realized something else.
It’s about change.
I’ve come to believe that the whole lot – life, the universe and everything – is just a lot of energy changing from form to form. This energy is pig-formed at the moment – when it turns into food, and I take in the food, the energy will be me-formed. And in the end, that form too will vanish. Dancing from one form to another.
And as farmers, we have our hands on those changes. We are present at the cusp of one thing turning into another. Life, into death, at this very moment. And we are present at the beginning of life – the breeding of the goats, the birthing of the lambs, the planting of the seeds. The magic is in the transitions. We are those lucky ones who are privileged to preside over the change points, where one thing becomes another.
It’s the same with making our own food – there are all these magical transformations. The point where goat’s milk magically solidifies into curds, for cheese. The point where the living yeast makes the flour turn into bread. The point where the bones and water and vegetables magically become stew. The point where the seed becomes the tomato plant. It’s about transformation – the pigs go from live to dead, and then into sausage. Magic, dramatic points of change.
There is no change in the food that I buy from the shop, wrapped in plastic. It sits in an eternal twilight, mummified, until it finally, gingerly, goes a little mushy and I throw it away. Like living wrapped in plastic, in a plastic house, working in a plastic cubicle. I remember living like that. Nothing much ever changed. People in that world seem to want to stay the same, as well. To stay forever young – like the perpetually shrink-wrapped food on the grocery shelves. Lurking in a state of stale semi-hibernation.
But for me, it’s putting my hands on the points of transformation that makes things exciting. That’s where the juice, the passionate engagement is, the dance is.
My boss, who works in a strictly corporate environment and refuses even to cut his own grass, asked me, curiously, about how we handle all the work on the farm.
“Doesn’t Rich work full time? Do you take care of all the animals and the kids by yourself?”
No, I told him, we do it together. We both work, we both take care of the kids, we both take care of the animals.
“Aren’t you just scrambling all the time?”
“We’re not scrambling,” I said. “We’re dancing.”