Walking the Hedge

Everyone knows that scene in Charlotte’s Web when, Pocahontas like, Charlotte throws herself over the body of a young Wilbur about to the get the axe from her father, thus saving his life.

Since time immemorial children have returned home or woken in the morning to discover the runt pig or calf (or what have you) they had been given to raise has been or must be slaughtered. Then likely served on the family table.

When serial killer Robert Pickton was on trial he told such a story as an attempt to gain sympathy from the jury. Farmers and ranchers watching the news coverage laughed bitterly.

I come from a family with a long history of farmers and hunters, complete with many old world values.

My Dad’s side of the family have been raising cattle probably since white people started raising cattle. The fact that the farm in England where my father and his siblings had been born is now a suburb is a family joke.

My Mother’s family arrived in Canada from Scotland some time around the Highland Clearances (The oldest soldier in Prince Charles Edward’s Army at the Battle of Prestonpans in the ’45 was an 80-year-old Ferguson) but you still see men in kilts at weddings and boys still are given names like Robert and Bruce. Working with animals also runs in this side of the family, many of us breed and show dogs, work in animals rescue, work for veterinarians hospitals, own horse ranches and so forth.

As a child we used the same white nylon rope to tie logs together building rafts on the lake that was used to string up a pig or a deer thus letting the blood drain out prior to butchering. The embedded brown stains in the rope fibre didn’t bother my brothers and I in the slightest. After all, Dad did soak it in a tub of soapy water.

I know what bear tastes like, and moose and elk and bison. I’ve had roast lamb, salted deer, and even rabbit stew.

I have given animals vaccinations, de-worming medicine, changed bandages, removed porcupine quills, cleaned up vomit, sprayed antiseptic on a half wild horse, and helped the vet fill the stomachs of four poisoned dogs with charcoal.

I have jumped into disgusting ditches to pull a drowning animal out of one; I have climbed trees for cats, clambered down mountainsides in the snow to drag a hound by the scruff back up it, I have spent all night sitting on the porch calling a beloved dog home.

I’ve gone to the chicken coop to gather eggs for breakfast, I’ve chased escaped goats, been bitten by horses, had many different kinds of mammals born into my hands, I’ve made the hard decision to put a good but injured animal down.

I have battled Parvovirus, Giaridia, Kennel Cough, infections, and fevers. I have faced cancer, liver failure, and birth defects, stillborn babes, Mange, lice, fleas, broken limbs, abused animals, starved animals and animals torn up by coyotes. I have had animals bleed to death under my hands as I do everything I can to stop it. I have given CPR to a dying animal and tasted death on my lips.

I have fought many battles with death, some I have lost and some I have won.

I have also slaughtered a few and taken a life for my own purposes. Then I give a proper portion back to the land.

I am not a vegetarian. How could I be when hundreds of generations before me relied on the raising of livestock to house and feed themselves?

I have had a pet snake that died of old age be turned into a belt as a gift. I wear real leather clothes. I have bags I store my witchy stuff in that are made of goatskin and deer hide etcetera.

I have buried things and dug them back up again a year or two later. I have bleached bones on the roof of my home.

These things have always been done with an understanding of the Land and with respect and mindfulness.

For this I know:

The reason farm parents make you care for something and then kill it is to teach you to value life and also to understand the power over the other creatures, and the land itself, that we humans wield.

We humans are animals; our bodies and our selves come from this Earth as any other creature.

But we are at the top of the food chain, whether we actually eat other animals or not.

We are the Stewards of the Land. Not in the modern pompous way that thinks we own the Land can do whatever we want, but in that old fashioned, ancient way that we once all knew so well when most of us were farmers, hunters, gatherers.

I learned at a young age that:

If we don’t take proper care of our livestock they get diseases (like Mad Cow) and they die, and then we go hungry.

If we don’t rotate our crops then the land gets sucked dry and the crops will fail and we will go hungry.

If we don’t fish responsibly then we will have disease-ridden fish farms and we will go hungry.

If we tromp around in the woods like we own the place the bears will maul us.

If we pollute the water then we will have nothing to drink and we will die of thirst.

My family has been piss poor farmers likely since before Rome invaded the ancestral lands. My Grandfathers ran farms for landowners, much like their fathers and their fathers.

We do not own the Earth; we are not the Landowners.

We are just running the farm.

Related posts:

1. The Way it Goes
2. Annoyed
3. Perfect Practice