Food, glorious food!

My friend Zachary

Tonight I have been thinking about the food I eat. The meat we consume here on our farm has all been home grown. The family and I made a decision a few years ago to grow and eat our own meat. This decision was not made lightly. We had many discussions. Many opinions were voiced and each voice was loud. Children are entitled to their own views just as much as adults and therefore we collectively made this choice to start eating our own meat. As you can imagine, it did feel somewhat strange once the decision was made. This was due in part to the fact that we had a steer called Zachary. Zachary became the first animal that we honoured at our dining table. We had known Zachary from when he was a few weeks old. Yes, we had bottle fed him and watched him grow from a small calf to a very large steer with very large horns. Being animal lovers, we did find it quite difficult to say goodbye to our big black friend. On the other hand, we were privileged to know him and to know that he had had a wonderful life. He roamed the paddocks all day with the sheep. He always had lots of green juicy grass to munch on. Sometimes he would get some hay as a special treat. Going to the supermarket to buy meat for dinner is something we used to do. We knew that we did not want to do that anymore. We did not know where the animal had lived and under what conditions it had lived. We are eating our own animals now and we know exactly what they have eaten and how they have lived. It is amazing to take that responsibility. 

Tonight we had lamb chops for dinner and they were delicious!