Nothing like some Hardscrabble Farmer wisdom (comment made on I Am a Killer thread) on a Monday morning :
On Saturday afternoon a family came up to the farm to buy a goat. They are originally from Kenya and who have been buying products from our farm for years now. They chose the animal they wanted and we led it to a spot not far from then sugarhouse and I slaughtered it for them. My animals know me and are comfortable around me. I slaughter the smaller ones like lambs and goat by severing their carotid artery and holding them while they bleed out. A friend of mine was at the farm that day and he had never witnessed a slaughter and wanted to watch the process so he stood nearby while it took place. I was mindful of his experience as well and when it was over- something that lasts a minute or two at most I looked over at him to see if he was alright.
Death is something humans understand in a way that no animal fully comprehends. We dwell on it, memorialize our own, think about our own demise, craft legal documents, build tombs and tell stories. It fascinates us because we understand that life is finite in a way that animals do not and because we are human we project our concerns and fears onto animals and make them their own.
No living thing desires death, but all life comes to an end. With animals meant for consumption by humans, their lives are- when raised on family farms- well lived. They are fed, looked after, treated with kindness and compassion. The word husbandry came from this relationship rather than the one used in marriage and it reflects the responsibility one feels for his livestock.
After we slaughtered the goat the family went to work on it, skinning, eviscerating, cleaning and butchering the animal together. They use every piece, every organ, every scrap to feed themselves and the way that they worked together was a wonderful thing to be a part of and something I have enjoyed every time that they visit us. Afterwards I took them out to the back forty to pick raspberries and before they left I brought out some syrup for the younger ones to taste and they paid me for the goat and for my time. They left me with the skin which I will tan and later sell to a guy I know who makes drums and the horns that will go to a knife maker for pommels in skinning knives like the one I used on the goat. The dogs and the barn cats got to clean up where the blood puddled and with the exception of the waste we removed from the entrails which will compost back into the soil under the maples where we slaughtered, the only thing left will be the memory of that afternoon.
My children are far more familiar with the concept of life and death than I was when I was their age and I am grateful for it and think it is a healthier way to go through life. They understand that every living thing on Earth requires the death of some other living thing to go on, that all flesh is grass and that the soil itself made up of the residue of all things dead is filled with more life in a single handful than the human populations of all our cities combined. They know that when I die I wish to be cremated and to have my ashes spread on the fields so that in some small way I might be able to return something of myself to the nourishment of others. If that is any stranger than to be pumped full of chemicals and placed in a concrete box too deep to ever rot, I’ll have to live with that;-)
I try to live my life in the most efficient, responsible and thoughtful way possible and to raise my children to be better than I am. What I eat, I produce, I harvest, I prepare. I do not pass on my responsibilities to other people nor do I accept their judgments as my own. Those who claim the moral high ground when it comes to issues as fundamental as the food we put in our bodies are rarely the ones who do the same. It is often with the best intentions that they posture and intone, but the road to hell, as they say is paved…
This morning before I begin to work again on our fields and with our animals I will feed myself and my family with the harvest of this piece of land and it will nourish us in many more ways than to simply fill our bellies. And as long as I am able I will do my best to make the lives of every living thing around me a little bit better than it was before I passed through.
Pardon me, but what the fuck is a “family from Kenya” doing buying your damn goats? How sweet that you enjoy their company. Wait until we have 20 million more of them. Damn it, wake up. We don’t need Africans in our country, we don’t need mudsharks, and we don’t need silly white people with their heads up their behinds.
I refuse to be eaten by a bunch of Kenyan savages.
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I am convinced that the failure to teach children (and more especially boys) about the very things that this essay describes is at the very core of our problems with the wanton violence we see in this country today.
I postulate that no one who grows up on a farm and witnesses and learns about death by taking the lives of animals for food in the manner Hardscrabble describes has ever become a school shooter or a serial killer.
By letting other people, anonymous strangers, do the work of killing our food animals, we have come to where we are today. To a place where death isn’t real to most people. Where the sacred aspects of this process have been ignored. Where meat is understood as just a piece of grillable food wrapped in plastic, and not what it really is, which is food that has been obtained through the sacrifice of a living being.
We really have to get back to that reality, or we’ll continue to suffer the consequences, which are enormous.
“The truth is there is no meal we can eat without killing. None. A trip to your local grocery store for tofu and spinach may not include a single animal product but the harvesting of such food costs endless animal lives.” ————- Hardscrabble Farmer
Truth! As usual, another masterful story From The Farm by HF.
I know some of you hate when I bring religion into a discussion. But, it is appropriate here. Specifically, I will briefly point out The Problem With Paradise. Here is what Ken Ham, President of Answers In Genesis, has to say about God’s original Creation; —————
“According to the Bible, a perfect God created a perfect creation, and because of man’s sin, death and suffering came into the world. One would not expect a God of life to be a god of death. The Bible tells us very clearly that there was no death before sin from many passages. In fact, there are no Bible verses indicating there was death prior to sin. The only reason some people try to insert death before sin is to fit man’s ideas of “millions of years” of death from a uniformitarian view of the fossil record into the Bible. But this makes a mockery of God’s statement that everything was very good in Genesis 1:31. Death, animals eating other animals, thorns, cancer, tumors, and so on are not very good. Keep in mind that having death before sin also undermines the very gospel, where Jesus Christ stepped into history to conquer sin and death.”
OK, so here is Genesis 1:29-31
“Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”
So, CLEARLY, a literal reading of this passage means that EVERY creature with soul-life (ALL beasts of the earth, ALL birds, ALL creatures on the ground …. what about fish?) was originally a VEGETARIAN.
Now, a thinking person will ask, “How can that be possible???”. Just think about the hundreds of thousands of insect species …. many eat plants, most eat each other, and if they didn’t they would die. Yet, we are to believe all insects in Paradise were vegetarians. That’s preposterous.
Furthermore, did God actually think about the end result of His “no death” plan?
Think no further than the fruit fly. Fruit flies reproduce at astonishing rates. These insects live for up to 45-50 days. Only 24 hours after a female fruit fly lays her eggs, they hatch and begin feeding. It takes about 8 days to grow from egg to an adult. The females start laying eggs almost immediately thereafter. A female fruit fly will lay an average of 500 eggs in her lifetime.
Soooo, get out your excel spreadsheet. If fruit flies didn’t die in Paradise, then how long until the ENTIRE earth is covered knee-deep with them? A month? A year? And that just ONE species of literally millions.
Sounds to me like Paradise would turn into Hell.
“By letting other people, anonymous strangers, do the work of killing our food animals, we have come to where we are today. …. We really have to get back to that reality,” ———— Eddie
Your points are well taken.
However, on a practical level, fuggedaboudit. Suppose you live on the 20th floor of a high rise apartment building. How do you get the cow up there? Everyone knows cows don’t like elevators, and management doesn’t like live fucking cows shitting all over the place. Also, do I really want to live in a building with 200 other families butchering cows, pigs, and chickens? I don’t think so.
Well, I live in a house …. and I don’t want to choke my own chicken. I just don’t want too … now or ever. That’s why I go to Trader Joe’s right down the road.
T4C
oops. Thanks for the correction.
“A rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a youth left to himself is a disgrace to his mother.”
———— Proverbs 29:15
I think if the nature of the problem were understood, that there are ways of teaching the lesson without raising chickens in an apartment building. There are urban farmers all over these days. People in houses like yours.
The unfortunate truth is that high rises are soon to be historical footnotes, as are grocery stores, most likely. Too energy dependent. People will either grow their food, barter for it, or go hungry. Be glad you’re an old man.
Overpopulation is self-correcting, eventually.
Regarding the family from Kenya:
i am not responsible for their being here, my government is, having said that I wouldn’t trade that particular family for a thousand disingenuous White, liberal, snarky, hipsters who are the first to accuse me of being a racist simply for noticing that races do in fact exist. The fact is I am able to openly discuss race with this particular family because they understand reality and don’t walk around with a chip on their shoulder. They are here for a college education for their children and will be heading back to Kenya when their kids are done and I think that in the meantime they, as well as I, are lucky to have the opportunity to learn from one another, share the things that we have in common and both be proud of our own distinct differences.
I used to be an angry about all the things that are wrong with our current system but that got me nowhere so now I focus on doing the things that make it right.
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
Hardscrabble –
You should collect all these writings of yours on TBP and any other blogs and compile them into an e-book.
It could be one more source of revenue for your farmstead. I’d but it for $9.99 or something like that.
Yeah, well these Kenyans are here and they should not be. I am not a Klansman and I am surprised that anybody reading this site would stoop to such crap. I am an ordinary white American fed up with what has happened to our country, as is Administrator if I am not wildly mistaken. I guess it is OK for him to write about 30 blocks of squalor but out of bounds for me to point out the oddness of a bunch of Kenyans buying goats in America! Some people throw up their hands, “Oh, woe is us! That is how it is! Nothing we can do about it! I´ll just grow organic zucchini and forget about all the bad things around me!” Again, crap. I have children and I have no intention of turning over to them a Third World hellhole. Real “hard scrabble farmers” from 100 years ago would have taken a much different view. I have low tolerance for fuzzy and muddled thinking, my friends. If these Kenyans really are true guests in our country, well, treat them like guests. But I think you will find that they haven´t the slightest intention of returning to Africa. Sorry, folks, the situation we are in is the real deal and and there is no room for sentimentality.
I agree .You live in Iowa if I not mistaken. Wait till you and your children are surrounded by millions of these third world bottom feeders. Your sentimental nonsense will end in misery.
Thanks, BB, for the support. And let me add a couple of other things. I paid more than $120,000 last year in income taxes. I am paying for my three kids to make it through college with no debt and, no, I do not receive a single penny in financial aid for them. I live in a very nice neighborhood, the end result of more than 35 years of military service, saving and tough overseas government service, plus a lucky break when I retired and managed to snag a decent job. I am forced to watch the influx of “urban blight” into my gated community, courtesy of Obama and Section 8 housing. I am forced to watch shiftless assholes driving their Escalades past my humble Hyundai. I am forced to watch as interracial sex is presented to America as perfectly normal and anybody who objects is a Klansman; any of our grandparents who were not braind dead would have vomited over this. I see my country innundated by Third World immigrants who have no place in a modern society, and I am supposed to shell out for them and their brats. My father enlisted in the army at 15 and fought through WWII. He spent 20 more years in the army and then worked himself to death the rest of his life. When he died I had to buy his tombstone; Dot.Com thieves looted the municipal retirement program he belonged to. Yeah, I am pissed off, and I don´t care who knows it. I don´t hate anybody but I am not falling for any more sob sister nonsense. Any black man or other minority who does not stand up and stand shoulder to shoulder with the real America….is not for real and can´t be trusted an inch. As for the moron who posted the picture of the goat with the KKK symbol on it, screw you. We have enough gutless creeps out there who don´t want to face the reality of our situation.
Sage,
Allow me to make an attempt at playing peacemaker…
Vet to vet, I can completely understand your fury, your outrage and the sense of betrayal you feel. I am also a legacy – and a Southron – same as you. My father started working when he was 13, fought in Korea and worked his ass off his whole life. Now in his dotage, he’s being fucked over by the very country he put his life on the line for. I think if he died 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been a small mercy, as he would not have to bear witness to how low this country has fallen…
You chose a gated community to retreat to, I am assuming, in an attempt to insulate you and yours from the debauched world around you. I chose a small farm in the middle of rural Kentucky for the same reason. My son can go to University if he wishes, but any degree outside of the hard sciences or anything practical -like an Ag degree – is useless. So many mush-heads have gone to University – thinking it is their “right” – getting degrees in useless subjects that the trades have been abandoned. (Call for a plumber or electrician and you’ll either get some FNG kid, or a senior citizen. There’s nobody left in the trades in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s..) I know of places so hungry for genuine machinists, their starting salary is 6 figures, with guaranteed overtime. But, there’s nobody to fill the vacancies. But I digress.
You’re gonna get hounded as an “Eevil raaayciss” for speaking the truth. I know. It has happened to me – is still happening to me. The only thing I can suggest is that when someone hurls “raaayciss” (yes, 3 a’s and 2 s’s is the correct spelling) at you, give them nothing. The response “Yeah? So?” is especially infuriating to the blenders and genocidal multi-culti race traitors. They expect you to cower at the use of their Word of Power. Thing is, their Word of Power has been overused so much, it has no more mojo.
Bottom line, brother… the America, the Republic we believed in? It doesn’t exist anymore. If it ever did in the first place. It has been destroyed by generations of self-serving, evil people, aided and abetted by the Red Shield run Fed to fund it all. Getting infuriated at the obvious self-destructive, genocidal insanity around you will not accomplish anything. Trust me. I was where you currently are. When a contemporary of the Roman philosopher Ausonius remarked that the Roman Empire was collapsing and would soon end, Ausonius replied: “Of course it is! But there is still time to live well.”
We can’t save it, and for men like us – used to controlling and defining our own destiny – that is infuriating and frustrating in the extreme. Even if we picked up a rifle and went back to work, we couldn’t stop it. The things that are in motion are too large to stop and have been a long time coming. That there are those who are obviously aiding and abetting this collapse has literally had me in a blind rage before. But, I had to come to grips with the obvious truth that what is happening, is happening beyond my sphere of influence.
The best I have been able to come up with was – if we’re going down, then I’m going to save as much as I can on a local level and preserve it as best I can. I can’t save it all. But, I can save a tiny piece of it.
Don’t be too hard on Hardscrabble. By all accounts, he is a thoughtful man and apparently a kind man. Not too bad, for a Yankee. He’s a producer and uses his land to supply him and his and is about as self-sufficient as I’ve seen. That carries weight, at least with me. I think he knows in his heart what’s going on – he’s not stupid or naive. He knows those Kenyans will not return home, despite what they say. But I don’t think he’s the type to dwell on that… he’s more concerned with the survival of him and his than anything else.
Last thing. I got a bit of advice, even though I know you ain’t asked for none.
Abandon your gated community. Liquidate anything you can do without – including any bank accounts – and find a bolt-hole somewhere, far from The Diversity and off the beaten path. Acquire some arable land with good water on the property and set about the business of saving who and what you can in the little time we have left. Bad Things are coming – most likely economic Ragnarök, the dethroning of the dollar, implosion of our economy, etc.. I think the words “privation” and “hunger” are going to take on a meaning that hasn’t been applicable since our fathers were children. The Diversity – the Free Shitters – will be the first to go once that happens. They have forgotten how to provide for themselves, if they ever knew how to begin with. Acquiring a bit of land right now to sustain you and yours in the future will pay dividends and is prudent, since if you want till after the fact, someone will already be there ahead of you and won’t take kindly to you and yours looking for safe haven…
Good luck and God protect you and yours…
I understand hardscrabble and without knowing the merits of the valid points, on the surface, I would side with Southern, though there really isn’t a ‘side to pick thing’. But this shits outta control and its by design. That said, if I were some African or such and had the chance to go to …… anywhere but Africa, fuck yeah, I’d be on that plane too. But I’d be wondering what awaits too. They’re bringing so many of them over, they don’t have to integrate. So marriage, gangs, their norms and values are just transplanted here……get it?…..transplanted here! – and the free shit gettin’ makes the FSA look humble. Check out the hmong’s most excellent adventure – times 1000 or more. And don’t think for second the most downtrodden got a golden ticket in their wonka bar. What you seeing, on average, are the toughest screws – the most savvy, connected, and capable of making sure they got the right candy bar. Let me guess, the officials of these various shitholes are living a bit better than the average citizenry…..nooooooo, c’mon, that’d be wrong!
Drop of a hat these fuckers know how to get with it. They’ve lived the horror you and I can’t fathom. The lutherans receive $ for placement, so to these fine folks this program is a fucking ATM. This is by desing. Like Southern, I’m not a raciss, but I know bullshit being done on purpose when I see it. Some see color, I see numbers. Some see moooslim, I see….moooslim too? But mostly, I see numbers who will vote against my interests cause some asshole somewhere says its time to pound me down and lift them up while the stupidest fuckers anywhere eat it up and vote it in with both hands.
Southern Sage, I’m with you on every syllable of your post at 1:28 except the line excoriating interracial sex. Who gives a shit? I’m puzzled at how you can be so otherwise level headed but have that in there. Object to your daughter or son or sister or brother shacking up with a jerk or a loser but there are jerks and loser in all colors and good men and women in all colors.
Billy and Tommy, thanks. Billy, your thoughts are especially thoughtful and to the point. Fred, sorry, but I do not accept the Marxist-inspired line that all people are the same. They aren’t, never have been, never will be. I know that there are plenty of fine, decent black people. I have worked with them and lived near them. I wish them all well, especially in view of what they have to put up with from many of their fellow blacks. That said, I do not believe that any good has ever come of mixing African genes with those of Europeans. I DO give a shit, my friend. You might want to check out the stats on the murder and domestic violence rates of white women in relationships with blacks. Gruesome reading. The European peoples evolved over tens of thousands of years to have very special gifts. If I have to explain that to you, well……Please get yourself a copy of A Troublesome Inheritance, by Nicholas Wade, and you will see why I do give a shit, OK? .No, I do not want my daughter marrying a loser or a jerk. But my grandchildren are going to look like me, brother. The record on this issue is far too clear to require any belaboring by me. My ancestors fought to keep this a white country with a Christian, European-based culture. We lost that fight and now the rest of the American people are soon going to know just how much was lost.
“I don’t know why men still hunt, you can get meat all washed and packaged at any grocery store.”
That quote from a relative pretty much sums up the average American.
Truly, I don’t think the abhorrence of reality (death) is what drives most people. It is pure, unadulterated laziness and a screwed up sense of priorities. Literally watching somebody else do something, or “beating” a level in a video game/ap, is enough of an accomplishment for most people. I hear friends and family talking about some great meal, or some great football game they saw, but rarely hear anything about some real accomplishment of their own. Sad, really.
Many people barely even cook anymore. I cannot believe there has ever been a society on earth more divorced from the realities of sustaining life.
Which just serves to remind me that, that which cannot be sustained, will not be. Having no connection to our earth, nor to our families, and even less with the very things we put in our mouths to sustain our very existences, cannot, will not, continue on indefinitely.
For millions, if not billions, in this world, the illusion of not having to take care of yourself will end abruptly, and violently. Probably sooner rather than later.
At least HSF’s family will not be facing it in shock and blindness.
Love your essays Hardscrabble, simply love them.
A quick question, if you will indulge me, and I’m sure you’ve addressed this before, but how many acres to do you have?
TE
HF is probably out in the fields gathering hay, or maybe killing a pig. lol
According to the article below, the farm is 50 acres.
http://marcmoranhopewell.flavors.me/
His farm was awarded the New Hampshire Farm of Distinction award by the NH Department of Agriculture. You can see a picture of the farm in the link below … a PDF file, on page 122
http://www.agriculture.nh.gov/publications-forms/documents/farms-of-distinction.pdf
Ariel View
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Lastly, if you like his writings — don’t we all? — you should check out his webpage and blog.
Thanks so much Stuck! I’ve been envisioning my needs for a farm, HSF has stated he is pretty self sufficient and I wondered how much acreage that was for him, or me.
I figured I’d have to check back in tonight or tomorrow, but you come to my rescue as always!
BTW, I am so sorry to hear of your godparent’s passing and your grief. Hugs to you, you are constantly in my thoughts and prayers, I may have never met you but I surely have been blessed by your existence! And, I’ll add, that feeling extends to a few others around here.
(((hugs)))