The Weekly Planet: What's my beef about local food?
Toolbox
By ELIZABETH GIBSON - Published: November 23, 2008
We hear a lot about eating locally these days, and I've long considered myself a "localvore," even before knowing the term. But this week my commitment to eating locally was tested when it came time to slaughter the two steer we've had grazing over the summer in the pasture beside our house.
We've gardened continuously – with one two-year urban hiatus – for more than 35 years now, in a variety of climates. From our first gardens in Oklahoma I remember the impressively tall cornstalks ("high as an elephant's eye"), sticky okra, magnificent tomatoes, gallons of pickles and hot weather – lots of it. Texas was even hotter, and during our four years there we grew lots of vegetables and marveled at the long growing season, the luscious peaches that ripened early in July in our back yard, and the chameleons that crawled up the banana tree by our bedroom window.
When we moved back home to New England, where both my husband and I had grown up, we continued our now firmly planted gardening tradition – a few years in Massachusetts and now almost 25 years here in Vermont. The climate on our hillside in Pawlet has changed enough during that period of time that we are now growing plants and trees once suited to the zone south of us. The past few years we've enjoyed lots of home-grown artichokes along with the more traditional local garden crops.
Throughout this time our eating habits have also changed, beginning with our early years as omnivores and then moving into a 15-year vegetarian phase while our two sons were growing up. That phase ended abruptly after my husband's ordeal with throat cancer which necessitated a different diet, one that included fish, chicken, and even some red meat every now and then.
As a vegetarian, I had often extolled the virtues of eating lower on the food chain – fewer planetary resources required per amount of protein consumed, better for your health. I contended that being a vegetarian was the most important action I could take to address my concerns about my health and the environment. Now I am not so sure. I think that living in balance with my environment requires constant attention and fine-tuning, based on circumstances that are always changing.
This brings me back to my (our) beef. Our first consideration in getting the animals was to keep the field behind our house open. One of our neighboring farmers had routinely pastured his heifers there each summer. But recently he's been scaling back his dairy operation, and our neglected field has been getting overgrown and starting to go to brush. We could have mowed it (and burned fossil fuel), but then another neighbor offered to sell us two steers. Encouraged by the enthusiasm of our now-grown sons (self-described "deprived carnivores"), we decided to try our hand at small-scale animal husbandry.
The two White Face Herefords, each weighing about 700 pounds, arrived in late spring. Over the course of the summer and fall they grew steadily. My husband, appreciating how they converted grass to stored energy, described them as "very large batteries." We fed them a little grain and some hay each day to keep them tame. Later in the season we supplemented their diet with some bruised pears and apples. But mostly they grazed – and grazed. By the end of the season, we figured they had grown to more than 1,200 pounds each.
"Don't get attached to the animals," everyone warned us. We had talked a lot as a family about this project. We didn't name the steer and simply referred to them collectively as "the cows" and individually by the different color of their collars. We all participated in taking care of them. We came to know their habits and even their temperaments. The one with the black collar was skittish; the one wearing the brown collar was more deliberate.
But as the slaughter date approached, I felt uneasy and anxious. Figuring that reality was preferable to my imagination, I made myself watch the whole process right in our field last Monday. And I have to say it was very hard for me, even though the animals didn't seem to suffer at all. Compared to meat we buy in the store, I've been reminding myself, this meat will be from animals that were extremely well cared for.
Talking about it afterwards as a family, we shared some of our feelings. Of all that was said, my older son's words stand out the most: "I feel grateful for the animals," he told me. He'd been out there with his dad, helping the uncle and nephew team who expertly performed the slaughter and then cleaning up the offal.
I don't know how much of this meat I'll actually eat. But I'm glad we've had the experience as a family. On one level, it's simply another aspect of eating locally. But what does eating locally really mean? For us right now, it means developing our relationship with our land – learning how to care for it and what it can produce and support.
As the November daylight hours wane and Thanksgiving approaches, I am thinking about how fortunate I am to be living with my family on the side of Woodlawn Mountain in Pawlet. And, yes, along with our home-grown veggies we plan to be eating a local turkey, thanks to Someday Farm in Dorset!
Elizabeth Gibson edits the environment section. She lives in Pawlet and can be reached at egib@vermontel.net.
ON THE NET
Grass-fed food and facts
www.eatwild.com/index.html
Gardener's guide to global warming
www.nwf.org/gardenersguide/gardenzone.cfm