Do you educate or just walk away, shaking your head?

[Beekissed]

This has oft been discussed on BYC but I don't remember if we ever had a thread about this here, but:

When encountered with extreme ignorance of livestock husbandry and gardening principles, do you try to be patient and educate, all the while freaking out because someone is so old and knows so little?

~OR~

Do you just shake your head and walk away, cry later, or even laugh until you pee your pants about the incredibly dim questions?

It's not so much that I mind educating, but I am often distressed to find that so very many people right here in rural America know absolutely nothing about the foods they consume, how they got here, or even that they originated on a farm!!

Are you all bothered as much as I am about all this? Or do you just become philosophical about the whole thing and thank God you aren't not that limited in your living? I do this also, but I can't help having that little niggling feeling at the back of my spine that THIS, this is the root of why the Earth is declining, our civilization is declining.......

This extreme detachment from the basic facts of life, the living and dying of food animals, the importance of soil sustainability, of our presence here on the Earth and how we affect all we touch.....why are so many so willing to abdicate from any responsibility for this?

Drive to the store, buy our prepackaged foods, sit in front of the TV and zone out. This? THIS is life?



Sorry.....a little hormonal and insomnia strikes again. The mind is whirling tonight!

 

[dragonlaurel]

I'm in the habit of educating people about stuff - so I'll probably have to talk them through it. It's amazing how people have given up the ability to provide food for themselves in these last few generations. I tried to talk to my Mom about it recently. Suggested that she could plant a little veggie garden. She said no. She is retiring next year and will have less money. She has a big yard in Florida. Why waste that?

 

[Beekissed]

I'll just transfer this thought from my journal:

I have often wondered how other folks like myself feel about the fact that so many people view animals as pets and not food.

They will EAT the animals but not the ones they know. They will not KILL an animal for food but will eat the animals someone else kills. They seem to think this makes them very sensitive in nature and enlightened in their thinking.....where in the heck did they get THAT idea????

This allows them to feel very good about themselves and their ideas about compassion and being a "good" person. I think this makes them lazy and incompassionate about animals in general, while contributing to the exploitation of the very animals they get teary-eyed about!

Oh, I know it's much easier to eat meat that you don't have to look in the eye, but why should this be made easy for people? Out of sight out of mind applies here. Killing is not easy, nor should it be. Nor should it be made easy for "sensitive" people....they eat meat just like the rest of us. They should have to take responsibility for their choices and stop leaving the hard stuff to other folks. Maybe then...just maybe..they would wake up and look around them at the world and the creatures in it.

Maybe they would see that all this takes planning and care, that farmers are not ignorant country folks, that our dedication and hard work provides them with survival. That the food they put in their mouths lived, breathed and died in someone else's hands so they could have a tastey morsel on their fork.

Chickens are pretty and fluffy butts, I know. They are also a source of protein that many utilize in their diets and they should take responsibility for this.

Just like folks who never had children shouldn't advise others on how to raise theirs, people who have never killed a chicken~but still EAT chicken~ should never, ever criticize those who do.

Sorry, didn't mean to get all high pitched here, but this has always bothered me about the general feeling on BYC that people who can't kill their "pets" and "friends" are so quick to criticize those who do.

It's the food chain, baby. Either get real or get vegan!

 

[FarmerChick]

No--I don't educate.

Maybe if the person is a tad interested in how I farm etc. but other than that, I don't bother. I won't change anyone's views....I just let them do their thing. My time and sanity is my business...LOL...I won't let them interfer with that ever!! Others thoughts and actions will not ever get on my nerves (well for long...maybe a little but I let it pass.)

I say--whatever---alot!

Anyone removed from their meats sure will say EWW and killing is never nice. But that is their way and I say, whatever....again, I just don't think about it much anymore.

 

[2dream]

It depends on the who as to the education. My boss is one who can not be educated. He will not eat any of my eggs because they are not USDA approved. He can't understand how I can eat my chickens for the same reason. Aren't I scared I might get some disease? LOL No matter what I say, or how I say it he will never get it. If it does not have the USDA stamp of approval on it - he will not eat it. Because we all know that the USDA is our friend.
But I will throw Bee's logic out there when someone says something like "you mean you killed your chickens to eat"?
Well, duh-huh....My response is usually, yeah, and when was the last time you ate chicken? And who KILLED IT?
Do I think it makes a difference to them. NO, they will never get it.

 

[Dace]

I have discussed the idea of raising some meat birds and a pig with a few people and they are mostly stunned and/or appalled

My response is that I would rather eat meat from an animal that know had a happy and healthy life. I just think it is healthier to eat than a feedlot animal.

The problem that I seem to come up against is that NO ONE seems to have a clue what a feedlot is about or how meat birds are raised or what goes on at a meat packing plant. So of course killing my own seems barbaric when you can just to to the market and pick up a tidy little package of meat. But a simple conversation is never going to make them see the light ....it runs too deep of a topic, most people either don't believe or do not want to hear the truth about our meat here in the good ol' USofA.

Now if I can find someone to raise a pig for me I am all over it! As far as my own meat birds, I am not quite ready for that....I could raise them up no problem, but I have never killed or cleaned one and I am just not ready to face that.....yet. I really don't think the landlord would approve.

 

[Big Daddy]

I will pass along what knowledge I have if asked. I certainly don't look down at people because they don't know something. Chances are that the knowledge they have about other stuff is more valuable than my knowledge about how to feed a chicken. I wouldn't expect someone that was raised in the city to know some of the stuff that I know. I was raised in the city and it is a continuing learning process for me.

 

[okiegirl1]

I went to visit my neighbor on Friday. I told her we were planning our chicken coop. and even thought about having some rabbits for meat. she about freaked. "Oh, how can you kill animals like that?" I said, you eat meat "yeah, from the store. I'll have to plant some more bushs so I won't look over and see anything bad, oh when ya'll moved in I was so worried I would have a bunch of Mexicians move in and they'd be killing animals all the time "....
I tried to explain that when you raise your own, you don't have to worry about anibotics and other junk in your food. "yea, then grow vegetables!"
on that note, I told her "well, i just won't say anything else about it. ok?" and I left.

her comments have bothered me for two days. one, what do Mexician people have to do with killing animals? She eats meat!
two, she has to plant bushes so she won't see anything bad? Like I'm over here kicking puppies.

I don't get it.

 

[freemotion]

Like Dace, I give the anti-cruelty speech rather than the healthy meat speech. If they want to play the holier-than-thou game, well, they've met their match! I win.

One story I sometimes tell is about the chicken farm (eggs) I lived next door to as a teenager. I would go with all the neighborhood kids and earn a few dollars every three months or so when they changed out a few thousand hens for new pullets. We would line up and get handed upside-down birds to carry into the barn, then older hens to carry out to the truck. I could carry six at a time, three legs in each hand. If a bird got away and ended up in the manure pit beneath the cages (five to a cage, stuffed in tightly) it would die there of starvation or asphyxiation from the ammonia fumes. No one was the least bit bothered.

My parents bought twenty older hens once for a dollar each and they free-ranged in our barn. They ended up in the pot because they didn't lay. I learned to mimic their sounds perfectly.

Fast-forward a few decades and I have my own hens. On the very rare occasion that I hear the sounds that I mimicked so perfectly as a kid, it is because the hen is frightened or upset. I NEVER heard a happy hen sound as a child.

How pathetic is that. How can I support that with my wallet, and bring that into my home, and nourish my body with such sadness and despair.

Shuts 'em right up!

 

[freemotion]

Then I tell them if they are going to continue to eat meat and eggs and milk, they need to see "Food Inc!"