218 a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e Thursday ~ Asian vegetable stir fry with soba noodles (or rice) and sweetand-sour sauce Friday ~ Pizza with sliced tomatoes, fresh basil, mozzarella, and a drizzle of olive oil Saturday ~ Pasta with fresh homemade tomato sauce and meatballs 14 • Y O U C A N ’ T R U N A WA Y O N H A RV E S T D AY September The Saturday of Labor Day weekend dawned with a sweet, translucent bite, like a Golden Delicious apple I always seem to harbor a childlike hope through the berry-stained months of June and July that summer will be for keeps But then a day comes in early fall to remind me why it should end, after all In September the quality of daylight shifts toward flirtation The green berries on the spicebush shrubs along our lane begin to blink red, first one and then another, like faltering but resolute holiday lights The woods fill with the restless singing of migrant birds warming up to the proposition of flying south The cool air makes us restless too: jeans and sweater weather, perfect for a hike Steven and I rose early that morning, looked out the window, looked at each other, and started in on the time-honored marital grumble: Was this your idea? We weren’t going on a hike today Nor would we have the postsummer Saturday luxury of sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee and watching the farm wake up On the docket instead was a hard day of work we could not postpone The previous morning we’d sequestered half a dozen roosters and as many tom turkeys in a room of the barn we call “death row.” We hold poultry there, clean and comfortable with water but no food, for a twenty-four-hour fast prior to harvest It makes the processing cleaner and seems to calm the animals also I could tell you it gives them time to 220 a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e get their emotional affairs in order, if that helps But they have limited emotional affairs, and no idea what’s coming We had a lot more of both Our plan for this gorgeous day was the removal of some of our animals from the world of the living into the realm of food At five months of age our roosters had put on a good harvest weight, and had lately opened rounds of cockfighting, venting their rising hormonal angst against any moving target, including us When a rooster flies up at you with his spurs, he leaves marks Lily now had to arm herself with a length of pipe in order to gather the eggs Our barnyard wasn’t big enough for this much machismo We would certainly take no pleasure in the chore, but it was high time for the testosterone-reduction program We sighed at the lovely weather and pulled out our old, bloody sneakers for harvest day / There was probably a time when I thought it euphemistic to speak of “harvesting” animals Now I don’t We calculate “months to harvest” when planning for the right time to start poultry We invite friends to “harvest parties,” whether we’ll be gleaning vegetable or animal A harvest implies planning, respect, and effort With animals, both the planning and physical effort are often greater, and respect for the enterprise is substantially more complex It’s a lot less fun than spending an autumn day picking apples off trees, but it’s a similar operation on principle and the same word Killing is a culturally loaded term, for most of us inextricably tied up with some version of a command that begins, “Thou shalt not.” Every faith has it And for all but perhaps the Jainists of India, that command is absolutely conditional We know it does not refer to mosquitoes Who among us has never killed living creatures on purpose? When a child is sick with an infection we rush for the medicine spoon, committing an eager and purposeful streptococcus massacre We sprinkle boric acid or grab a spray can to rid our kitchens of cockroaches What we mean by “killing” is to take a life cruelly, as in murder—or else more accidentally, as in “Oops, looks like I killed my African violet.” Though the results are y o u c a n ’ t r u n away o n h a r v e s t d ay 221 incomparable, what these different “killings” have in common is needless waste and some presumed measure of regret Most of us, if we know even a little about where our food comes from, understand that every bite put into our mouths since infancy (barring the odd rock or marble) was formerly alive The blunt biological truth is that we animals can only remain alive by eating other life Plants are inherently more blameless, having been born with the talent of whipping up their own food, peacefully and without noise, out of sunshine, water, and the odd mineral ingredient sucked up through their toes Strangely enough, it’s the animals to which we’ve assigned some rights, while the saintly plants we maim and behead with moral impunity Who thinks to beg forgiveness while mowing the lawn? The moral rules of destroying our fellow biota get even more tangled, the deeper we go If we draw the okay-to-kill line between “animal” and “plant,” and thus exclude meat, fowl, and fish from our diet on moral grounds, we still must live with the fact that every sack of flour and every soybean-based block of tofu came from a field where countless winged and furry lives were extinguished in the plowing, cultivating, and harvest An estimated 67 million birds die each year from pesticide exposure on U.S farms Butterflies, too, are universally killed on contact in larval form by the genetically modified pollen contained in most U.S corn Foxes, rabbits, and bobolinks are starved out of their homes or dismembered by the sickle mower Insects are “controlled” even by organic pesticides; earthworms are cut in half by the plow Contrary to lore, they won’t grow into two; both halves die To believe we can live without taking life is delusional Humans may only cultivate nonviolence in our diets by degree I’ve heard a Buddhist monk suggest the number of food-caused deaths is minimized in steak dinners, which share one death over many meals, whereas the equation is reversed for a bowl of clams Others of us have lost heart for eating any steak dinner that’s been shoved through the assembly line of feedlot life—however broadly we might share that responsibility I take my gospel from Wendell Berry, who writes in What Are People For, “I dislike the thought that some animal has been made miserable in order to feed me 222 a n i m a l , v e g e ta b l e , m i r ac l e If I am going to eat meat, I want it to be from an animal that has lived a pleasant, uncrowded life outdoors, on bountiful pasture, with good water nearby and trees for shade And I am getting almost as fussy about food plants.” I find myself fundamentally allied with a vegetarian position in every way except one: however selectively, I eat meat I’m unimpressed by arguments that condemn animal harvest while ignoring, wholesale, the animal killing that underwrites vegetal foods Uncountable deaths by pesticide and habitat removal—the beetles and bunnies that die collaterally for our bread and veggie-burgers—are lives plumb wasted Animal harvest is at least not gratuitous, as part of a plan involving labor and recompense We raise these creatures for a reason Such premeditation may be presumed unkind, but without it our gentle domestic beasts in their picturesque shapes, colors, and finely tuned purposes would never have had the distinction of existing To envision a vegan version of civilization, start by erasing from all time the Three Little Pigs, the boy who cried wolf, Charlotte’s Web, the golden calf, Tess of the d’Urbervilles Next, erase civilization, brought to you by the people who learned to domesticate animals Finally, rewrite our evolutionary history, since Homo sapiens became the species we are by means of regular binges of carnivory Most confounding of all, in the vegan revision, are the chapters addressing the future If farm animals have civil rights, what aspect of their bondage to humans shall they overcome? Most wouldn’t last two days without it Recently while I was cooking eggs, my kids sat at the kitchen table entertaining me with readings from a magazine profile of a famous, rather young vegan movie star Her dream was to create a safe-haven ranch where the cows and chickens could live free, happy lives and die natural deaths “Wait till those cows start bawling to be milked,” I warned Having nursed and weaned my own young, I can tell you there is no pain to compare with an overfilled udder We wondered what the starlet might for those bursting Jerseys, not to mention the eggs the chickens would keep dropping everywhere What a life’s work for that poor gal: traipsing about the farm in her strappy heels, weaving among the cow flops, bending gracefully to pick up eggs and stick them in an incubator where they ... emotional affairs, and no idea what’s coming We had a lot more of both Our plan for this gorgeous day was the removal of some of our animals from the world of the living into the realm of food At... removal—the beetles and bunnies that die collaterally for our bread and veggie-burgers—are lives plumb wasted Animal harvest is at least not gratuitous, as part of a plan involving labor and recompense... of a famous, rather young vegan movie star Her dream was to create a safe-haven ranch where the cows and chickens could live free, happy lives and die natural deaths “Wait till those cows start