Looking in her eyes
Yesterday was busy again… well, today was, too.
Harvested a lot of snow peapods. I have a quart bag full in the freezer now. I also am getting a collection of peas drying for seed for the fall.
The cutworm-eaten tomato tops haven’t survived. At least I started a lot of them.
Went shopping and found the material I want to use to refurbish a pair of pants I really like but don’t fit anymore, as well as got six pounds of organic spaghetti and four pounds of regional organic rolled oats to add to my stash.
Yesterday, I cooked the last pork shoulder from the little (if 100# is little 
) piggie Judy showed me how to butcher. It was excellent baked with a mustard/powdered cloves rub. Today we had pork shepherd pie for dinner, and we still have meat for a couple of sandwiches and a nice meaty bone for soup or stew.
I’ve never forgotten the little piggie. There’s something different about looking into the eyes of the animal you’re preparing to eat. Every time I have some of her, I remember the calm contentment in her eyes. I don’t know; it probably sounds goofy, but the remembering feels almost sacred. So much different than buying a piece of meat wrapped in plastic.
And for you veggie people, I feel much the same about growing my own fruit and vegetables. I think plants know if you care for them too. 
May 15th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Hi RSG—
Thank you for connecting eating meat and killing animals and the sacred. It seems in this day and age even the non-corp., non-CAFO farming operations still have lost the sacred and are on the edge of gore/laboratory cold-ness.
I grew up eating animals I knew and cared for. There is something very sacred and deep about another creature giving up it’s life to feed you. That awareness simply can not happen on a large scale for each individual but seems to me very important.
About the cut-worms. Have you tried wrapping a one or two inch strip of aluminum foil around the stems (at least of tomatoes and peppers) when you plant them. Some of the foil goes under the ground and some above. It’s not wrapped so tight as to be a choker. My mom did this in CO. the land of cut-worms and it seemed to work.
Thanks for your wonderful blog.
Tawnia
May 15th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I hadn’t heard about the tin foil. I’ll try that, thanks!