glacier

 This year we find out again about the wonders of livestock work on the glacier like ice mother nature has provided us.  We have had since the first snowfall the regular alternation of snow fall and freezing days and thawing days that rapidly turns snow cover into ice.

And how to do the chores?  Add on spikes, of course!  Staying in the house, as the weather man cautions, is not an option.  Avoiding a spell in the hospital in traction from a fall becomes very desirable.  The animals need attention and immediately, or very soon, that need becomes job one.

You see, when you take on livestock farming, if you have the older understanding of the farmer's role, you have assumed a calling.  It is not dissimilar to having a child.  When you do this, in either example, some things become non optional.  Like a child that needs the care it needs, no matter what, the livestock make that kind of demand.  You have made a deal with the world or with your understanding of it.  The use of the livestock for food to sustain our lives requires an absolute adherence to the care and feeding of that livestock. There should be nothing careless or offhanded about that.

This understanding is older.  And it is one of the things that modern farming with its illusions that animals are merely some kind of machine for our use and satisfaction has left in the past.

Like so many of the things we have left in the past, there is a cost.  Carelessness in this will cost us too much of our humanity.  Eating carefully assumes that we take responsibility for careful husbandry of the lives we mean to take for food.