I was making small talk with a lady whom I had just met in a waiting room last week, when, upon learning I was a farmer, she asked, “Do you eat the animals you raise?”
“Well, not all of them,” I answered, wondering if she thought that was the reason I was overweight, “but, yes, we try to process one or two per year for our own consumption.”
After contemplating my response, the lady stated, very sincerely, “Oh, I don’t think I could ever eat an animal for which I had cared.”
I can honestly say that her concerns have never entered my thought process. Maybe because some of my earliest memories are those of going into the chicken house every Sunday morning of my youth to retrieve an animal for my mother to skillfully change from feathered fowl into delicious fried chicken. That’s why we spent the money on grain and our time in caring for the squawking creatures: to have something good to eat. To this day, the smell of fried chicken makes me think it is noon on Sunday and it is a wonderful memory.
Every afternoon and morning of my youth was also spent carrying a three-gallon bucket of soaked corn about 500 yards up the little valley beside our house, to two young hogs that awaited the treat. They weren’t pets and I never considered them as such. They rooted both their trough and a 10-year-old boy around like toys to find the tasty morsels. I can remember cursing them in my mind, while at the same time, I was dreaming of what their salt-cured little hams would taste like come winter.
I do, however, remember a time when I got into trouble with one of our neighbors for being so naïve as to think that everyone had my same mindset. A new family had just moved into the neighborhood from somewhere out East. The family had always lived in the city, but started raising cattle about a half-mile down the road from our house. They had a daughter that was the same age as me and was in my class at the little one-room school house. We became good friends and it was not unusual for me to stop by their home after school and help the little girl feed a heifer that they had kept back after selling the other calves. I knew why they were feeding it expensive grain every day and I just assumed that the neighbor girl knew, as well.
On the day that her fat calf was gone, I said, “I guess your dad took the heifer to the slaughter house today?”
Indignant, she replied, “No, Daddy took her to the sale barn, today, where he’s going to sell her, and with the money he gets, he’s going to the butcher shop and buy a bunch of fresh beef for us to put in the freezer.”
“Well, that can’t be right.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is Thursday.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Because Wednesday is sale day.”
Jerry Crownover is a farmer and former professor of Agriculture Education at Missouri State University. He is a native of Baxter County, Arkansas, and an author and professional speaker. To contact Jerry about his books, or to arrange speaking engagements, you may contact him by calling 1-866-532-1960 or visiting ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us.’
