yesterday we harvested another beef and I feel like the word Harvest is makes me think of picking um vegetables from a garden or something it's way more involved way more sacred and um a really fascinating process still to me that most people don't get to participate in so Lacy and I are going to dive into that today and uh talk about what that whole process looks like
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um so this is our second cow that we've harvested self harvested self harvested field harvested field harvested so one of I think the goals for having beef in general is to take the middleman out of this process uh what we've seen over the last few years during the covid crunch of course there was like this um major problem where people couldn't get into to uh the USDA certified butchers and so they might have had plenty of cows but they couldn't process them and that to me was this huge Awakening of oh goodness we don't have control of our food system yeah and I mean we do when we get we don't or it's a challenge when you get to large herbivores right we've had sheep all this time and sheep you're free to you know Harvest them anytime you're ready it's much easier much quicker a lot of less equipment um it's much more I mean it's almost exactly the same as if you were hunting and you deer yeah exactly and you know it's interesting some of the people in your Facebook comments have been like yeah you know my husband Harvest deer and I know you know that's a heavy weight and I do think that you know hunting does come with its weight but similarities yeah but when you harvest a cow that's in your care that's in your care it's it's like it's still Weighing on me and I'm kind of just picking up on like even our feeling right now or overall is there is a heavy weight that comes with it and this time was much different um because so when we Harvest them we actually go out there with a gun and we shoot them where they are with the herd in the head um and ideally they drop I mean it's not like we didn't plan for a better solution that's that's what our plan was from the beginning our plan was it's going to live here it's going to die here it's going to be like this Full Circle event to happen in this one place and we think that that's a part of the Regeneration of you know connection of you know life and death and the blood on that ground where that animal was eating and taking nutrition from so it's just it's so much like we've thought of all of these elements and it's not I think some people might look at it from the outside of oh well they're not they don't know what they're doing but I mean there the intention is there yeah I mean I think a huge Awakening for me was like um it's been a few years ago but you know I was out at my friend's Farm Daniels and he was just talking about you know these cows live this best life but then they get loaded up in a truck and spend their last few moments not living their best traumatized yeah because I mean it goes from like getting loaded in the stock trailer to then getting delivered to the butcher where they're like often times held at least 24 hours on concrete right which cows don't do well on concrete they're in a situation where it's spiritually dark I mean it's a butcher place a slaughterous so everything's dying there I don't think that the cows are unaware of that so there's like this whole Darkness emotional problem in my opinion of it's similar to I think our it's not just our it's our health care System I was talking to a friend yesterday about her experience going in to get a some um transfusions and how systematic it was and she's kind of just shut in this little room by herself and and then she'd had the experience of having someone um an NP come out and um give her transfusions in her home and she was like the is just incredible and then we started talking about like the family doctor versus you know the way that we're set up now where we go into the office and it's clinical and it's sterile and and the doctor doesn't learn all of the things about you that he could learn from walking into your home you know I mean it's just everything about our lives and then you know I've had three home births and one birth center birth and and I've talked to a lot of women about their births and what it's like in the hospital versus what it's like in your home or birth center you know it's just it's a very different experience and it changes it's this path of like everything it's this path of checking out of the traditional systems and you might not be well I don't even think they're that traditional it's only like the last 50 to 75 years that these systems have become the normal maybe the current systems the current system yeah I mean and it might not be that you're ready to make all those jumps I think about Even our education like you know our kids don't know what school is like they think going to cohop for 4 hours once a week is like
exhausting it's just hilarious to me thinking I was talking with them on the way to their Co-op today and they're just like it's you know they're like trying to jockey their position for their public speaking to be like not first and not last and it just giving me all this like remembrance of you know that that whole education and I think too like we don't and this isn't a podcast episode about homeschooling but I think about learning and it's one of these it's this experience in life I think people you're so vulnerable when you're learning it's like eating have you ever thought about eating in front of someone it's like what the most intimate things you do and you do it in front of people and and how awkward is that really if you think about it and it's like one of the major things though that like you think about like all the biblical holidays revolve around food right for the most part yeah supposed to be the spiritual experience and like Community Building you know like there's nothing more spiritual or intimate than yeah having a community meal learning to bring it back is I think it the same it's you're taking something in and you have to be open to do it I mean I know when I'm learning and when I'm not learning if I'm open or I'm not open right like there's you can always say like I'm not this is not right I'm not taking this in my mind is Clos you know like you know when you are open and I think schools often at least in my experience taught me how to put the wall up and and then be very careful about when I let that wall down yeah because you in this vulnerable position and it opens you up to you know any random person who's in your environment if you're if you're learning and and I think most people have experienced as an adult going to a conference or a place where everyone is there to learn the same thing and you leave with this energy that you didn't expect when you got there right yeah so anyway all that to say bringing it back to a beef bringing it back to a beef there's just this intimacy that I think we're afraid of and that we avoid and I know that that's been a lot of the feedback I've gotten on many of the posts I've made about processing our own meat is I could never do that yeah and I you know I just know I couldn't and you know there's no judgment really for me about that I think I am a very hyper sensitive person and it's a almost debilitating sometimes and this experience was heavy and difficult and hard but it also I think is teaches me what I am capable of doing and what I require and you know what's sort of a part of my existence is this process well and I think like I had a few people that asked if they could come out and help and I kind of did not invite anybody well I people have even for my births there were people who were like dual training or birth photographers or and they they were like oh I'll come pro and I'll take pictures at your birst and and I am a hard no well like I I think people want to learn but for me like it's still a very sacred act right and it's not something that we've perfected yet and I think that's that learning part is like being you know 100% transparent like The Kill did not go how we wanted it to go and the one before that went less how we wanted it to go and there's like this learning and you know it's part of handling King animals is you have to be very responsible for their life and very responsible for how they die and it's you know I think the word is maybe embarrassing when that doesn't go how you expect it to go well I think that the truth is you can never fully control all the variables right you just can't and when you add in more people you're adding in more variables right and so it's just more to try to manage in a situation that's already sort of unmanageable you know like it's you can't control how the anal the complexity of nature you know like there's just so many things happening when you're out in the field you know like this time we had talked about would we take him to the barn to the runin and try and isolate him before we killed him and you know we ultimately decided it would probably be less traumatic to just put him down where he was well and and it's that's the responsibility of the caretaker of the animal right and so when you invite or have other people come in for that experience that responsibility it's a shift of like the person there starts to feel the weight of it but it's not really their responsibility right I don't know it's a weird it's it is definitely a weird it's like um in invasive intrusive almost I think we could get to a point at some point that we could do something like that manage all that but it would almost be like you would have to have people there just to manage the guest and it would be like a and then it becomes almost like a show and I don't want it to be a show it shouldn't be that it shouldn't be a show but at the same time it shouldn't be hidden so I think that's you know I think about the system now and everything is Behind These cinder block walls everywhere you know wants to see nobody wants to see it and you know the closest people see of their food system is usually when they end up behind a hog truck on a country road or a chicken truck you know and that's like all they ever really see of the process and there's just so much more involved D um than that and you know in those situations I just imagine how confused those animals must be confused and terrified ter yeah just the whole thing just seems yeah scary so um yeah they kill didn't go exactly right we did successfully put him down though and after we shot him it was quick it was it was quick it just wasn't as quick as we wanted it to um so after we do that we slid his throat and the because his heart is still pumping it it pumps out the blood really quickly but what I wasn't expecting in like that learning moment was what happened next was that the lead Bull of the herd um came over and let out this moan and I think what we'll include the clip on here so you can listen to it um for a couple of seconds I'm so torn on that it it feels like another sort of maybe a little kind kind of a bit of invasion of privacy just give a couple seconds but the herd came and they essentially made like a semicircle around this bull that was like having his last like kind of muscle twitches essentially but um it was the it was an amazing thing I don't know how to describe it um Lacy was crying I was crying a little bit it was but it was just this moment of like there again like is this appropriate I was thinking like would it have been better to not make the herd go through that or was it better for the herd to be able to have you know their say their goodbyes to this animal um and then you know like Lane was like well there goes our trust bank with the herd and I was like you know I mean there is an element of that like well do they look at us differently now well sheam is the hu he's the the lead bll and um he's the one he's is called is mournful if you've ever heard of chaar it's like a chaar mixed with a a base I don't know it's like it's just incredibly unpredictable and um and and he he does it pretty regularly but he had done it before when uh we had another cow died of just natural causes and um when he came across that body and that that cow had been dead for some time but yeah it had been kind of off in the pasture by itself and it was winter time so we just let them lay where they die yeah and he came over and found it and and did a similar thing yeah and and so he you know I mean I don't know if it's just this particular bull or if this is what people the you know they would do in the wild I know I've heard stories about crows and how they'll do this morning ceron or elephant elephants like do something where they like return to the same spot where ancestors have died like year after year or something there's something fascinating like that yeah I think we have a way of disassociating the that when we you know buy Hamburger off the shelf you know we have a a way of um I don't want to impose humanness to animals but I don't want to take it away either you know this complex emotional connection that that animals have with one another and you know interestingly like this this is another bowl that we were killing because we can't really have two bowls we can't support Two bows and um you would think there'd be like some element of competition or like relief or but that was not yeah and that's what I said to Lacy is I was like well maybe this is him like celebrating he's King now but he was already clearly head he was no it was it that was not my intuition on the experience and he it was more than just singing he was kind of dancing around and he was pawing at the ground in a you know like that traditional madb way very it felt very F yes but it was yeah I I agree with not like an animorph sizing it but um there was definitely an element of some kind of spiritual connection that the entire herd had I mean they all came up sniffed him you know were there it it was it was an amazing experience and I think it it just added another element to the whole thing and and something to really contemplate like I said of like is it appropriate to kill one of them in front of everybody or not you know and it's something I think we have to kind of take into consideration next I mean it's just so much different like you know broilers you're slaughtering them and there's literally like if there's ones out they're out eating the blood in the leftover bits of the ones you just killed it and it's just not like that with well the experience too I think was like something out of a nature show you know when you watch a lion on a show kill an animal then I think that you see the other animals of a herd like come back around and then you and and watch and and I I don't know it just was much more like the complete experience is what it felt like and not that it was good and it wasn't bad either it was it just felt like we were part of something much bigger and um and also fully natural so I don't know yeah it was just like it had me thinking again of like you know even when you're raising the best beef but you pack it up and you put that weight on somebody else and you know I understand you can't always do it this way but I I've been wrestling with the idea of you can't always do it this way but maybe it's because there's so many people that aren't willing to take on that weight like it's it's a little bit different like if you're trying to supply all the beef for all of Greensboro that's different than if every other person in greensb was supplying their own beef you know I I don't know I it's a if everybody was taking that responsibility taking that weight equally instead of putting it on certain people like I've heard that slaughterhouse people like have a a serious a lot of mental struggles struggles because of the weight of their job and I think conditions aren't that well and you know there's all kinds of other things that you get into you'd have to really disassociate in that context what you you'd have to uh yeah just draw kind of build walls around to protect yourself from that right you know to do it once a year or twice a year um that's manageable and I think it re aligns and and regr grounds you in reality it's interesting because I got to thinking about um the Old Testament the Torah that you have these really sort of a lot of killing right for the sake of appeasing God offerings and such as offering and I've always thought of it as oh this something about the smoke and the smell and it connects God back down to us I with this experience I realize that those sacrificial experiences were for humans it wasn't you know I think we think oh how could God want us to do that but I think it it's about this experience that you have when you take the the life of of an animal it's it's a it's spiritual I mean it just is there's nothing that you can there's no real other way to describe it and this connection is so um full like all the dimensions are involved sound of touch smell yeah even taste you know like it's just such a big experience and there's really no other thing you can do I think we we go out thrill seeking because it's in our nature to expect to have those thrill as a part of our regular life right like we build roller coasters to sort of satiate that that we we aren't getting from our day-to-day but if we eat meat we should be right like if if we're a part of nature we should be experiencing the fullness of those those natural Thrills and um it was very much like a similar experience to like riding the roller coaster like no I don't want to be here get me off I'm at the top of this and this is not what I signed up for when I buckled but then you come back down and you're like oh no that was I would do it again this steak is delicious yeah right uh well I'd like to Ste in another kind of continuing on like I think another really sacred part of it was just having family there like so we we did that we processed him which I I really like the um open air processing so we had to find a tree limb that was we're still refining our process after the kill and Train Kill but um we found a tree limb to hang the carcass from and then we had to hoist it up and um as we hoisted the tow straps slid down the branch so then we had to like tie another tow strap to the Tractor to like pull it in two different directions so it wasn't like laying against the tree or breaking the branch and um but the kids were there most of the kids some of the kids um and we uh skinned them out and uh you know we have an 8year old 12y old 15y old and they all got to experience again you know they've they're Farm kids so they've done a lot of chickens and sheep and and they helped us with the cow last year so this wasn't their first this wasn't their first but they have questions and I think they also each have their own way of expressing their emotional connection C to the entire process and it's interesting like the 8-year-old he kind of like this time more kind of joked around and wanted to poke stuff and but I remember last year he kind of like had to have a moment where he cried because of it you know just like tried to trying to process that and um but they you know we let them use a skinning knives and he was telling me last night you know he how much he enjoyed that whole process of skinny skinning the cow out and um so yeah it's just that part I think of them being that connected like as a family a cow is a massive and these are smaller cows you know Dexter cows but I would say from head to Hof what do you think he was maybe like eight or nine feet tall yeah if he had been fully stretched yeah so I mean you know it was like a full body kind of being involved with the entire process and pulling out the organs and um looking at the different muscle groups and looking at the muscles that were still twitching or if you like pulled the tail like a muscle in the leg went and um so I feel like all of that like that's like SCH schooling on the nextev we're doing anatomy you know as our H school science right now and it's just so interesting you know I was like oh man we should dissect something we should order something to ected and you can order like a baby pig or a frog or you know and then I'm like my kids have dissected so many things over the years I think it's silly for me to think I'm going to order a worm and we're going to dissect that it might be cool too but I'm just saying you know we've we've done that they've done that again and again so their experience is um pretty real in that way they've seen it they know all the parts and um so it's just a it I don't know I think life has a way of teaching us if we are living it and you know this more the way the school does it is a much more like clinical approach like okay today we're going to learn about this and in this more you know back to the you know I don't know like more uh ancient way of living where you participate in all those processes it's not you're not learning it it's not that you're not getting an education you're just not doing it from a book you're doing it In Living Color yeah I know and to me it's like I I want to like start taking so the last one we did last year I took the hide and tried to tan the hide but a cow hide is like insanely hard to tan the way I wanted to do like a fur on tan but I think like being able to like create clothes you know we have like the socks from our wool of our sheep but like it feels like a complete waste to not be using that leather for something so it's like that's that to me is the next level of like how can we do all of that and then like the horns from last year we saved those to do biodynamic preparations but you know there's I think I think there's more elements to it that we can continue to improve on but um yeah I don't know yeah yeah it's a heavy process but I did we did you know there's always the comment well you could just eat a more healthful plant-based diet and I am you know not anti that if somebody wants to choose that lifestyle um but from my research it's actually not more healthful um to eat just plants so you know from what I'm reading and what I understand about health and nutrition uh animal products are hugely beneficial for us especially if they're grown and and treated in this way and this holistic way and they're not full of you know antibiotics and um hormones and corn and Grain and all of that then um you're getting the most helpful nutritional foods that you can get from these animals not to mention I think these experiences are also nutritional on a you know much deeper level maybe inexplicable level well I think it goes back to that complexity I mean there's like a spiritual level of you know eating meat that is scared at its last minute to eating meat that died in the field that it spends every day of its life in you know I mean that's there's got to be a difference well we watched that special recently about how always feel very inept like they just don't have a connection to their own capability and so they're growing up feeling like they just don't you know they don't even know what their the point of living is because they have no Hands-On experiences that give them that feeling of oh this is what life is about this is how I can use my own two hands and do this thing and you do leave that experience and you feel like okay I can do this I know you know and that I I do worry about the generation that just spends all their time on on electronics like today like processing that cow was a full body workout and we're not even done like now it's in a cooler and in 10 days we'll be cutting it up into you know Cuts but um I sit here today and my body is sore like my entire body my muscles are sore from all the work of doing that you know and I think that that to me there's a level of like satisfaction from that soreness that I think that a lot of people don't get to experience when you don't have you know like going well young children I think in particular right now are in a deficit in that way right so but yeah and so that's a a whole lot of heavy stuff to think about let us know what you think about it um send us an email send us a DM we do have some pictures in our group and yeah on our on our social media so if you want to check those things out you can you can see some of the images and um maybe we'll share a little tidbit of the video in the YouTube um recording yeah that we took it is emotional I'll tell you if you want to watch it um it's you be just be prepared I don't know if it will translate through the video but yeah I don't know um and if you've got questions if you're thinking about field harvesting your own and want to know kind of more in depth on the process shoot us an email info the schoolhouse.com or send us a DM on all the socials and please share this episode with somebody that would benefit from it thanks for listening
