Grazing: part of the solution, not the problem

a new e-book gives more details from Allan Savory's TED talk

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3023954/saving-our-land-from-turning-into-desert-by-letting-animals-roam-like-their-ancestors#1

Also see other pages about this here in this e-book

Out to Pasture contrasts industrial-style confined animal production with farms that raise food animals outdoors in diversified operations, striving to be sustainable. Several of these pasture-based farmers are profiled and they tell their own vibrant stories of bucking the trends in farming. They discuss how they got started in farming (three transitioned from confinement operations), what's important about their farming methods, how their conventional-farm neighbors view them, how to keep young people on the farm, the future of the food system, and other compelling topics. The film also features Robert Lawrence, director of CLF; and John Ikerd, a leading thinker on sustainable agriculture issues.

On Killing Animals

Owen Lloyd in FB

I've always wondered: why does veganism stop at what you put in your mouth? What happens when you take nonviolence against animals to its logical conclusions?

Why sanction the consumption of industrialized plant products, even when their production often permanently destroys the land they are grown on? Why sanction the consumption of food from land that is tilled, when the practice kills billions of animals each year? Why sanction food produced with the use of biocides, that kill billions more? Why sanction food produced with fertilizers, which inevitably create dead zones in the oceans? Why sanction driving when cars inevitably kill everything from bugs to large mammals? Why sanction the burning or refining of oil that devastates animal habitat and contributes to the end of all life on the planet? Why sanction the use of electricity, which is derived from those same fossil fuels, or from fish-killing dams or bird-killing turbines or turtle-killing solar arrays? Why sanction living in houses built on the bones of forests and all that lived in them?

And what would happen if veganism's pledge against nonviolence applied to humans as well as nonhumans? Should we stop wearing clothes produced under systems of capitalist exploitation? Stop eating food produced by migrant labor or (like most chocolate) by slaves abroad? Stop using money, necessarily the product of slavery and colonial conquest? And shouldn't we stop living on land stolen by violent force?

Maybe, like Jainists, we should stop walking outside for fear of trampling bugs? But of course even Jainists have no problem walking outside on areas already covered in a death of concrete, because like veganism their philosophy isn't designed to resolve violence against animals but to mask one's individual complicity in it.

I'm not saying we shouldn't make the best choices we can, or encourage others to do so. Even more than that we should be nurturing an empathy with the living world that leads to better choices. But as activists we need to stop focusing on people making "good choices" and start working to make the bad ones impossible.

Stella (replied)

We farm and love the animals we have here. They wouldn't exist if we didn't breed them (often puzzled about what vegetarians have to say about that: the 'right to life' of domesticated species is a totally avoided subject).

The reality is that our needs, well designed for, meet with their needs (to exist) perfectly, as Nature intended. We provide them with a very nice life, relating to them with (mutual!) love & affection like every other member of our extended family.

Then, instead of letting them die a miserable, painful death from old age & disease (I tortured my chickens that way for several years because I couldn't face killing them, until I grew up in that respect), we provide them with a quick natural death - at the hands of a predator - what would happen to them in Nature. Thanking them and thanking Life for the honor in taking part of Her sacred cicles.

I really (now) think that learning to kill our food is a very important rite of passage that we mostly miss out on in western culture.

The feeling of re-connecting to something profound and sacred (the Cicle of Life itself) that I got from going through all the emotional turmoil of learning to do this is impossible to describe, but I think it is something vital for our emotional & spiritual health, and one of the (many!) reasons we are such an adolescent, stuck culture.

On Giving Death

15Aug15 - thanks Sabine for letting us know about this wonderful article!

From "Susun Weed, Holistic Goat Keeper"

Can you describe how you slaughter your goats?

I would never slaughter anything. I am a woman. I give birth. I give death. I am Kali, dancing through birth, life and death. I do not slaughter, kill, murder, or take life. I give the gift of death.

The giving of death is a sacred rite. We are very serious about it. We never threaten death for misbehavior. We set the date for giving death and tell the animal when it will be. We invite the soul or spirit of the goat to get ready to go; pack your bags!

Our ceremony of giving death includes four positions. She-who-holds-the-knife, She-who-holds-the-animal, and She-who-walks-in-the-woods.

She-who-holds-the-knife is a solitary position; no one else can hold the knife with her. She is in charge; she decides when to cut. She stands astride the goat, facing in the same direction as the goat, knees holding the goat’s shoulders, hands free to lift the head and cut the throat.

She-who-holds-the-animal is more than one person when we give death to a particularly feisty young buck or on the rare occasion of giving death to a full-grown goat, otherwise it is one person. She holds the legs of the goat.

She-who-stands-in-support is as many people as there are present. We support She-who-holds-the-knife, the process, and the animal by chanting Om mani padme hum, the holiest of Tibetan mantras. When death is clear, we change our chant to Om shanti, shanti, shati, peace, peace, peace.

She-who-walks-in-the-woods is often not an actual person, though on occasion someone does walk in the woods. She-who-walks-in-the-woods represents the part of all us that does not want anything to die, ever. She-who-walks-in-the-woods is the part of each of us that resists change. We honor and recognize that part of ourselves. The part that wakes up on the morning of giving death and says “Could I put it off? Could I refuse to wake up? Do I have to do this?” I don’t dread giving death, but I am never happy about it. It is part of keeping a healthy goat herd.

I believe that there is a difference between life force, which is personal and present only so long as the body lives, and soul force, which is timeless and unbounded. When we give death, we remind ourselves that we will consume the life force. It does not end; it does not die; it continues on in the form of our bodies. Nor can the soul force die; it also continues on, and perhaps will choose to take another form.

She-who-holds-the-knife must first cut through her own resistance. When she must cut through the energy field of the animal, then through the hair of the animal, then through the skin and the muscles of the throat. Only when she sees bright red blood – not the dark blood of the vein, but the bright blood of the artery, pumping powerfully – does she stop cutting. Bleeding to death is pleasant. I have talked to women who have almost bled to death (when giving birth) and they have all said that bleeding to death is blissful, oceanic, ecstatic. We collect the blood in a bucket half-filled with cool water, which we place under the neck. We dilute it and use it to fertilize our plants. Nothing is wasted.

The chanting, the stroking and the holding of the animal create a vortex of calm, clear intention. The animals never exhibit any fear. We don’t hide. The goats come to the ancient oak tree where we give death and, in their curious way, check out what we have done when we have completed the ceremony. Afterwards, I usually give an anatomy lesson to the apprentices. Then we carefully skin the goat with a technique I created which leaves the fascia behind, thus eliminating any scraping of the skin. A two-inch thick layer of borax on the wet side of the skin dries it in about two weeks. The skins are stiff, but they make great rugs. At the moment I am sitting on a goatskin from a lovely buck we gave death to several years ago.

That was beautiful Susan.

I truly believe Julie, that we can end war by reclaiming the act of giving death. When every woman is willing to pick up the knife and give death when needed, then there will be no more war. Death is necessary. In the classical images, Kali gives death to one child even as she is giving birth to another. When women put down the knife, we force men to pick it up. Men don’t give birth; they don’t know instinctively how to give death. Certainly they can participate. Certainly they have a gift to give that precedes the giving of birth. But they don’t give birth.

It’s not easy. At the opening talking stick with the thirty women in my German apprentice group, all but one of them complained: “Why are you asking us do this terrible thing of giving death?” The last woman said: “I have come to this apprenticeship because I want to learn to give death. I keep a herd of sheep and I can’t stand it anymore to have to hire a man with a gun to slaughter them.” When the day came, three weeks later, to give death to the rabbits we had tended, verbal battles ensued because so many women wanted to be She-who-holds-the-knife. They understood the value of what I asked.

One past apprentice loved herding my goats. She applied for her “dream job:” herding a huge herd of sheep in the wilds of Alaska. The man who was hiring called me for a reference. He said he usually didn’t hire women because he worried they wouldn’t be able to kill a sheep if needed. I was able to reassure him that I knew she could do it because I had seen her hold the knife. She got her dream job.

That just gives me chills. It’s my favorite part of this interview so far.

Read the rest of this interview here in the Goat Page

How Wolves Change Rivers

As usual, we find Nature has the optimal designs (if we only understand them), that have been perfected over millennia. This beautiful short video is an example of how predators regulate eco-systems towards more fertility.