Bob Comis operates Stony Brook Farm in Schoharie New York where he and his wife pasture raise heritage breed pigs, lamb, goat and poultry. In his posts, Bob shares his thoughts on farming, regional food systems, and how it all could be better and different.

Since March, there has only been life on the farm (other than a couple of unfortunate piglet deaths). However, we are getting to that time of year when life and death commingle and the real purpose of the farm reasserts itself. In the interim, the place has seemed like something of a petting zoo, especially since Peter loves the animals so. That, as it must, is about to change.

We are loading up the first batch slaughter pigs of 2010 tomorrow afternoon. It has been long enough since I’ve trailered any animals to slaughter that I am back to that sort of apprehensive place where I feel the nag naggging at me from within the deep corridors of my mind/brain/soul/whatever.

“Am I doing the right thing?”

“Is it okay to raise animals with care only to have them killed so that we can eat their meat?”

“Should I quit — quit farming, quit eating meat?”

“Is there something inherently wrong about it, so wrong that I will find myself thrown into some karmic hell?”

“Wilbur, is that you?”

In spite of these questions, in spite of the nag nagging, I will load the pigs up and drop them off to be killed so that we can eat their meat.

With these questions unresolved, with them lingering, hanging over me, really, like a cloud, I go about the work of a livestock farm, the main purpose of which is to raise animals for slaughter. Because of my unease, I live a life of contradiction, but, rather than become immobilized by unresolved contradiction, I accept things as they are: I am a livestock farmer, and my unease, my uncertainty, my apprehension, do not change that brute fact, that brute fact that I feel so deeply I feel it in my bones, I feel it tingle my skin, the same way, I suspect, a deeply religious person feels their god coursing through them: I kill — ethical vegetarians/vegans would say “murder” — for a living, but, that is not all that I do; I also provide an alternative to the jungle: I provide freedom and care, I provide the barely restrained (except for an electric fence perimeter — some of whom would liken to a prison) expression of the animals’ interests — sustenance, water, shelter, foraging, rooting, wallowing, and, perhaps the most important, play and carefree lounging.

It is a hard life, in this case not because of the physical demands, but rather the psychological demands of unresolved contradiction, of living life from within contradiction, of being/Being contradiction. But, again, by accepting things as they are while being mindful of the struggles and aware of how I interact with them, I am able to keep going, slogging through the mud and the muck, through the blood and hard looks, through the hunks and chunks of meat, of flesh, of life taken to provide sustenance, surely, but pleasure as well, and perhaps primarily. I take pleasure, great, thrilling pleasure, in the flesh of the animals I care for, that I raise up from wee pigs and wee lambs.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

I think so. I think not.