(Continued from Part 1.)
Our goal is to limit our trips to town by producing as much food as possible. There are still a few items we will need to purchase, salt, flour, etc., but those are easily procured in bulk to limit our trips. I am a student of history. I study how and what our ancestors did as they settled this country. They had to be resilient and self-reliant. They had to deal with heartache and failures. Most that pursued manifest destiny failed, but regardless, those men and women were tough. They kept on going. It is easy to romanticize a time we did not live in, but their fortitude eventually settled a wild land.
I have heard that it took two generations for our society to lose all “coping skills.” What this means is our lives have become so easy and reliant on technology. Most of the society does not have basic skills, like building a fire. We do not know where our food comes from, and we are driven solely by corporate marketing tycoons who tell us what to buy and when. Our society now values feelings more than knowledge and grit. We praise and worship creeps and mentally deficient individuals instead of trying to better ourselves. Our society is soft. As a nation, we appear weak.
So many people in this country lack the basic skills to take care of themselves. Look at how many people get stranded and die sitting in their cars during a snowstorm; a snowstorm they had been warned about for several days. We are not taught critical thinking or how-to skills. High school graduates don’t know how to balance a checkbook, make a healthy dinner, and some have no desire to learn to drive.
Why drive when you can play a video game? Through the lack of real-world skills, technological advances and a lack of interest, our culture no longer has the grit and perseverance that our ancestors did when they headed West for a better life. Can you imagine this generation leaving everything they have in search of a place they had never been just for the chance of a better life?
When I brought the first batch of chicks home to our new house, my one-year-old son waited anxiously. Obviously, as parents, we built up the occasion. He was so excited and loved holding them. Often, we have people ask us what our chickens’ names are. I always respond, “We do not name food.” These chickens are part of our lifestyle, not pets. It’s at these times when I remember what those working cowboys had said years before. Our animals are tools we use to give us healthier food, a sense of freedom from corporate products, and the plain comfort of knowing we have food regardless of the supply lines.
To this day, we have not named any of our animals and we have taught our son where his food comes from. On occasion, when we sit down to dinner, he asks if we slaughtered whatever we are eating. I include him in the butchering process as often as he wants, which is often. He has helped us pluck feathers from turkeys and chickens he’s helped raise since they hatched. He has learned not to name or get attached to any of our farm animals, because eventually, they either get sold or slaughtered. My son is learning self-reliance, resiliency and emotional strength. These skills are part of who he is and will be with him the rest of his life. We do not give our animals any type of human emotion, characteristic, or feeling.
I firmly believe all our animals are tools, even our cat. We feed our cat, but you better believe his job is to keep the rat, mole, and gopher population in our orchard in check. He earns his keep during the spring and summer. During the fall and winter when the weather turns cold, he stays inside, looking pitifully out the window at the yard he’s not patrolling. Our chickens give us fresh eggs which we either eat, sell, hatch, or trade. When we hatch out a new batch of chicks and they reach laying age, we sell off our older hens, (we do not keep any chicken more than 2.5 years), and we separate the roosters into a different area. I let the roosters get to a certain size, then I harvest them. After processing the roosters, I dig a hole near one of the fruit trees and bury the remains there. Free, natural fertilizer is far superior to any of the synthetic stuff out there. I not only relish in the fact that I am getting free fertilizer, but more so, I love the fact I am giving something back to the Earth.
Please do not think I am insulting or looking down at anyone who has pets or keeps the more traditional farm animals as pets. I know plenty of people who keep pigs, chickens, goats, and cows as pets. It works for them, and it makes them happy. Having companions and a purpose is what keeps people going. I will never tell anyone how to live their life; the government does enough of that already. Pets have been taken over by corporations like everything else in our society. Billions of dollars a year are spent on our pets. For several decades, our culture has put human emotions and human characteristics in animals and because of that, we find it acceptable to dress them in Halloween outfits and seasonal goodies and treat them like humans.
Trapping and Hunting to Protect Our Way of Life
Earlier, I mentioned the predator-proof chicken coop and pen I built when we bought our house. I later mentioned the pen where we raise roosters to later slaughter. We call that pen the meat pen. The meat pen is not 100 percent predator proof. It is 2 chain link dog kennels bolted together with deer fencing I put on top to keep aerial predators out. During the years we have had chickens, we have been very fortunate with only losing two chickens to predators. The first loss came from a Cooper’s Hawk in the main chicken coop the very day the protective netting to cover my pen arrived. I was preparing to put the netting up the following morning, when suddenly, I heard quite the ruckus and saw the hawk take off with a pullet. Since then, we have not lost any birds from winged predators. The only other predation that has taken place was in the meat pen. The meat pen does not have a subterranean barrier because it has been moved several times as our farmstead has developed, and it will move at least one more time before it’s assembled in its permanent location.
The predation was caused by a local family of foxes. They dug under the kennel and got a rooster. Losing a future meal is frustrating, but it is part of farming. The same morning I found our rooster had been taken, I found a neighbor’s chicken lying headless, on our property. As I was picking up the dead chicken, I saw several of the foxes run from under a nearby outbuilding. Upon further investigation, I found they were living under that building. There was plenty of other evidence indicating they had killed many other local chickens. It was time to stop them. I set several traps and within a few days, I removed several foxes. I have not had any issues with foxes, since then.
It is as easy for our culture to put human emotion on wild animals as well. Look at the number of people who approach animals in the national parks every year. “They look so cute.” “They’re so majestic.” “I don’t know how anyone could ever kill something so innocent looking.” We have heard every thought, feeling, and argument about the pursuit of wild animals. I admire an animal in the wild for everything it is. As a hunter and outdoorsman, I admire those animals more than the average Joe who has no connection with the land, with the wild habitat those animals’ roam. As a farmer, as a hunter and as a trapper, I pursue animals in their natural habitat, learning about the animals and their ways.
The moment that any animal pressures my livestock, my livelihood, or my family, I no longer look at it as something to admire. I look at it as a threat to my way of life and what I love. When we first moved into our house, my infant son was playing inside, near the screen door, when he fell and started crying. When my wife came to check on him, on the other side of the screen door was a large, male grey fox. The fox was simply being a fox and was brought in by my son’s crying. A baby cry and a dying rabbit sound very similar. The chances of the fox attacking my son were slim to none, but my family’s safety is my number one priority. Where we live, there is no shortage of predators, primarily foxes. Each year, we see more. Thinning out the population during general hunting season is not only fun, but also necessary for our way of life.
A large majority of the trapping I did for the federal government was in urban areas. I learned to trap along public walking paths, next to industrial buildings and areas where people frequently visited. I learned different ways to hide traps in plain site as well as different techniques that attracted and successfully trapped the targeted critter(s). The remainder of the areas I trapped were somewhat “wild” areas where I didn’t have to disguise or trap so secretively. Obviously, I preferred the latter, however the skills I learned, and hope to pass on to you, in both urban and rural environments, can help to protect your livestock, put food on the table, or money in your pocket should you ever need to trap for profit.
(To be continued tomorrow, in Part 3.)