This past weekend Ben and I put our little homestead flock of eight laying hens and a rooster into their summer coop and out onto fresh grass. For the past few weeks since the snow melted they’ve been wandering around and around their packed dirt barnyard looking for tender green things to munch on.
We set up a temporary paddock for them, opened the door of their coop, and they spilled down the ramp and immediately got to work scratching and eating. I spent about 30 minutes watching them express their natural chickenness. Scratch, scratch, peck. Scratch, scratch, peck. One hen finds a worm and three more chase her around trying to grab the worm before she gobbles it down.
My mind wandered to this sacred relationship between humans and the animals that we enter into relationship with. In the system that Ben and I dance with we have sheep, cows, chickens, dogs, and cats.
The cats keep the pests in check. The dogs keep predators at bay. Otto alerts us when a cow or ewe needs help with birthing her babies. Moss helps us move the cows and the sheep. They greet our Airbnb guests and keep us company during work that can sometimes be lonely. The sheep and the cows feed the soil. They feed our perennial pasture system and they feed the garden that gives us delicious vegetables and beautiful flowers. The sheep provide us with fiber, meat, and tallow that can turn into soaps, candles, and balms. The cows provide us with meat, and milk that also feeds the entire farm.
And what do these animals receive in return? For one of the laws of this earth is that everything operates in cycles. Although humans are doing their darndest to take and take and take from the earth without giving back to her, it’s not something that can continue forever.
Here at Wild Earth we have woven an invisible contract with our animals. In return for everything you give us we will give you a life in which you can express your natural instincts to the fullest potential.
The dogs live and work next to us as dogs have for thousands of years. They receive their share of the bounty they help us raise. The cats get warm milk. The cows and sheep spend their days out grazing fresh grass all summer. Babies stay with their moms until an appropriate weaning time. Chickens are rotated to fresh green spots so they can scratch and peck to their heart’s content.
What if this contract isn’t actually optional? Over the past 100 or so years the dynamic of humans and animals on farms has changed drastically. From something similar to our farm to animals as mere units of production. Units of feed in to pounds of meat or milk out. Animals taken out of their natural environment and put into concrete barns where they’ll never know what it is to graze or lie down in fresh green grass. Pigs put into birthing crates where not only can they not build nests for their babies, they can’t even move other than standing up and laying down in the exact same spot.
As I sat watching the chickens scratch I wondered how this affects us on a spiritual level. How it affects us in the nutrients and the energy that we’re eating through this food. The further into this world of relationships I get, the more it becomes clear that there are things drastically wrong with the way most humans are living in modern society. And of course, those things are becoming more and more apparent in how they manifest themselves.
I don’t feel surprised by what is happening in the world today. It feels like a symptom of the last few hundreds of years of how humans have been living. We began hunting and murdering women in close relationship with nature, aka witches, in the 15th century. Nature became something to use. In the past two centuries this has accelerated rapidly bringing us further and further from the way humans have evolved to live over many thousands of years.
How do we right this ship? I truly don’t know. Our food system as a whole feels like a giant tanker ship headed off the edge of the world. I don’t know how to turn it around. I do know that there are thousands of farms like this one exploring how to raise food truly well. With a reverence for the earth and the animals and the humans that are eating the food. And that in these chaotic times it’s the chickens pecking in the grass, the lambs romping around with each other, the cats basking in the sun, and the cows quietly ruminating who are my greatest teachers in how to live.
From the hills of Vermont, Katie