The Joyful Housewife

In which I discuss my hopes for the New Year, our upcoming move to the country, and ponder the reasons that I eat seafood, but not land animals.

This is the animal that sparked this post: The Large Black Pig, an endangered, heritage breed. I don’t eat them myself, but I do acknowledge that one of the ways to support these heritage breeds is to support the farms that breed them - by eating them!

This pic is from the blog for Eversfield Organic; it shows how cute these pigs can be. Click to visit their website.

I’m not one of those crazy vegetarians or vegans who freaks out if a bit of cooked meat touches anything that might go into her mouth and spouts diatribes at fellow diners as they are biting into their perfectly cooked steaks and burgers. In fact, I’m not even a vegetarian proper (the word for me would be something like lacto-ovo-pescotarian, because I eat dairy products, eggs, and creatures of the sea. I just don’t eat mammals - those that walk the land and have feathers or fur or wallow in mud (I haven’t eaten any of these animals in 18 years, and I show no signs of doing so for the next 18).

Why am I even bringing this up?
Well hubby and I have been very excited about our upcoming move to a small town on the Eastern slope of Colorado. We have been living in Denver for the past three years and love it here, but he has received an unbelievable offer to work in Montrose, CO,  and we feel that we cannot turn it down.

Our days are now spent listing all the ways our lives will change for the better in Montrose. The name of our future town has become for us a short-hand for all of our hopes, dreams, and New Year’s resolutions. We will eat better and exercise in Montrose. We will have a dishwasher! We will be able to hang our clothes out to dry, instead of using the energy wasting dryer. We will have a yard for our old dog to run freely in (without annoying any cranky neighbors). We will finally buy bikes and be able to ride them in town without worrying about getting run over! We will hike! We will ski! We may try out fly fishing! We will bake our own bread! And most importantly, we will have an amazing garden and start canning an preserving our harvest for the winter months!

Life will be perfect in Montrose!

Now, I’m not flaky: I am ever the tiresome realist. I know that moving is not a panacea for all our shortcomings and that each of these changes will take conscious effort on our part. It’s just hard not to let our excitement propel us forward through the short, dark days of winter, when we get up before the sun does. After we got over all the anxiety about moving from a great city, which offers tons of culture and bustle, restaurants and parks, we began to see all the positives.

We won’t have to fight traffic ever again! We will have the opportunity to have as much land as we want along with a nicely sized house for the same money that would limit us to a two bedroom house with nary a yard in Denver. We will have a two car garage again to keep snow off our cars. We will have a country garden, with tomatoes, herbs, and all sorts of veggies and fruit trees, without having neighbors fighting us for gardening space. The list goes on and on. For every worry that we have, there are several reasons why this move is an opportunity of a lifetime for us.

Enter the Hobby Farm dream. It turns out there are a collection of Popular Farm magazines about every aspect of living off the land on a “hobby farm.” A hobby farm derives its name from the fact that you won’t be able to make any real money off of your animals and produce. You will be able to provide for yourself, and sell a bit of the extra, but it ain’t gonna make you rich or even support you as a sole income.
I’ve been devouring the pages of these magazines, dreaming of all the ways I can expand my skills and interests to cultivate a gigantic vegetable garden and even have cute little farm animals! This isn’t so far fetched for me. I spent summers on my godfather’s farm, and even though he didn’t have any animals other than ponies, my neighbor friends did.

Our husband and wife comedy routine commences daily as I show him pics of heritage farm animals and say, “Get ready, babe, we’re gonna have chickens next year.” And he responds, “Like hell, we are!”
He just doesn’t see it yet. But he’ll come around. I’m kidding, I know I haven’t the discipline to shovel animal manure and chicken droppings every day - but I like to stretch my imagination to try the idea on for size once in a while. Lord knows he does the same thing. His latest dream, after we plant the orchard and the grapes for making our own wine, is olives. He’d love to find a strain of olives that would actually grow in Colorado and make his own olive oil. Now who’s the crazy one!

Anyway, the real reason for this long post is my disbelief, after looking at all the cute pics of farm animals, that anyone would actually want to eat them! The magazine boasts the docile, friendly, and loving nature of these animals, and in the same breath mentions how tasty their meat is! I know you’re not supposed to name them and all that, but for me that would be the whole point. I wouldn’t want cute black pigs, and funny goats for meat, but for outdoor pets! To give me a laugh and brighten my day and remind me that there is beauty and life in this world outside of my head.

So then why is it okay for me to eat fish and cute little lobsters (which purportedly hold claws with each other and mate for life!)? I’ll leave that for all to ponder and perhaps answer it in the future because this post has become so long it might grow it’s own feathers and fur! Just let me leave you with the knowledge that I’m not entirely bothered by the idea that it might be hypocritical to eat some living creatures and not others. I never said I was perfect.

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