Dispatched from the Haven or Where Do Ribs Come From?

Yesterday, Independence Day, was one of the harder days of growing and harvesting our own food.  Since I  had the day off, and it has been about 6 months since they were born we decided to harvest (my favorite euphemism) two of our young male goats.  I thought about getting pictures for this, but decided better of it. 

I used to say, that if you couldn't handle animals dying, you probably shouldn't eat meat.  Or more directly if you couldn't kill the animal yourself you shouldn't eat meat.  I'm not sure if that is true now - it's kind of like saying if you can't handle the sight of blood you shouldn't have surgery - which is more obviously not true.  In any case, it is a truth that all of us who eat meat contribute to the death's of animals.  At some level for me this goes back to the idea of food and connection.  It is a difficult part of what we do, and arguably the hardest part of harvesting the goats is the day leading up to it.  I certainly thought about what was to come consciously at times, but I'm not sure how much consciously my emotions were involved.  That said, late in the day I had a pretty profound sadness come over me.  I can't say what it was about - maybe it wasn't the goats, and it was just run of the mill ennui.  Or maybe it was difficult deciding this is what I was going to do with my evening, some part of me rebelling.  I'm not sure.  At the point when it was definitively decided that this was what was happening, however, I returned to being more about what I was going to do and the sadness passed on.


Here we do our best to make the death's as quick and painless as possible.  For the most part we try to make it like a normal day for the chosen goats.  The first difference, however, is they don't get grain that morning.  The less stuff in their stomach's the easier they are to clean.  We still send them out with the other goats, so they get forage and water throughout the day.  Since it was hot and there were thunderstorms about we waited until about 5:45 to really get going.  Leading up to this the knives are sharpened, the 12-gauge slugs are purchased, and the butcher's bandsaw is put together.  


Then someone goes and gets the first goat to be dispatched and a disposable bowl with a little bit of goat food in it.  We put the food down so that the shooter (that's my role) isn't pointed towards anyone or anything that would be dangerous if there was a ricochet.  I already have the shell in the gun, and walk up to something like point blank range.  This time our first goat was pretty docile, and he easily walked up and started eating.  I was able to take my time and line up my shot.  Once the trigger is pulled I see a moment of the dramatic change in the head, and the sudden appearance of red all around.  I immediately walk away.  Another person comes in quickly with a knife to cut the throat so that while the heart is still pumping the blood can be pumped out.  Then we take the goat and tie him to one of the beams in the barn so that he will be ready to be skinned and cleaned.


Then we bring the second goat over.  Last night he was skittish.  When we first put the food in front of him and let go of his lead rope, he immediately bolted.  I took the slug out of the gun, put it down on the deck, and we had to get him corralled again.  This time we tied two lead ropes together so that everyone could be out of the way, but he couldn't run too far away.  We brought him back, put the food in front of him, and he was either more relaxed or more into the food.  In any case, he began to eat.  A skittish goat is troubling for me as the shooter, because I need him to stay still while I walk up to have him in close range.  So I rushed this one a little more and felt more stressed by it.  Nonetheless, the result was the same: about half of his head disappeared, someone else comes in with a knife to cut the jugular and we tie him up.


Following this comes skinning.  From here on out things are basically the same for both goats, so I'll only detail one of them.  We skin from the neck down, splitting the skin along the chest and slowly working it down using a knife to cut the connection between skin and the fat and muscle beneath it.  Then the internal organs are removed.  It was around here that gallows humor began.  Last night it was when someone reached inside the carcass (now an it, no longer a him) to pull out the last organs (the lungs and heart).  It struck me as funny, because it looked like he had his hand inside a puppet.  This led to a moment of pretending that one of us was hosting a children's show with a dead goat as his side kick, asking "Apollo, you don't seem to be talking anymore.  What happened?  Cat got your tongue?" At this point the camera would pan over as the cat finishes off Apollo's tongue.  And tension is lessened.  


Once skinned and gutted, the feet and head are cut off, and we wash the body.  This takes longer than expected, because there are traces of goat hair here and there all over.  We wash, and wash and wash.  This has the additional benefit of helping to cool the meat down so that it doesn't spoil.  Finally we are satisfied that the goat is clean, and it is time to fire up the saw.  This is a relatively new piece of equipment for us.  It takes some time to set up (including a wasp sting for yours truly earlier in the day), but saves so much more time in preparation.  Now we set it to cut 1.5 inch slices and the rest is pretty quick work.  From here we carry the slices into the kitchen to be cleaned again.  


At this point it more closely resembles what we usually think of as meat when we buy it in the grocery store, than it does the animal that it really is.  We clean the pieces of meat in the sink, and then package them in freezer paper, label them and put them in the freezer.  We decide to keep out the ribs because they are hard to package, and they became tonight's dinner.  And so things go, we live, we cause deaths, we consume life.  It brings me back to connection.  Connection to reality much more than a chicken nugget can bring.  Connection to the cycles of life and death that sustain.