Anywhere But Here And Back Again

Sometimes it is entirely necessary to disappear. The middle of winter is a good time for that. When the weather is dark and grey and all that is visible outside is brown foliage covered with ice and snow, it is time to flee for a while and gain some perspective. We opted for Disney World.

This planned escape started almost two years ago when we told the kids, "when Meg is old enough to remember the trip" we would go. They held us to that promise. And so, we procured airline tickets and with the help of relatives and friends were able to find a place to house the seven of us and getting us into the parks without completely breaking the bank. We left exactly one week ago on an airplane bound for Orlando and it was perfect!

Disney World is truly an amazing place if you ask me. Yeah, there is a lot of merchandising and food is too expensive, but they are one of the single largest employers in the country and most of their employees seem to be fairly happy with their jobs. I like Disney's optimism, tenacity and vision. Each of the theme parks that we visited had a fairly good message. For the Magic Kingdom it was believe in your wishes and dreams really can come true. Epcot was all about the earth and the people on it - we are many people of many cultures but we all share the same home - it felt a little like taking part in the Olympics. The Animal Kingdom was my family's favorite and expressed the importance of taking care of the other species on the planet - the animals, the plants and the insects. Oh, and it also had the greatest roller coaster ride as well.

I do realize that most of those messages were probably lost on my soon-to-be 5 year old who was completely enamored with the Princesses that she was able to meet, but I think that some of it did sink in for the teen and pre-teen in the crowd.

The other thing about Disney is how memorable it is. I have been to other theme parks and amusement parks, but I don't remember much from them. I think that Disney is so much more memorable because most of the rides have a slightly scary aspect to them - a story line that you get to be a part of and then some aspect of it becomes frightening, but with a good resolution. When you are scared or stressed, you remember things more clearly. I have very clear memories of the first time that I went to Disney when I was 8 due mainly to the fact that I was freaked out by some of the rides. I don't remember being scared, but I definitely remember them.

So, we had a memory making week and now it is back to the same old grind for another few months of winter. But spring is coming, followed in short order by summer and as we remember and process all of the memories from this week, we can start planning for the next fun adventure. To use one of Disney's own phrases, "there is a great big beautiful tomorrow..."

The Darkness Before Dawn

I get up at 5:25 am on Sundays so I can sleep in. I know that doesn't make any sense, but bear with me a minute, there is a method to this madness. We have a very large, very fluffy dog named Gina that lives outside to keep the riffraff away from the farm. She is a wonderful dog and very good at her job, but we also live across the road from a large dog boarding facility and it takes a strong dog indeed that doesn't want to run across the road and see her other friends playing and barking.....Gina is not quite such a strong dog sometimes. So, to avoid the inevitable phone call that will come at 7 am, telling me that there is a large fluffy dog of mine across the road, I get up at 5:25 to put her in her kennel. I do it so early because if I wait until 6:30 am then I stand a chance of inadvertently waking a kid up in the house and, when one is awake it doesn't take long before five are awake. There is no sleeping in when there are five kids running around. But if I can sneak out of the house and back in again really early I have an outside chance of not waking anyone up and actually getting back to sleep myself. I know....how very devious of me. The biggest problem with getting up at 5:25 am and going outside on a January day is that the cold does an extremely good job of thoroughly waking you up. But, if I am fast enough and don't have to track my fluffy dog down, I can get back inside a warm house and curl up next to a warm husband and drift luxuriously back into sleep. There are some mornings, however, when I don't want to. Not sure how many of you have been outside a few hours before dawn in the middle of winter but there is something amazing to see.....the stars! I used to think that "starlight" was really just a figure of speech and that there really wasn't any way that those tiny pinpoints of light could actually illuminate anything, but I was mistaken. On a field of snow in the darkness before dawn, the stars make it bright enough to see the entire world around you. I find myself drifting along behind my dog on the way out to the barn where her kennel is, eyes to the heavens over head and completely enthralled with the constellations. There are always constellations to be found, but most of the clearly recognizable ones are in the winter - Orion, Taurus, Pleiades, Canis Major and Minor hunting with Orion, Perseus. The winter skies are so crisp and clear that there are times it feels as though the stars are within reach instead of millions of miles away. When I was a kid, I used to wait until it was pitch dark outside to go out and do chores and then, while the horses where busy munching hay, I would flop down in a snow bank and simply stare upwards at the expanse of the universe above. This would always come to an abrupt halt however when my mom would flick on the yard light and yell out into the yard, "Jen! Are you alright out there!" She was forever convinced that I was nightly trampled by the horses, so I would answer her that I was fine, (other than being totally blinded by the yard light suddenly coming on and shocking my dark adapted eyes) and stumble my way back into the house. I, at one time, thought that I would like to do astronomy, but then realized that the mystery and magic of the skies was more to my liking and I preferred to look at it always with a sense of wonder rather than know too much about the whys and wherefores of their movements. I enjoy knowing the constellations and the stories behind them - Orion, the hunter sits on the opposite side of the universe from Scorpio (my zodiac sign) because Scorpio bit him. Cassiopeia sits upside down for half of the year due to her vanity. Watching the zodiac constellations march across the heavens during the course of the year also gives me a feeling of connection to people from the past that used only the skies to maintain a sense of time and direction. This morning as I stood peering up into the skies I noted Venus which appears as the morning star at this time. Right nowaccording to the almanac, it is at its brightest that it has been for a while with a magnitude of -4.7. Not that this means too much to me. For me it is so bright that it almost looks like an incoming plane until you realize that it isn't blinking nor is it moving. Suspended in the sky, a planet not unlike the one that I stand on, yet so far away as to only appear as a brightly lit dot in the sky. Thoughts of the magnitude of space make me feel like a mere dust mote in the sunbeam of the universe. How small, how inconsequential am I in this time and space that I occupy. The thought is both alarming and soothing all at the same time. It helps to put into perspective the problems of the week, the animals that I haven't been able to cure, the people that I know that are in a state of distress, the seemingly endless number of questions with no answers. I look to the dark, star filled sky and it simply swallows all those concerns and more. I am not a very religious person. This is perhaps an understatement, but I do believe that there is something that binds us all together - each atom, each grain of sand, each leaf on every tree, each person, each planet and star. I stare up at the starry sky and feel connected in some small way to that infinity above me. I have never felt quite the same sense of profound awe in any cathedral, no matter how magnificent the masterpieces painted on the ceiling, and no wording in any religious text has been able to give me as much peace as the message of the quiet, constant light of a midwinter sky. So, this morning, as I walked back toward the dark, warm confines of the house, I paused and breathed in the crisp, star-filled air and let the peace and quiet fill my soul and felt the gentle roll of the earth through infinite space as measured by the stars.

The 4 - H Conundrum

Had an interesting discussion with my daughter the other day. She is very much into doing things that other people are doing (or have done) lately. I think she is trying to find her niche in the world.

The discussion of interest, however, happened while deciding which 4-H projects to tackle this year. They were due to turn in their enrolment forms and had to have their projects figured out. Food and Nutrition - check, Aerospace - check, Wood Working - check, Horticulture - check, Poultry - ......."what? you don't want to take the chickens again?"

No, .....she wants to take something bigger!

Bigger, as in something that she can "show" around a ring. Not just a simple chicken that you take in and out of its cage while talking to the judge.

She wanted to take a pig because that is what I had done in 4-H. Well, we will have pigs, so I could totally see how the idea crossed her mind, and they say that imitation is the best flattery, but I felt conflicted suddenly. Here is where we come to the conundrum.

4-H is a group that built out of the farmers of the community and as the farming practices started to change back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, so did 4-H. It is now very production oriented - the most animal units in the smallest space for the least amount of money. 4-H does focus on taking good care of these animals and some of the science behind the production is sound, but the bulk of the animals that go to the show are, sadly, raised in confinement type production systems.

We like to imagine that the problem isn't around here. It isn't our neighbors that do this horrible thing to animals, but when you peel off the denial....yeah it is. I drive by several confinement units on my way to work and there is one particular horrid cattle feedlot on the way to my parents with beef cattle piled nose to tail in muck up to their elbows and 6 foot fences all around their tiny enclosure while nice green fields stretch out in every direction for miles around them.

We grow pigs on this farm, but only two or three at a time and very slowly. We feed only organically grown feed and produce scraps from our garden.....well,.... and the occasional chicken that they corner and help themselves to. There is no possible way that a pig, grown in the way that we like to grow them, will gain enough, quickly enough to be shown at the fair. They would be close, but not quite.

Sometimes I wish 4-H went a little farther. Take those pigs on the hoof newly judged and then take them to the butcher and re-judge them based on meat quality and taste after they are butchered. Take it even further and judge them based on nutritional differences found in the meat. I would happily have Faye take a pig to the fair then.

So, how to change the system? This is what I contemplate as I drive by confinement units, hear the latest news on the farm bill, receive letters from my Alma mater vet school and cringe.

Speaking of Vet school....there, too, lies a problem. I cut my teeth in the production animal world in the very bosom of all farm animal knowledge....Iowa State. Did three years of an Animal Science degree and then launched into Vet school with the plan to become a mixed animal practitioner. I learned all the ins and outs of production animal medicine and surgery only to give it all up after I graduated. I started out at a mixed animal practice, but since I was 4 months pregnant with the daughter that now stood in the kitchen staring me down for a bigger animal to show at the fair, I had done only small animal work. Time, distance, and a lot of kids later I find myself where I am now - firmly entrenched in disliking my own industry for their narrow minded views on producing animals.

The AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) themselves are pro-confinement operations, pro-antibiotic use in the feed, pro-large scale production. I try to unravel the "why" behind their political stance on all of these issues and I honestly can't see it. Are they (and by they I mean the production animal vets that make up the AVMA) afraid of what might happen to their multi-million dollar money makers - essentially IBP and Tyson foods? Are they afraid of what those huge corporations might do to them? Personally, I say "who cares!" I am a scientist and I have to look at all the ways and means of raising an animal - which is best? Best for the animal and best for the people eating the animal? Becoming a scientist teaches you how to think critically and then becoming a veterinarian promptly brainwashes you into thinking that the large scale production method is the way to go. It would seem to me to be in the best interest of the veterinarians of the country to be the leaders in raising animals - dictating what truly is the best method of raising an animal. We are supposed to be the animal advocates.....or is it that we are supposed to be the large scale production owner's advocate.....I forget....the brainwashing makes my head hurt.

I distinctly remember one production class. The professor was talking about beef production - raising cattle to put on the most meat as fast as possible and what they need to be fed to do that. Silly me, I always thought that cows were supposed to eat grass - they are ruminants after all, designed by thousands of years of genetics to be able to eat the stuff that omnivores and carnivores can't eat and digest. But here was a professor giving us a recipe for what to feed to beef cattle to make them grow really fast....and it wasn't grass. Not only that, but he said....and I remember this almost word for word because it struck me as somehow very wrong, "their feces should be so "hot" they almost bubble" What this actually translates to in non-vet lingo is that they have very loose stools and you will sometimes see a little 'froth' or 'bubble' on the top of the cow pie that they leave. Apparently, that is a sign that they are getting a really high protein feed and laying down a lot of muscle. But then he went on to talk about the liver abscesses that this can lead to because when we feed cattle this unnatural "hot" feed it screws with the bacterial flora of their rumen and then essentially end up with what amount to ulcers in the gut. The bacteria cross from the intestines into the liver and set up shop. These cattle may be putting on a lot of weight, but they are miserable doing it. Imagine someone cramming those "high performance energy bars" down your throat when you have a constant case of severe heart burn and gastritis. What is the production professor's answer to this? Antibiotics in the feed to help keep those bacteria in check.

Wrong, this seems so wrong.

And how did this start? I have no flipping clue. Somewhere along the line the big became bigger and they started thinking of ways that they could produce more faster and make more money. And, as so often happens, overproduction happened and then you have to make a market and a reason - we have to "feed the masses" , have a marketing campaign - "Beef! It's what's for dinner!"....remember that one? The prices eventually fall and the little guys go bankrupt and the big just keep getting bigger and start having a lot more political clout because they have the money to control the legislation. This is all a very sick and twisted system that we live in. What is done to mass produce slowly becomes the norm to the point that veterinarians start learning how to deal with the mess that is the confinement raised beef cow, hog or poultry and accepting it as norm. The norm becomes what is pandered to and taught to the next crowd of young aspiring vets and what is sent down to the extension services in each county as "good production practices" and further taught to young 4-H members contemplating what to take for fair that year.

So, we have come full circle - from me, growing up taking pigs to fair, thinking that this is the best way to do things, to a full veterinary degree later realizing that maybe we should be raising our animals differently and trying to find a way to help my children realize that as well, while fighting a system that tries to teach them the exact opposite.

"Can't do pigs, Honey."

"But why not?"

To which I attempted to explain the above at an 11 year old level.

"Well, how about a cow? Can I take a cow?"

"Beef steer or dairy cow? Because you know that the beef steers don't come home, they eventually go to market and we are back to the production conundrum again."

"A dairy cow. They come home right? And we can raise them like we want to and still take them to show right?"

By God, I think she might just understand and have it figured out. And, she may have just put me over a barrel. Yes, we have talked about getting a cow at some point. Why not now? Why not for a 4-H project? That would give us two years to watch it grow, build what will, no doubt, need to be built to have a milk cow in residence and re-learn my dairy cow medicine that I might need to know.

Therefore, I am now in the market for one newly born Brown Swiss heifer calf. If anyone should know a local dairy that would be willing to sell me one, let me know.

Photo credit: Farmer's Daughter.....clearly another person after my own heart.

A Year Without Grocery Stores.....

I like this woman's idea! A Year Without Grocery Stores and what is even better is the fact that she doesn't even consider going back. Less waste. Deeper connections with people. Healthy food. The complete opposite of what the entire country has been doing for a decade now. Brilliant!