Radiance of the Ordinary

An excerpt from Tara Couture’s new book

When Tara was a girl, not quite a teenager, she had a conversation with an older woman that has stayed with her into adulthood.

“…she told me a secret about getting older: While people would see me as older—as Tara at twenty or Tara at forty or Tara at sixty—on the inside I would remain the same person I had always been. To young me, that was a stunning revelation.”

- Tara Couture, on p171 of Radiance of the Ordinary

I still marvel at this.

I did not know Tara at twenty, or at forty, and neither of us is quite yet sixty, but I am grateful to know her now, and to bring to you this week a taste, just a taste, from her new book.

Some of you will be familiar with Tara’s exquisite writing from Slowdown Farmstead, and some will remember Mila’s Story. Whether you read her every week, or had not heard her name before just now, I assure you that you will discover the unexpected in her book. For oh, it is a good and glorious book.

Tara, by her own admission, likes finding her weak spots. In so doing she reveals strength. She explores the world and meets it as it is, but also asks questions of it, and strives to improve that which can be improved.

Life grows bigger. And then, life grows smaller.

- p76, in the chapter called Motherhood

Radiance of the Ordinary: Essays on Life, Death, and the Sinews that Bind was published by Chelsea Green Publishing this month, and the following chapter is printed here with permission from the publisher. Couture’s book arrives in three parts: Harvest, Home, and Evermore. This chapter is from Home.

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Of Blood and Butterflies

In the autumn it is time to harvest our animals. They are fat and slick from a spring and summer of feasting on sweet grasses and forages. They are at their prime, thick with health and joyful with their lot in life. I walk among them, bringing pails of apples for their dining pleasure. Some of the old cows come right up to me, asking me to pop the apples right into their mouths. Others are shyer and will only take the apples if I lay them on the ground at their feet. I know who’s who. Some, like my oldest milk cow, Bea, prefer a nice, deep scratch on the soft, malleable little flap of skin under their chins. She’d rather get that than an apple any day.

I walk among our herd, looking at their bodies. Looking to see who’s “finished.” I vividly remember how Richard taught me to do this many years earlier. We stood together, leaning over his fence on a quiet prairie afternoon. An endless blue sky, uninterrupted by forest or mountain, spread out above us. His was the land of the prairies. A red-tailed hawk perched on a fence post across the field. He could spot those hawks with ease, whether they were nearby or a tiny speck in the distance.

Richard pointed out the steers to me, one by one, explaining the differences in their bodies. “You see that one, Tara? It’s not ready.” I asked “why” again and again that day. And then, every time we worked around the cattle, I pointed out the ones I thought had a nice finish on them and waited for his expert assessment. He saw things that my lack of experience blinded me to. But I began to understand, in my feeble way. Mostly, I realized, as with everything, there is an art to being a cattleman as much as there is the skill and knowledge.

Now I walk among my herd, Chief Evaluator, deciding who lives another year and who dies. The responsibility of my decisions weighs on me. As I move through the herd, looking at their bodies, I remember each of their stories. When they were born and to whom. I look at my fat heifer whose grandmother is still here, the two of them bonded. When they chew their cud, mesmerized in peaceful pleasure, they do so together, side by side on a grassy mound before the tree line. The heifer hasn’t had a calf in four years, despite the bull’s best efforts. She’s infertile, and her time here is coming to an end. There’s no decision left to be made, only acceptance to be had.

Two fat steers, both over three years old now, are contenders as well. I walk between them, looking at their rear ends, the fat cover over their bodies, that rounded fullness still absent in their younger herdmates. And all the while, as I look at these living animals and imagine the flesh beneath their hides, all of life sings around me. Birds and sweetgrasses. The cattle move about peacefully, lazily swatting at flies with their tails, staring off into parts unknown. They are hypnotized by their own chewing and burping and swallowing, their collected forages making their way through the various chambers of their ingenious digestive systems. They are a marvel, a brilliant, life-giving marvel, and I am going to eat them. Not only am I going to eat them, but to eat them, I must kill them.

In our world of wedges—great buffers to keep us comfortable—we have created all manner of devices to keep us from the grit of life. But grit remains. We just pass on our refusal of participation to the poor soul who cannot refuse. Every autumn, when it comes time to harvest our animals, I think of the person standing in the pool of shit and body fluids in a commercial abattoir. Every day, all day long, that person looks into the eyes of fearful, wild-eyed beasts and fires a captive bolt stun gun, slashes arteries, and jumps back before the blood fills their rubber boots. In a moment meant to be a sacred act, a great responsibility between eaters and that which nourishes them, it’s an abomination. These beautiful animals are treated only as meat, even while their spirits still have hold. It’s a separation disguised as an efficiency, but in truth, it’s a robbing of our relationship with nature. A gift slapped away.

I was once told not to name my animals. “Too hard to kill them if they have a name.” Every now and then someone still says something similar. I don’t suppose they’re ready for my standard response.

“Why would I not name an animal? One of the great joys of farming is having relationships with my animals, spending time with them and getting to know them. Is it because they’re going to die that I should not name them? Every single person I know is going to die, but I don’t limit myself in my relationships with them.”

I’m usually met with a shrug or a concession. “I suppose.”

I anticipate the fall animal harvest for weeks before. It’s a busy time, and it’s emotionally exhausting, too. We will harvest sheep and pigs if we have them. We will harvest some of our cattle and rabbits, chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks. We will fill our freezers and our root cellar with the meat of our farm and that which we hunt. From the day they are born, every single one of those animals moves toward the day of their death, and that death, save an accident, will be at our hands. We are duty bound to the responsibility, the rightness of our obligation.

Harvest day is a dreaded day in my heart. It’s heavy with responsibility and sadness. Sometimes I feel unworthy of participating in the day. But it’s also a day of great reverence and gratitude. There is profound joy in the overwhelming magnificence of God’s creations.

“Duty bound.” That phrase used to mean something. It’s a phrase wrapped in honour and sacrifice. To the duty, in the duty—rightness. Rightness matters to me, to us. Within our gratitude for the life-giving nourishment these animals provide us lives the duty of our hearts. Our animals, born here on this land, will know no trailer, no line to the gallows. They will remain here, under the same sky they gazed upon when they were born. They will be in their herd, peacefully lounging, when a bullet enters their brain and their life ends. Their blood will return to the same earth their bodies fell onto as they slipped from their mothers’ warm bodies.

In the moments after we kill an animal, we sit on the earth, hands on the animal’s body, praying our prayers of thanks. I tell stories I’ve collected from having known the beautiful beast. We send it off with words of gratitude while all around us something profound is happening. There, in the field, a mystical transformation. The physical into the ethereal. The contained into the limitless. Not something ending. Something expanding beyond the borders of life. Under my hand, the warm body transforms from that which I have known into that which isn’t mine to know. And in the wake of this alchemy, a body remains. Nourishment. Ever-giving life.

We have given our animals a good death, solemn and sacred, and now there is joy. Absolute joy. Joy in the relief of everything having gone well. Joy in the abundance of beautiful nourishment. Joy in the assuredness that life continues on. We hang the body and carefully slide our sharp knives along the inside of the hide. The thick skin slowly peels back to reveal the quality of life we have given to the animal. The fat is deep yellow from the sweet, rich forages of our land’s pastures and wilds. The muscles and organs are deep red, rich with maturity and the effort of carrying this animal up hills and into valleys, through trails and wild places. The meat smells sweet and earthy and I am proud. I’m proud for the work we have done. I’m proud we have done things the hard way, moving these animals daily across our land, keeping them for years longer than they would live in a feedlot, making sure they were given all we had to offer. I am proud because the meat that’s left for us is a thank you more important than any measure or gauge. Evidence better than any other of a life well lived.

The blood pooled on the grass around us attracts a lone yellow swallowtail butterfly. She comes and floats her delicate legs on the congealed blood, feeding on it. We watch in amazement. Every year we hope the hungry swallowtail butterflies will return for their blood feast. The first time we witnessed this, we were startled. Weren’t butterflies meant for daisies? But nature, as nature does, laughs at our ignorance. Of course a butterfly delights in the nourishment of blood. Of course the wasps find us, landing on the flesh of the animal and pulling off little round balls to bring back to their homes. Of course we’re all tied in together.

And therein lies the wisdom of a butterfly, weighing her actions not against the opinions of her butterfly clan but with the knowledge built right into her, fed into her from antennae connecting to a mysterious ether beyond. She encourages me to be brave, too. To embrace the wildness and rawness of the parts that lie dormant inside of me, cultivated into submission by a culture that tells fairy tales in place of deeper meaning. We believe in our limitations and weaknesses because they are a comfort to us. Familiar and dependable.

But when I’m honest, I cannot deny that here in this field, there is something beyond the reach of my words or reason. There is blood on my hands, on my arms, soaking through the linen of my shirt and into the open skin that contains me. Blood from another life is absorbed into me, becoming part of me. I don’t just see it there, I feel it, deep in my body, changing me, layering me, pulling me deeper and deeper into an untouchable realm. It’s beauty-full. Full and saturated, concentrated and thick. This is a world ungovernable by man. This world cannot be manipulated with fairy tales. There is nothing here that can be marred by the misunderstandings of a lost human. This is real. This is true. The blood fades into thirsty butterflies, human skin, and the dark, cool earth. All of us connected, now, through that shared blood.

That same blood flowed from my ancestors and into me. The blood of their animals, hunted in forests and farmed in fields. From the earth into us and back to the earth again. To my descendants, a drop of my blood with all of life echoed through it.

I wonder, how do the swallowtails drink if too many people buy meat from grocery stores? How does the blood return to the soil? How do the coyotes and the vultures feast on the entrails from the farmer and the hunter? Our wedges, our separation, spills over into all of life. A chink in the chain. We cannot divide ourselves without dividing everything.

A world of wedges. Lovers kept from lovers. The great healer kept from the ill at heart and mind. A cheap peddler’s promise of easy and slick sold to the hungry while the truth is kept tucked away. It’s too hard. It’s too ugly. You’re too feeble of mind and spirit. Look here, watch this, eat this. The real business of life, they assure us, is the business. Go to the right school. Wear the right clothes. Buy the right car. Lust after material possessions. Then lust and lust and lust again. Gerbils on a wheel staring out of their plexiglass cages on their endless pursuit to nowhere.

The bison removed the biggest wedge I had—my fear of death. A fear so strong I had unknowingly shaped my life around it. Without that day with Richard, without the many days that followed, wherein I immersed myself in what I was being taught, I don’t know if I would have survived the pain of what was to come in my life.

Radiance of the Ordinary: Essays on Life, Death, and the Sinews that Bind, by Tara Couture, came out this month, and I highly recommend every single page.