This speaks to me as a small sheep farmer and environmentalist. "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." I have a still young ewe that has twice miscarried, and it was very sad as she has incredible maternal instinct and tried for hours to get her limp lambs on their legs. The reality is she likely has a loose cervix and cannot carry a lamb to term. She will become nourishment, but she displayed the beauty of that pull to protect new life.
Can relate, but with a rabbit - a very sociable and amazing lil creature. I love animals, I love eating them, and the many folks who think "meat comes from a store" saddens me. I can't eat anything (vegetables as well, yes, I've gone and said it, they have defenses against being eaten as well...) without wondering or investigating where it came from, and under what conditions. The further food gets from being whole, the more confusing it becomes to my psyche. It's not something I will on myself, it's just there sitting gently in my consciousness
Very, very gifted writer. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Tara Couture and I are members of the same club - one no one wishes to join. We both lost a child to Covid19. Tara lost her young daughter to suicide - Mila's response to the insane lockdown policies and their effects, the actual consequences of acts carried out to an end. I (we: my husband, our four daughters, and I) lost my young son David, 25, to the virus itself, three months before Tara's devastating loss.
Both of these deaths can be laid directly at the feet of Anthony Fauci, and EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Dazsak, Francis Collins, and every other person who contributed to creating SARS CovV2 - because that is the origin of every harm done: its (C19's) very existence is due to those people bringing into being something that did not exist prior, that should not exist, that wouldn't have sprung into being by itself, and it harmed so very many in various ways. Simply: they caused our children's death. They killed our children.
I gather, reading this excerpt, that Tara has gone on in her book to explain that her years on the farm, in particular the relationship she personally has with Death -and Life, lived up until those very deaths she herself is responsible for- aided her in bearing her child's death. Specifically, she ties the Bison to this. I expect we'll learn about the Bison later as we read on.
I have no such experience. I actually choose not to I suppose. We all could find a way, a place, to gain this lack, to offer ourselves to partake in the act of slaughtering, but we don't; at least most of us don't and never will. I have no 'bison', so to speak.
I don't know how I bear the injustice, the disappointment, the holidays with our kids (because 4 is not 5), his birthday, every February 9th, the flashback of the doctor calling that evening and telling me "he didn't make it", the instances of going a not oft drawer and stumbling upon a piece of paper with his handwriting on it, but most of, all the separation.
I don't know how I bear the separation.
But I am glad that Tara has found what she has. I'm glad for Tara's 'bison'. And I'm glad that she has found a way to express what lingers inside her mother's soul, and that she's willing to share that.
I see hints of the Catholic Church's Eucharist in these lines:
"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. ....All of us connected, now, through that shared blood."
During the Sacrament of Holy Communion, Catholics receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus in the species of bread and wine. Per the Catholic Catechism, (section 1331), "we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body."
Wonderful as the gift of a cow may be, it's infinitely better to be in communion with God!
God this is exquisite writing (I subscribe to her substack, but never seem to get to it lately... though I did save her video post of the kind of rabbit pen I long to have one day on my own little "homestead"). Her sensibilities about the closeness to the animsls are so familiar to me, reading this is like putting on a cozy old jacket I've worn for most of my life. Besides the rabbit husbandry (with some duck, turkey, goat and chicken scattered through my years), I've processed more large game meat than I could recall, and the life of the animal is always sacred to me. It matters how they live, and it matters how they die.
I can scarcely imagine surviving my own child, it's almost too painful to ponder. But for someone who lives close to the earth, to blood and organs and hearts that stop beating as I handle my work with gratefulness, and that amazing feeling when I think I know what my animals are "saying" to me... somehow, I think, just possibly, I could survive it as well.
This seems like a book I might need to have in my canon. Thanks for sharing
This speaks to me as a small sheep farmer and environmentalist. "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." I have a still young ewe that has twice miscarried, and it was very sad as she has incredible maternal instinct and tried for hours to get her limp lambs on their legs. The reality is she likely has a loose cervix and cannot carry a lamb to term. She will become nourishment, but she displayed the beauty of that pull to protect new life.
Can relate, but with a rabbit - a very sociable and amazing lil creature. I love animals, I love eating them, and the many folks who think "meat comes from a store" saddens me. I can't eat anything (vegetables as well, yes, I've gone and said it, they have defenses against being eaten as well...) without wondering or investigating where it came from, and under what conditions. The further food gets from being whole, the more confusing it becomes to my psyche. It's not something I will on myself, it's just there sitting gently in my consciousness
Beautiful writing.
Very, very gifted writer. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Tara Couture and I are members of the same club - one no one wishes to join. We both lost a child to Covid19. Tara lost her young daughter to suicide - Mila's response to the insane lockdown policies and their effects, the actual consequences of acts carried out to an end. I (we: my husband, our four daughters, and I) lost my young son David, 25, to the virus itself, three months before Tara's devastating loss.
Both of these deaths can be laid directly at the feet of Anthony Fauci, and EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Dazsak, Francis Collins, and every other person who contributed to creating SARS CovV2 - because that is the origin of every harm done: its (C19's) very existence is due to those people bringing into being something that did not exist prior, that should not exist, that wouldn't have sprung into being by itself, and it harmed so very many in various ways. Simply: they caused our children's death. They killed our children.
I gather, reading this excerpt, that Tara has gone on in her book to explain that her years on the farm, in particular the relationship she personally has with Death -and Life, lived up until those very deaths she herself is responsible for- aided her in bearing her child's death. Specifically, she ties the Bison to this. I expect we'll learn about the Bison later as we read on.
I have no such experience. I actually choose not to I suppose. We all could find a way, a place, to gain this lack, to offer ourselves to partake in the act of slaughtering, but we don't; at least most of us don't and never will. I have no 'bison', so to speak.
I don't know how I bear the injustice, the disappointment, the holidays with our kids (because 4 is not 5), his birthday, every February 9th, the flashback of the doctor calling that evening and telling me "he didn't make it", the instances of going a not oft drawer and stumbling upon a piece of paper with his handwriting on it, but most of, all the separation.
I don't know how I bear the separation.
But I am glad that Tara has found what she has. I'm glad for Tara's 'bison'. And I'm glad that she has found a way to express what lingers inside her mother's soul, and that she's willing to share that.
I'm so so sorry
Thank you.
Beautiful chapter. Thank you for sharing this book with us.
I see hints of the Catholic Church's Eucharist in these lines:
"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. ....All of us connected, now, through that shared blood."
During the Sacrament of Holy Communion, Catholics receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus in the species of bread and wine. Per the Catholic Catechism, (section 1331), "we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body."
Wonderful as the gift of a cow may be, it's infinitely better to be in communion with God!
In some ways, it can be one and the same
God this is exquisite writing (I subscribe to her substack, but never seem to get to it lately... though I did save her video post of the kind of rabbit pen I long to have one day on my own little "homestead"). Her sensibilities about the closeness to the animsls are so familiar to me, reading this is like putting on a cozy old jacket I've worn for most of my life. Besides the rabbit husbandry (with some duck, turkey, goat and chicken scattered through my years), I've processed more large game meat than I could recall, and the life of the animal is always sacred to me. It matters how they live, and it matters how they die.
I can scarcely imagine surviving my own child, it's almost too painful to ponder. But for someone who lives close to the earth, to blood and organs and hearts that stop beating as I handle my work with gratefulness, and that amazing feeling when I think I know what my animals are "saying" to me... somehow, I think, just possibly, I could survive it as well.
This seems like a book I might need to have in my canon. Thanks for sharing
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
Wow! At the end the question remains: who is this person. Thanks for the “pre-print”.