Friends or Food....

As it is Boxing day and the fridge is full, literally full to the top, with Turkey, sausages, bacon, salmon and pate, it makes me wonder if this new year will be a time when I will move a step closer to becoming vegetarian.

The idea of moving to a remote Scottish island, often cut off from the mainland and the supplies brought in by ferry, never daunted us; self sufficiency has always been a goal.
We have grown a huge variety of vegetables here, but when it comes to meat, there is no getting away from some cold hard facts of life... and death.

It started with mackerel.

Our first house was on the side of a small sea loch in Gravir. At certain times of the year shoals of mackerel would come into the loch and on a warm evening, Mark could stand on the local pier, catching fish after fish after fish.  He would mostly give them a quick donk on the head to finish them off quickly on the pier. But sometimes he would put the carrier bag from fishing on the kitchen draining board, and it would still be flapping about and rustling when I came in to de-head and gut them for the freezer.

When we moved to our permanent house in Kershader, I finally got to realise a day dream when I was given my first 6 chickens, 2nd hand.  They were a bit too free range to begin with, but the eggs were outstanding.

The thing about a flock of chickens is they are so easy to keep when you have the space, and so easy to expand when someone also gives you a cockerel.

The joys of baby chicks...

Mark always told me I should be the one to raise and look after them while he handled the unfortunate end part. He developed a stress free method for popping their clogs... but nowadays, after 5 years of doing the necessary, he is starting to feel the strain. I guess we also know them all a lot better now...

The island has an abattoir, not for chickens unfortunately, but certainly when we upped the game and got some piglets, it was the only option.
They arrived adorable.

And in just about 6 months turned into huge freezer packs.

It was hard to get rid of them, they had been good pets, wonderfully amusing to keep but I'd forced myself to always see them as food...

...difficult all the same.  The bigger the animals, the higher the anthropomorphosis.

So we went back to poultry after that with some ducks.

It was all a bit uncomfortable, and though we managed to 'enjoy' one of them, the rest - lucky for them - escaped and flew away to live happily ever after.

The chicken flock continued to expand which was wonderful for the eggs, but as far as meat was concerned we had now given up on rearing table birds.  Watching them at every stage of their lives, I couldn't help but see life from their perspective - soaking up the sun's warmth, scratching in the ground for anything interesting, cuddling up to each other for warmth and comfort, or just hanging out.  All such basic needs, just expressed by way of their own environment.

Then things got super cute when we were given some orphan lambs by a neighbouring crofter.

Sheep are the main way that people round here get their protein.  We hope to take on about a dozen sheep in the future and have lambs from them. So far we have 2 of our orphans still, and they are still adorable, probably more so because we have seen them, tended them, fed them since babies.

Today I went out on a frosty, clear, quiet afternoon, with all that food in our fridge, but none of it self sufficient.  I fed:
- 4 ducks, reared from eggs this time and not so inclined to escape

super cute, and no where near intended for the table, at Christmas or any time.
- 4 goats, taken on as a favour to a friend despite other peoples comments that they'd make a good stew

- 2 dozen chickens and 1 cockerel

- 2 soppy sheep, 1 ewe 1 eunuch

and a partridge in a pear tree! (No, no partridge but we did plant a pear tree from seed - maybe next Christmas..?)

All these animals, they may be wild, they may be smelly (though not necessarily bad) they may not be domesticated pets, but they are certainly not destined for the freezer.

It might be a problem, but as I still can't make the connection between them, and food, for now vegetarianism is still on pause.