Big bumps in a small world

I thought recently, as I split and stacked firewood that I had bucked up for two days prior, that the homesteading idea is actually rarely anything like glamorous, or maybe more on point, less glamorous than I've seen it depicted now and again.  Dealing with the coming season's firewood can be tedious, monotonous, especially going it alone.  Drive and motivation are provided by precognizing the warmth and security of a hearty fire in the wood stove, our sole source of heat.  The gleaning and processing of food is not too far off the same calculus, acutely when considering the long arc involving the preparation and maintenance of fruit and vegetable acreage: it's a seasons-long process, and it takes an approach that requires labor along the lines of months, not hours.  There's so much uncertainty, so much Grace, so much understanding.  And no small factor of humility: if you think you know some absolutes, you don't.

I like tomatoes, and I pick 'em and eat 'em.  I really do like kale generally, too.  Our ladies in the chicken yard are laying so steadily and in such profusion that they almost make me feel something akin to proud, and I thoroughly enjoy eating the eggs. I thank them every day and try to give them the best that I can.  I also gently handle and spend time with the roosters that are next in line to be processed.  ('Process' being that agrarian euphemism that so gently and subtly covers so much ground.)  I tell them that they're doing great, eating well and growing into beautiful birds. I also tell them that we are soon going to kill them and eat them.  Sometimes this makes me feel like I'm mildly psychotic, but it's the only way I know right now to have an authentic relationship with them.  I don't want it to be a secret; it's important that we are very clear in the presence of whatever God we claim to know.  (Still...it may be a bit weird.)  It's more fair warning than I've ever given any tomato, at any rate.
We have these sheep, too.  I can hardly express the joy I get from spending time with them, and I thrive on being in rhythm with them throughout the seasons.  They help ground me, they share so readily their open hearts, and can even bolster my esteem (typically when my grain bag is full), to say nothing of all they do to nourish and tend the land here.  They're remarkable creatures in my eyes.  Some I have come to know over four years now, which is to say some of the sheep and I have really gotten to know each other.  And so it doesn't necessarily shock me so much as it sends odd tectonic tremors through me when we lose one. Jens (the shepherd) and I spent a couple hours with the flock today, and I surprised myself at being somewhat taken aback when he asked if I felt like one of the elders' time was coming before the next breeding season.  I'd noticed her bag has remained distended beyond the weaning, and that she'd slowed appreciably, she'd suffered mastitis at last lambing; I'd also been enjoying how she's become so much more 'friendly', slower to leave our impromptu morning meetings.  I cognitively know what all these things point to, for the health of the flock, her lambs, her self.  I also affix emotional value to her as well.  As an individual involved in animal husbandry (again), this is to my detriment.
We have a pig that will be ready to harvest in a month or so.  The last harvest experience I had was with our dearest friends, folks whom I love and trust and admire very much, and to my chagrin (literally, I'm sorry to say), the act raised so many questions for me.  Questions that I'd not asked myself in decades.  Questions of dominion, of place in the world.  I ate pork as I ate tomatoes or eggs...chicken, too.  How had I allowed my spirit to slumber, sleeping unfeeling, unfazed, through the high holy act of consumption?  How had I forgotten that for that being, I was witness and complicit in the earthly ultimate sacrifice?  I can blame media or marketing or just about any anesthetic I can conjure, but none of it is the Truth, and the Truth has little to do with 'how' or 'why': Truth, in my opinion, is about the present and exists without questions.  Contemporary truth is that I've held in solemn regard the sheep that I've consumed in the past years, and it's because they have had names to me.  But so did that pig.  So do those roosters.

I expressed to Marcy, coming out of that post-harvest funk, that I needed to speak with some holy people, to contact some shamans, to ask worldly natives about what their relationship is with husbandry, with dominion, with consumption.  I needed some answers.  And Marcy, as only she can, called me out...lovingly.  No one on this planet was going to 'give me answers', and I knew it.  She's right, of course.

In the time since, I've noticed the wisest people don't offer any words.  They listen, authentically, kindly, with real empathy.  Some offer how they feel, asking if I think it'll help.  And without fail, they ask what I'm feeling.

I say I need more time walking the land, in prayer.  In reverie.  In gratitude.  I'll leave glamour to the media.