Et in Arcadia ego
I’ve always had animals. Even growing up in an apartment in a city in Switzerland. More than once we nearly missed trains, trams and busses because we had to wait for my hippo, unicorn, lions, monkeys, pigeons, cats and dogs to get in and find a seat. At one point I had a journal with all the weights, feed rations, favourite foods and important characteristics of my entire menagerie. I would get up at 5 o’clock before school so I could feed a whole zoo full of imagined animals living under my bunk bed. Even though I’m not that easily coaxed out of bed at 5 in the morning anymore, I still very deeply care about my animals. I did have to come to a few harsh realizations over the years and working with real animals. A hippo would never fit into a tram, neither would I be allowed to keep lions under my bed and unicorns are really hard to find, as, apparently, they only come out of the woods when no one is looking and it has to be icy cold as well. Shattered dreams everywhere. So, I build new ones.
My notion of what farming would look like has always been rather romantic. In my mind it was all babies and snuggles, little lambs and piglets running over vast pastures, immense gardens producing without anyone having to do anything (because let’s face it, none of my cacti survived longer than a couple months). Cows would knock on the door every morning, ready to be milked and then happily go back out on pasture and live a good, happy life. Shovelling shit has never bothered me, so even that part fit perfectly into my pastoral world. Meat came from, well I did not talk about that, I just ate it. My happy farm knew no cold, no death, no drought, no floods. Today, I know the death part was fairly unrealistic and it is a reality I’m still adjusting to and learning to embrace instead of fear. The rest is non-negotiable (especially the cold, ha-ha welcome to Canada). In my teens I was faced with the uncomfortable truth, that most farms do not operate like my dream farm, most meat that lands on people’s plates has never seen sunlight, it hasn’t run over vast pastures, no piglets playing with lambs and calves and little chickies. I found myself in a world of CAFO’s and I did not like it, not one little bit. I tried going vegetarian, I lasted about a week. I started protesting animal rights, supported various organizations to do the job I felt like I couldn’t do, being stuck in the middle of the city I felt like my options were limited. I had to move across the ocean to find what I didn’t know I had been looking for. A piece of earth to create a safe haven for my lambs and piggies and chickies to run and play and eat grass and sunshine and bugs and happy ever after. Every day I am learning that there is a lot more to that reality than I initially thought, that my menagerie encompasses so much more than what I see; I am not just feeding my animals above ground, there is a whole army below and while they are not as fluffy as my sheep, they do an incredibly important job making nutrients available to the plants my sheep and goats and pigs eat, effectively feeding my animals for me. As a kid I never even imagined the hidden world below our feet, I would have loved it! Millions of little creatures in every handful of soil? AMAZING! I believe I would’ve gladly added amoebas, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes to my collection under the bed (I admit, there was the odd snail living in a cardboard box, the odd red bug occupied my polly pocket houses). When I thought about farming, I would’ve never dreamed of the complexity I was to encounter. I never knew how interwoven and all-encompassing nature’s systems were. I’m learning, I’m reading, I’m listening, hoping to create one piece of heaven after another, until the whole world is nothing but babies and snuggles, death imminent, unavoidable, oddly comforting, pastoral pastures, my very own Arcadia.
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