Two Views To A Kill

TODD:

I literally brought Crosby and Stills into this world. I felt obliged to be there when they left it.  Ever since they were born on Saturday, April 29, 2013 we knew they were destined for the butcher. If they’d come to us as ewes, we might have kept them, but we’re far more interested in breeding and building the flock for colored fleece. So why did we have them in the first place? Their mom, Daisy, was an “insurance policy” we acquired for free in the fall of 2012 to increase our odds of having lambs in the spring of 2013.

Our original plan for the ram lambs was to keep them through the winter, shear them in March with the rest of the flock, and then send them off to the butcher. However, as the weather turned cold last fall and we began feeding the flock hay, Peg suggested we accelerate matters. Why? Two reasons really: 1) with the addition of the “new nine” sheep the hay consumption has increased significantly beyond our original plan – two less mouths to feed is less hay to buy, and 2) we sold Daisy’s sheepskin rug in December and received a very good price. So, Peg’s thinking went, butcher them sooner rather than later and tan their hides. I agreed.

Having experienced making a run to the butcher back in August (see Daisy’s Last Day), we decided to try a different approach with Crosby and Stills. We had heard from two local farmers that George’s brother Chet does a great job on site. After that, the carcass goes to Green Mountain Smokehouse for cutting and packaging. I called both and scheduled the date – Friday, January 17.

Maybe about a week later, we saw a posting on the SHEEPBREEDERS list serve about someone interested in purchasing whole lambs. Peg reached out and we connected with Rafik. He was interested in both lambs. Like Chet, he would do the slaughtering on the farm, then pay us and take the carcasses with him. Since we can’t legally sell the meat (the government frowns on selling meat that has been slaughtered on farms instead of in inspected slaughterhouses), this was a way to take in some money instead of paying out money to put more lamb in our freezer. We decided to go for it.

Yesterday morning, Rafik and his friend Moaz arrived at the farm around 11 am. After introductions and a brief chat about logistics, we headed up to the barnyard. We had separated Crosby and Stills from the rest of the flock during the morning feeding, but we hadn’t locked the barn door, and somehow they had gotten out. With a pail of grain, it was easy to get them back in the barn and away from the rest of the flock. Crosby has always been the most trusting sheep, and Stills tends to follow him.

PEG:

Unable, maybe unwilling, certainly too fearful of my own reactions, I hid in the house as the three men and Todd stood in the shed preparing to slaughter Crosby and Stills, our wether lambs. I sat answering emails to keep my mind from wandering up the slope to the shed, but when I emailed a colleague that I was basically cowering in the house, I felt stupid and a little curious.  I got to the low open window of the shed, pressed my body up against the wall and very carefully peered in. Crosby was already dead.  Todd stood with his arms across his chest. Stills wandered around the guys, seemingly clueless.

They suspended the body from the ceiling and I whimpered as they began to remove his beautiful hide now streaked with blood. They were slow, careful, and skilled; bantering easily with Todd about smoking lamb meat, soccer, and the weather as he watched unflinchingly.  Part of our agreement was to have the hide removed intact. As the skin began to drape away the animal became something else, hanging meat, I guess, and my need to cry was replaced with cautious curiosity and my feet began to freeze. I continued to watch until my cold feet drove me inside.

TODD:

Peg decided she couldn’t watch. I think the boys would have been agitated if we left them in the barn with strangers, and the whole reason for doing this on the farm is to minimize stress. Not that I HAD to stay, I WANTED to stay.  I NEEDED to experience this first-hand.  Why?

Last fall, a fellow Hartford sheep farmer, Chuck Wooster, who wrote Living with Sheep: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Flock in 2005 (and we both had read before moving to Vermont) gave a talk at the Howe Library on the ethics of killing farm animals. In addition to sheep, Chuck raises chickens and pigs. He is an excellent writer (a guest columnist for the Valley News) and a very thoughtful person. One of his points during the talk was, essentially, if you raise animals for meat, you should participate in the kill.

I could tell from the start that Rafik and Moaz were experienced – not only with the animals but also the owners. They were calm, friendly, peaceful, respectful, and efficient. They picked a lamb, stabilized him quickly over a plastic sheet and paper towels laid in the middle of the barn floor, and quickly slit his throat. He never really struggled. Of course he kicked his legs immediately, but they had both his front and back hooves pretty tightly secured in their hands. In what was probably 60 to 90 seconds the lamb was still. I won’t go into details from here, but they carefully removed the hide in one piece – important to us and they knew it – gutted him (keeping the liver and heart), put him in a garbage bag, and took him out to the car. In total it took about 45 minutes.

PEG:

I came back out with warmer boots and again leaned up to the open window to see Crosby’s hide in a pile on the shelf at the window’s edge. They covered the cleaned carcass in a large black plastic bag, tied it at the top and carried it out. They were now prepared to kill Stills. They gently laid him down and brought the knife out. I ducked my head away, brought it back, saw a tail wag hard, the backs of the men faced me as they kneeled on Stills to finish the job. Watch. Don’t watch. Yes, you can watch. You can’t see much anyway. Watch. Every time I turned away, I saw the rest of the flock just a few feet away chewing cud, picking over the remaining hay in the feeder. Back to the window. Stills was still moving. I turned away, started on chores in the barn yard. I took water tubs to the garage and cleaned them out, returned them, filled them with water, keeping busy but my mind was on what was going on in the shed. When I looked again, Still was hanging from the rafter, most of his hide was hanging free, they’d moved faster this time. I watched for a while; saw some stuff being pulled out from the far side of the suspended carcass.  I threw questions at the men, “what part of the lamb do you smoke?” I must have seemed so odd to them shoving my head in the window instead of coming inside the shed. Somehow the wall was my protection. I can see, engage with random questions, but I’m not really there, I’m not responsible. I’m not part of this chore. I could stay. I could go.

TODD:

About halfway through the process, Peg’s head appeared at the window. She would watch for a while, then go away, come back, ask a question, go away. She reminded me of the neighbor on the old Tim Allen show – Home Improvement – the character that you never saw below the nose over the fence, Wilson. She asked me which one had gone first, and I wasn’t certain, but I think it was Crosby.

While Rafik and Moaz worked, Stills was walking around the barn, smelling what was going on, not at all appearing distressed. Eventually, he stood next to me in the corner, chewing his cud. I’m almost sure it was Stills, because when his turn came, Rafik and Moaz struggled a little more getting him secured on the floor. He fought some, not much, but some. Crosby, being the bottle lamb, was more trusting and would have gone down easier.

After two hours, I was cold.  The temperature was about 36 degrees, and Rafik and Moaz were not dressed as warmly (or so it appeared) as I was. But I was COLD. We said our goodbyes and Peg worked on preparing the hides. I went inside, got the fire burning in the wood stove, and poured myself a scotch.

PEG:

When they were done removing the second hide, I loaded both in our hand cart and took them behind the house, laid them one at a time on a snow bank and gently rinsed away the blood and some of the muck.  I laid them both on grass where snow had melted consciously saying to myself, “these belong to Crosby and Stills,” but the hides were now wet heavy dirty sheepskins and Crosby and Stills were, for me, no longer part of the process, the scene. I set up a raised wooden bed in the basement, brought the hides down, put them fleece side down, and generously salted the wet, pliable skin side. In about three weeks we’ll ship them to Bucks County PA to the tannery that handles almost all the pelts on the east coast.

TODD:

Twenty four hours later, I’m still thinking a lot about the experience. I have no regrets about our decision for Crosby and Stills. They had good, albeit brief, lives and never suffered. We learned from them. We cared for them. As we’ve progressed on our collective journey as junior sheep farmers, more than one friend has suggested we should do our own slaughtering. I’m not saying I would, but now I know that I could.

PEG:

Only now as I write, I let my mind go to the Spring, to memories of bottle feeding Crosby in my lap, to the Summer when Crosby sought me out in the fields, and earlier this morning when he found me and let me rub his face and neck to say good bye.  Crosby adored me his entire life.