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Tl;dr if you want to keep genetic diversity in domestic animals, and/or you want there to be domestic animals in our future, actively buy animal products from small diverse farmers. Also I'm burnt out and struggling some.
You can save seed from rare plants and skip growing it for a couple years. You can keep those seeds in a freezer for quite awhile and you don't lose the variety. Animals are different. To preserve domestic animals you need a big enough gene pool of live, young or breeding-age animals. Sure you could freeze semen and ova and hope someone revives them someday but that requires a lot more tech and it isn't being done to the breadth of genetics we need to preserve. Plus, animals have not only genes but culture. Three years ago my geese did not know how to dig for potatoes or shake their own apples off trees: they learned. My sows make better nests when they're around older sows who have made nests.
If you believe animals are a useful and necessary part of ecosystems and human food systems-- obviously I do, for many reasons I won't detail here, but you can definitely ask me about it-- this is a hard time. We're losing an awful lot of our diversity.
Feed has gone up from roughly $14/bag last year to $20/bag this year for me. That's a lot more money out of my pocket, my discretionary income, every day. Animals eat every day. I'm trying to figure out ways to keep this working but I'm not sure I've recovered from the 2018 evacuation or the covid abattoir disappearance where I couldn't legally sell meat to reimburse costs.
I don't really *like* selling meat to people I don't know, either: meat is the outcome of a pretty intense and special relationship between me and my animals. That relationship should also include the person who eats that meat: it should be done with reverence and something like love. So I waffle on what to do, I spend money to feed animals in order to keep the breed alive, I spread the genes and support other folks raising animals when I can. I spend money on feed instead of on housesitters for vacations and so I don't really take vacations, and I burn out, and I feel dark about the future of all of this.
When I put my hand to these plants and animals I can feel the chain of people who made domestication and husbandry choices generation by generation. Every person who breeds a plant or an animal makes choices that change it, just a little bit, honing it for the next person, fitting it better into the environment. One break in the chain and animals are lost, plants may be lost. I'm a link in that chain. In cold winters oils and fats are so important to survival, and they're hard to get from plants and take good soil (which will be mostly underwater soon, tbh) and a lot of physical labour. If someone needs a small, very hardy animal that can forage and sort itself pretty well over winter and provides huge number of calories at some time in the future they will have that animal, in part, because of my work with Ossabaws and various geese. Maybe they will be able to have a kinder community because of it. If someone needs to grow vegetables in a short season (short because it's north, or because part of the season is too hot or too dry to grow in) they will in part have those because of my stewardship and spread of those seeds. I have trouble thinking of charging for that too: the more people have these seeds the more likely they are to survive.
Whenever someone gets breeding stock from me and grows their own animals out, or gets seeds from me and shares their own saved seeds with friends, or learns a skill from me and shares those skills with friends: that makes it worth it. When people honour the connection of their food and their ecosystem and their body, that brings me so much joy.
When I'm burnt out I think, if folks today don't support diversity then they don't deserve to have it given to their future generations. It's not a good way to feel.
So I'm looking at what to do going forward, I don't know what that will be at this point. This is just a rambling post in keeping with my Dinosaur Farm videos, trying to be real about what this experience is for me without shining it up any and maybe looking for some words of encouragement. I'm putting myself into a bit of a farm business class to see if that helps me thread all these needles and come up with some sort of useful tapestry of action.
Meanwhile I'll likely be down to the coast with ducks and geese (and maybe pork?) and soap this fall; once I have abattoir dates I'll be taking deposits.
I know a lot of you are actively working to make the world a better place in your area of knowledge or expertise. This is mine. I wish us all so much success.
You can save seed from rare plants and skip growing it for a couple years. You can keep those seeds in a freezer for quite awhile and you don't lose the variety. Animals are different. To preserve domestic animals you need a big enough gene pool of live, young or breeding-age animals. Sure you could freeze semen and ova and hope someone revives them someday but that requires a lot more tech and it isn't being done to the breadth of genetics we need to preserve. Plus, animals have not only genes but culture. Three years ago my geese did not know how to dig for potatoes or shake their own apples off trees: they learned. My sows make better nests when they're around older sows who have made nests.
If you believe animals are a useful and necessary part of ecosystems and human food systems-- obviously I do, for many reasons I won't detail here, but you can definitely ask me about it-- this is a hard time. We're losing an awful lot of our diversity.
Feed has gone up from roughly $14/bag last year to $20/bag this year for me. That's a lot more money out of my pocket, my discretionary income, every day. Animals eat every day. I'm trying to figure out ways to keep this working but I'm not sure I've recovered from the 2018 evacuation or the covid abattoir disappearance where I couldn't legally sell meat to reimburse costs.
I don't really *like* selling meat to people I don't know, either: meat is the outcome of a pretty intense and special relationship between me and my animals. That relationship should also include the person who eats that meat: it should be done with reverence and something like love. So I waffle on what to do, I spend money to feed animals in order to keep the breed alive, I spread the genes and support other folks raising animals when I can. I spend money on feed instead of on housesitters for vacations and so I don't really take vacations, and I burn out, and I feel dark about the future of all of this.
When I put my hand to these plants and animals I can feel the chain of people who made domestication and husbandry choices generation by generation. Every person who breeds a plant or an animal makes choices that change it, just a little bit, honing it for the next person, fitting it better into the environment. One break in the chain and animals are lost, plants may be lost. I'm a link in that chain. In cold winters oils and fats are so important to survival, and they're hard to get from plants and take good soil (which will be mostly underwater soon, tbh) and a lot of physical labour. If someone needs a small, very hardy animal that can forage and sort itself pretty well over winter and provides huge number of calories at some time in the future they will have that animal, in part, because of my work with Ossabaws and various geese. Maybe they will be able to have a kinder community because of it. If someone needs to grow vegetables in a short season (short because it's north, or because part of the season is too hot or too dry to grow in) they will in part have those because of my stewardship and spread of those seeds. I have trouble thinking of charging for that too: the more people have these seeds the more likely they are to survive.
Whenever someone gets breeding stock from me and grows their own animals out, or gets seeds from me and shares their own saved seeds with friends, or learns a skill from me and shares those skills with friends: that makes it worth it. When people honour the connection of their food and their ecosystem and their body, that brings me so much joy.
When I'm burnt out I think, if folks today don't support diversity then they don't deserve to have it given to their future generations. It's not a good way to feel.
So I'm looking at what to do going forward, I don't know what that will be at this point. This is just a rambling post in keeping with my Dinosaur Farm videos, trying to be real about what this experience is for me without shining it up any and maybe looking for some words of encouragement. I'm putting myself into a bit of a farm business class to see if that helps me thread all these needles and come up with some sort of useful tapestry of action.
Meanwhile I'll likely be down to the coast with ducks and geese (and maybe pork?) and soap this fall; once I have abattoir dates I'll be taking deposits.
I know a lot of you are actively working to make the world a better place in your area of knowledge or expertise. This is mine. I wish us all so much success.