Vegetable Violence
It rained all last night and this morning. I've been inside reading about "American technological foundation narratives": about how we have dreamed that the axe, the mill, the railroad, or the aqueduct brought our civilization into being. After a particularly grim chapter on child labor and union busting in early mills, I decided to go out to the garden for a bit. The rain had stopped, and some time outside would be cleansing, relaxing-- a small indulgence in my own set of myths, wherein my gardening makes the world a bit better.
It was brutal out there.
The night's rain and day's overcast brought out all sorts of creatures: slugs of several colors, a few different kinds of tiny, beautiful snails, small slimy things for which I have no name. They were in the spinach, the lettuce, the radishes, the thyme. I killed them all. The slime of the slugs stuck to my fingers when I crushed them, wouldn't wash off when I rubbed it on the grass. Revenge, I suppose.
The night's rain had spurred unprecedented development of the weeds that came in with my purchased topsoil. They had grown an easy half-inch overnight, waving conspicuously over the baby lettuces and seedling kale. Their new height made it easier to pinch them en masse. I must have plucked hundreds of them in the twenty minutes I spent in the garden.
This is all killing of the unwanted, the pests. The wanted veggies are not spared, though-- thinning takes as many plants, if not more, as eventually make it to the dinner plate. Without rigorous thinning, they'd all come up stunted, of course. But nontheless, lots of baby plants come under my pinching thumb-and-forefinger each year. The same ones that take the weeds, and the snails, and the slugs.
I love and respect my vegan friends, but sometimes I feel that they are laboring under a misconception. Deaths occur every day in my garden. The creatures that die are smaller, perhaps, than the cow or pig-- their cries less wrenching, their neural structures less complex-- but they die at my hands, nonetheless. I use blood meal and bone meal to fertilize the plants and keep away the deer: these slaughterhouse byproducts once bothered me, but they are dual-purpose, effective, and non-synthetic, so I use them. I would guess that many, if not most, organic farms do the same.
When a woodchuck decimated a part of his bean patch, the otherwise vegetarian Thoreau killed, butchered, and ate it. Were it not for my suburban squeamishness, I would do the same: I am certain that his is the moral choice. The deaths of the slugs and the woodchucks are to preserve the vegetables, the deaths of the slaughtered animals enrich them. Choosing to eat only vegetables may reduce the amount of killing on your behalf in the world. But you are lying to yourself if you think that it eliminates it.
Gardening can be gruesome work.
It was brutal out there.
The night's rain and day's overcast brought out all sorts of creatures: slugs of several colors, a few different kinds of tiny, beautiful snails, small slimy things for which I have no name. They were in the spinach, the lettuce, the radishes, the thyme. I killed them all. The slime of the slugs stuck to my fingers when I crushed them, wouldn't wash off when I rubbed it on the grass. Revenge, I suppose.
The night's rain had spurred unprecedented development of the weeds that came in with my purchased topsoil. They had grown an easy half-inch overnight, waving conspicuously over the baby lettuces and seedling kale. Their new height made it easier to pinch them en masse. I must have plucked hundreds of them in the twenty minutes I spent in the garden.
This is all killing of the unwanted, the pests. The wanted veggies are not spared, though-- thinning takes as many plants, if not more, as eventually make it to the dinner plate. Without rigorous thinning, they'd all come up stunted, of course. But nontheless, lots of baby plants come under my pinching thumb-and-forefinger each year. The same ones that take the weeds, and the snails, and the slugs.
I love and respect my vegan friends, but sometimes I feel that they are laboring under a misconception. Deaths occur every day in my garden. The creatures that die are smaller, perhaps, than the cow or pig-- their cries less wrenching, their neural structures less complex-- but they die at my hands, nonetheless. I use blood meal and bone meal to fertilize the plants and keep away the deer: these slaughterhouse byproducts once bothered me, but they are dual-purpose, effective, and non-synthetic, so I use them. I would guess that many, if not most, organic farms do the same.
When a woodchuck decimated a part of his bean patch, the otherwise vegetarian Thoreau killed, butchered, and ate it. Were it not for my suburban squeamishness, I would do the same: I am certain that his is the moral choice. The deaths of the slugs and the woodchucks are to preserve the vegetables, the deaths of the slaughtered animals enrich them. Choosing to eat only vegetables may reduce the amount of killing on your behalf in the world. But you are lying to yourself if you think that it eliminates it.
Gardening can be gruesome work.