The meat I hate to love

The one element in our garden I've found by far the most enjoyable, is the chooks. We got our two Australorps last September so over the last five months we've been able to enjoy not just fresh eggs but also watching the hilarious creatures. They really are a delight to watch doing the "chicken thing". They cluck about the yard with their heads held high, peck in the grass, dig holes to sit in, eat anything they can get their beak on and hop around merrily all day.

The welfare of chickens that produce eggs is something we've all heard a lot about over the last several years and that was a big part of why we got our chooks; we eat lots of eggs. It's pretty general knowledge these days that egg-producing cage chickens live in very high density, are unable to go outside and are literally just stressed and unhappy egg making machines. We had nothing but good reasons to stop buying into that unneccessary cruelty and have our own birds. After a bit of research I'm disappointed to discover that Free Range Eggs actually only represent 11% of the Australian egg market. Even with that small figure, it is certainly an area that the consumer has led the market through their buying choices though--not long ago there were no Free Range options on our shelves at all. 

All that aside, that isn't what I've, yet again, become disillusioned to discover. The other night I recommended a book to a lady on the green4me facebook page called The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. It's about how food is produced. I have skimmed it many times before looking for specific info but never sat down to read it cover-to-cover. Anyway, I started it on Friday night and have found it to be unputdownable, similar to a Patricia Cornwell book of horrors.

I've finished the chapter on the farming of meat chickens--that's what people who produce chicken meat call what they do--farming. I'll refer to the unethical model I'm about to describe as production from here on, as my definition of a farm involves the sky, being able to wander around in the sun and grass.

Anyway, I read about it and was disgusted that meat animals are produced this way. At the time though, I honestly did think, 'it's an American book, we'd have better standards here.' This morning though, I've researched our own industry and, as yet, haven't managed to find a difference whatsoever.

So, where does our chicken meat come from?

Chicken's lives start in a hatchery where fertilised eggs are incubated and hatched (isn't this just the picture of nature and romance?). 




After they've hatched they are sexed and the weak birds are destroyed at under 24 hours old without leaving the hatchery. Their killing methods are a bit hush-hush but the chicks tend to have their heads chopped off.

After this, the chooks are shipped to the growers who put them in sheds like the one pictured. Here, they are grown as quickly as science will allow. They're pumped full of hormones, antibiotics and the lighting is closely monitored so the chooks can see what they're doing long enough to eat and drink but not long enough to fight with each other (meat birds are notoriously nasty).


 Back in the 1970s it took just under 70 days to produce a chicken big enough for slaughter. These days, with thanks to all the artificial crap we pump into them, they're ready to go in 32 days. Sadly, by the time the chooks are harvest size they're so overcrowded that they will always be touching another chicken. 

 
 I'm assuming this photo is meant to make us feel better about the way chicken meat is produced as it was released by the Australian Chicken Meat Federation Inc.. Granted I can't see any deformity in the chickens, but look at the size of the shed above... if nothing else these chooks are seriously overcrowded! 


This is what the Australian Chicken Meat Federation Inc. has to say about the issue of overcrowding: "Density is not the most critical issue in determining bird welfare.  Research has shown that it is the way that the environment in which the flock is managed, rather than the amount of space that each bird has, that is most critical."
Cop out much? 

Nearing harvest time chickens will also have put on so much weight on the breast they're vertebrae will often crack, leaving them in horrific pain and paralysed, unable to access food and water. These birds will ultimately starve to death in a frenzy of distressed chaos. Another sad fact is the poo. The sheds are only cleaned out after each harvest so the birds live their whole lives walking then lying in their own poop. As chook poo decomposes it releases amonia which causes painful blisters on the breast, respiratory problems and stings the eyes--often causing blindness. In their book, Singer and Mason suggest meat chickens spend at least 20% of their lives in severe and chronic pain.


After they leave the broiler (growing) sheds chooks are carted unceremoniously to the slaughter houses. The slaughter is too horrific to even fathom so I'm not going to go into it but I will recognise that we use the same slaughter methods as the US where they have machines do it all for them. These fallible machines though, are often responsible for failing the first two steps of the process--the stunning and killing--and so these poor defenseless bastards are plunged into vats of boiling water, alive and conscious, to boil and drown to death. American industry reports suggests this happens to about 3 million of their birds a year. Not surprisingly, Aussie info like this isn't easy to come by.


So, it turns out that being between gardens for me is not going well for the food producers of Australia. Instead of digging, composting, planting and harvesting I've had time on my hands to research the environmental and moral impacts of my consumer choices. In the space of a week I'm off dairy and vowing to NEVER buy chicken meat again unless it has at least been certified by FREPA (Free Range Egg & Poultry Australia Ltd).

Our girls.

I'm just happy that right now my girls are outside in their clean little house perched above fresh straw, with the door open, and free to eat and drink as much as they like and go where they choose in the yard.


 I've definitely got more to think about in terms of our own self-sufficiency and sustainability project... the meat chickens and the milking goat might have to wait until our next house upgrade though!

Milking my humanity

As I've mentioned before, we're about to move. Our current place is too small for us to explore self-sufficiently much further, so we're off to the next biggest place we can afford.

This is a google image of our current place. You can see how small our yard is... This was taken before we moved in and installed all our greenery though. Our four garden beds are lined up where the (A) is. The house is strictly north facing which means the Camphor tree in the neighbours yard keeps the hot afternoon sun off the veggies and the chooks. To be honest, I'm pretty proud of what we've been able to achieve in our little yard. For most of the year we were able to provide about 50% of the veggies we ate, we planted three fruit trees, a blueberry and strawberry patch, all our eggs, and we started growing fish to use as one of our main protein sources. I was particularly keen to get the fish moving. 

I don't LOVE eating fish, but I do love animals so this was really important to me on not just an environmental level, but a moral one too. 

Nowadays the state in which animals farmed for food and their welfare is pretty well documented. Words such as over-crowded, debeaked, caged, darkness, stress, soft bones, and antibiotics are synonymous with the meat that is produced and consumers buy in Australia. 

With this in mind, especially with a toddler, I was torn between having meat in our diet and doing the "right thing." What to do? This is where the aquaponics project was born. This was the best way I could think of to have "meat" in our diets without the cruel cost.

This is part of the reason for the upgrade. Sure we wanted a bigger living space indoors, but given we spend so much time outside, the bigger yard was essential. This is a birds eye view of the new place with it's much more efficient, pathless, square yard. I'm really looking forward to being able to install bigger tanks and more garden beds. Our aim is to be fully self-sufficient on at least the fruit and veg front. Hubby and I had talked about it and concluded that as far as meats go, we would primarily eat fish but still have a bit of red meat here and there.

Alas, tonight I was looking into the rest of the items in our diet that impacts animals and I've been absolutely horrified and saddened by what I've discovered.

MILK!

We decided to switch to A2 milk a good 12 months ago now, thinking we were doing the right thing buying milk that had no GMO content and was about as close to the "real thing" as you could get in the supermarket. I'm still under the impression that this is true, but what I'm horrified over is the dairy industry itself. I also liked that A2 milk isn't watered down and is made solely of milk, not the leftovers from the manufacture of other products (such as cheese).

I thought cows would be the same as humans--once they have a baby they will produce milk for as long as they are milked (we've all seen women on TV who breastfeed their kids until they're 10). Alas, this is ultimately true but the rate of milk production reduces gradually over time. How does the dairy industry combat this? They force cows to calf at least every 12 months and thus the veal industry is born!

Cows are artificially impregnated, they birth at the dairy farms, their babies are removed after approximately 12 hours and then (this is the laughable part) because Australian laws do not allow bobby calves* to be slaughtered until five days old the babies are kept in holding, fed ONCE a day on milk REPLACEMENT then sold off to an abattoir to be served up at a premium in your local restaurant and supermarket.

The treatment of the babies is enough to make me sick in itself but that's really only half the issue. These poor mummy cows birth every year and never get to live as a normal cow, chomping grass and standing around in a paddock mooing with their baby. Not just that, think of the physical stress of going through that every year! I'm pregnant for the second time in three years now and I feel bloody awful--I'm not doing this again!

To top all that off tail docking is legal in NSW as is teat clipping (yes, "teat clipping" it's exactly what it sounds like.)

Alas, back to the point. We've got our new house coming in two more weeks and we had veg, fruit and the meat industry in our sights. Now I'm suddenly appalled by the dairy industry and will never look at milk the same way again.

From what I've found A2 is the only company that actually mentions bobby calves on their website, but they don't make any promises, they just claim to support the welfare of bobby calves.

I'm pretty confident I'll never buy milk again... but I will finish what's in the fridge. If these poor girls went through all that just to bring me some milk, the least I can do, since I've already bought it, is drink it.

*a bobby calf is a baby cow who has been separated from its mother at less than two weeks of age.

Lights, camera, action!

What a crazy week we're having! 

We're moving to our new piece of paradise on the first weekend in March so over this growing season we've eased off, not knowing when the move would be, and for the last few weeks we've been slowly taking apart our garden system. I'm so sad to see my little piece of Eden disappearing.

For those who don't know, I'm currently 24 weeks pregnant. Thanks to the constant (and horrible!) morning sickness I haven't been able to get much done in the garden but I did learn more than ever what a little oasis it is. I'm not sure how many times over the past 24 weeks I felt too horrible to do anything except merely survive. I'd take a cup of tea out to the garden, sit under the Jacaranda tree and watch the leaves in the breeze and the chooks cluck about the yard. I miss my little garden already.

We have decided to leave the garden beds intact so any potential tenants at least have the option of enjoying homegrown food, but we've cleared most of them and taken down the fences.

I'd love to give everyone a tour of what we did at this place and appreciate some ideas of how we can improve on our techniques and design for take number two!

This was our yard before we started...

It's only little, but we had big plans! We were ready to get started within a month of moving in.

 Aside from what both me a hubby had picked up from our grandparents as young children, we knew next to nothing about gardening, least of all growing food. (My grandparents only grew natives and pretty flowers.) It looks like we bought the correct stuff though...?

This is me digging out the grass with my baby watching on, as well as the dogs--great help dogs! (I think the white one was having a little sleep in the dirt).

  

Here comes my fab hubby with another barrow-full of soil.

Finally getting there with the first three beds.

 All planted out and appetites waiting!

As you can see, everything went crazy--and fast! Within a matter of weeks we were harvesting left, right and centre!

This is spring 2011 (the following year from the photos above). Unfortunately I didn't go camera crazy as the whole process unfolded but I'll keep that in mind for round two! 

To cater for our two chooks, who arrived in September 2011, we installed a fourth garden bed closer to the garage and fenced off each bed with about 1.2m of chicken wire, using star pickets to hold it up. There was a little access lane along the fence and a gate at either end of each enclosure. The idea was to use the chooks as tractors, so we could move their pen to access a new garden bed each month. Their job was to eat all the leftovers and turn over and fertilise the soil ready for replanting.


It worked a treat but we underestimated, and were advised incorrectly, at the jumping capacity of Australorps.
Our girls spent about a month in their pen (the door was always open for them, they were never locked in) before they decided it was time to start exploring! Luckily they planned their escape at a time all the other beds were established enough to withstand their exploration! They free-ranged around the whole yard, eating snails, digging up the lawn, eating fallen tomatoes and just generally having a merry chook time. What a total delight they are! I'd never had chooks before and I just love them!

Next came another adventure in our move toward self-sufficiency! Meet our aquaponics setup! For those who haven't seen one before the tank is the ultimate in food production! A small pump cycles the water from the tank up through the grow medium where the plants grow. The plants in the top eat all the fish poo and clean the water for the fish--brilliant!! The best part of course is that you can eat not just the vegies you grow on top but also the fish! We currently have about 40 Silver Perch growing and they range from about 10cm to 20cm in size. We're not sure how they will survive the move, but even without considering the fish themselves, it's going to be one painful little number to get to the new house!

It's now time to start round two but where to even begin?! For now it's more packing and cleaning (if the rain ever stops!)

Welcome to my blog, green4me!

I've started this blog for the same reason I've started many things in my life: I want to make a difference. Before you run for cover, please take the time to hear me out (at least on this first post).

Back in 2007 when I was a broke student, feeling down and poverty stricken, I bought a book called Living the Good Life and it truly changed my life. At the time I thought being "green" meant saving green (and when your rent accounts for 70% of your income that's not a bad thing!) so I thought it would be a bit of a manual on being frugal with your money, but I was wrong. Being green means so much more than saving money and my life was about to change as a result of this book opening my eyes to it.

As I thumbed through the book on how one family managed to live mostly self-sufficiently for six months on a regular suburban house block without buying any more than absolute essentials, I realised this book was a bit of a crystal ball. I was keen on this hippie getup and, geez, this woman made it sound easy! I want to give it a real go.

At the time I read the book I was single and renting so my options for living sustainably and self-sufficiently were quite limited and limiting. Now, however, my family and I are about to move into our second owned home so we're taking our green ideals with us to start afresh and give this green business a good go!


I have no doubt it's going to be an adventure just as it was with the place we're leaving. (The move in itself will be an adventure--we have dogs, chooks, a 1000L fishfarm and enough toys to fill a warehouse!) 

We're a family of three and a half and are about as far away from farmers as you can get, but having a crack never hurt anyone!


Let the games begin!