Morilla, Meatloaf, and 10,000 cows

We crawl through the fence and into the barnyard. Chickens, sheep, pygmy goats, regular goats, and a variety of cows, oh yeah, and a couple dogs. My aunt has names for all of them, well, maybe not the chickens. I follow her out to the pasture where the Jersey cows and calves are congregated, my new sneakers with the pink flowers on them encounter the slipperiness of a cow-paddy despite my best efforts. We throw bails over the fence for the cows. Scratchy, itchy hay on my arms, the warmth of the cows reassuring, manure on my jeans, the bright blue sky, farm house in the distance, the pasture scattered with farm machinery my grandparents used in the first part of the last century. Its all so familiar to me. I remember dusty summers exploring the woods, mud fights in the dug-out, riding horses (and getting bucked off), chasing cows, hot sleepless nights with mosquitoes biting and coyotes howling. Summers at the farm.

I visit a friend who has known me since I first came to Canada. I swear she's the reason I got through university . . . private tutoring and she didn't even start charging! Now she's married with a bun in the oven (notice the official obstetrician terminology), they live on a farmstead, have started a market garden and are building a new house. In my wildest dreams I never imagined her raising chickens and goats but now it seems like the most natural thing in the world. It somehow felt right to be eating things that were grown only a few hundred meters away. Maybe I'm idealizing it but the connection to seasons and the land is a different concept than in the city where our peas come from China year-round and apples are shipped from Washington instead of the Okanagan.

From the idyllic farmstead where I see all that is good about life in rural Alberta I went to the feedlot that my cousin manages. 10,000 head of cattle. To be honest I was expecting to be horrified with vagrant abuse of animals. To be even honester I was horrified at how naturally I accepted it as imperative to our lifestyle by the end of the day. To provide the all-powerful consumer with the beef we want at the right price this is how the system must work. 9lbs of grain for 1lb of meat. The healthiest, fattest cows I've ever seen. Vaccinations and growth hormone when they get shipped in, then they eat all day everyday, continuously monitored to make sure they stay healthy. Meat is big business in Alberta. I'm ashamed that I can't quite bring myself to tell my extended family that I'm mostly a vegetarian, it seems like the most intimate of betrayals that I am rejecting their very livelihood. Of course, I still love my cousin. "Different strokes for different folks," I tell him when he asks what I think of it all.

I loved every minute spent not thinking about anything remotely related to work. Of course, it can't be avoided when your cousin rips off his shirt and asks for his rash to be diagnosed or your aunt wants to know your opinion on cancer causation. I tried to spend lots of time kicking through crisp dry leaves and watching sunrises and sunsets. Life is good.

A large pumpkin, a mammoth zucchini, gourds, and garlic accompanied me on the Greyhound back to Calgary.

As far as my post-holiday resolutions:

Live more. Love more. Volunteer. Eat beets. Play guitar. Laugh more.

P.S. Morilla is a Jersey cow and Meatloaf is a pygmy goat.