[Peter]

Thank you Karen for yet another exciting thread.
When I first started Blacksmithing I had been a veggie/vegan for 7 years but my body (or my inner voice) kept telling me I needed more protein in the form of flesh to cope with the physical workload.
I remember vividly sitting in front of a smoked mackeral fillet for more than a hour. It was quite funny now looking back I just couldn't bring myself to eat it. I eventually did as the passion for my work was stronger than my guilt of eating flesh again.
That was nearly 18 years ago and ever since I've been eating flesh about once or twice a week that depends as I try to only eat organic food, which really limits ones choice through availability and price.
I used to kill our own chickens as I believe that all who eat flesh should at least once in their life kill an animal themselves and then eat it. I no longer eat chicken I didn't like killing them or raising them. I lived with them for long enough to understand that chickens are quite nasty vindictive creatures who would eat their own mother, they're dirty things as well lots of parasites, yuk.
I've been in an industrial chicken shed with 20.000 screeching, suffering birds and I know what they eat and most of their food is medication so I don't eat any chicken anymore. Like the Hunza people I eat goat meat and cheese now and then along with a large variety of fruit and veg living and cooked
so I might make it to one hundred who knows. As Paracelsus said "Your food is your medicine".
On our property my wife Rosie and I keep pigs to work the land (we're planting a forest garden) and goats to give us milk and cheese. We've killed one of our piglets for its meat and that was a very taumatic experience for me if not for the pig he was eating when he was shot in the head so he died happy. Our 3 nanny goats are pregnant at this moment and we haven't decided what to do with the little ones.
Its a different reality when you raise your own meat.

Thanks for reading my bit.
Glad to be here, Peter.