08/06/2026
The hardest of days
The trailers hitched for our trip to the abattoir.
I’m incredibly proud of the food we produce here on the farm. It’s tasty, nutritious and is grown in a way that doesn’t compromise our ethics or deplete our environment.
But that final trip still is a difficult one to take, no matter how many times we make it.
For the sheep it’s a few hours in a long life of slow movement, gentle handling and grazing organic pasture in familiar family flock.
They have the best lives we can give them. And the most humane and dignified end possible. But it is still an end, and it hits heavy every time.
There’ll be many who read this and think “well just don’t send them,” and that would seem like the easiest choice. But people would still eat meat, and the less opportunity they have to source meat from local small farms like ours the more likely they are to buy from larger companies with longer supply chains, who place more importance on shareholder profits than animal welfare and food ethics.
The people who buy meat from us are not just buying good, nutritious food, they’re actively supporting a real life local farmer, strengthening their local economy, supporting nature friendly food production and rebelling against a system that is otherwise ruled by greed - maximising profits at whatever cost to people or planet.
And for that reason it’s worth it.
