Warning:The following post is perhaps not for the faint of heart.
If you ask most people what they are thankful for having you are going to get a massive generalization. They will tell you the run of the mill things that will not be a surprise or at odds with most everyone that you ask. I'm going to go against the grain with this post. If you didn't find me strange before you might decide I'm insane after this, so it was nice knowing you.
I'm thankful for the ability to raise,kill, and eat my own food. There is a massive chasm in what we eat and how it gets to our plates. I've been blessed with the ability to close that gap a little, and hopefully will be able to do it more. So in the future essentially most everything I eat will be grown or raised at my house, by my hands. I never thought I'd be someone who was thankful for being able to kill anything, then I butchered my first chicken. (I don't count hunting/fishing because those animals are wild and are not raised by hand). It might be messy business but it is interesting to say the least. People would look at food much differently if they could have a hand in the entire process that it takes to go from tiny creature to ready to eat or tiny seed to producing plant.
At this point we go to a grocery store grab some cellophane wrapped meat and we go home. There is no knowledge of what you are eating or where it came from, it's essentially like grabbing fast food without the preservatives. I understand that the thought of killing an animal on your own makes plenty of people squeamish. But, from personal experience there is both a sense of pride and accomplishment at knowing what you are eating and how it was raised. I'm not talking about the sticker on a package, but full knowledge of what that animal ate,where it slept, how it was cared for and how it was killed. Most people don't want to know that but I think if they did that they would eat differently. Not that I'm encouraging you to become a vegetarian (I like meat and am looking forward to the day when I can butcher my first pig,cow, and sheep). It is just far more enjoyable to know that what you are eating has had no hormones or chemicals pumped into it and was not raised in a cage roughly the size of a shoe box and you can be sure of it because you raised it yourself.
Understand I'm not trying to guilt anyone or shame you because I still eat food from the grocery store. I don't own the land or the animals required to feed myself at this point. I just happen to know what it is like to raise an animal for the purpose of eating it. There's a startup in Seattle called Crowdcow that is allowing buyers to see the cow they will be eating before it is killed. That is a big deal,especially in this day in age where buying a cow for someone to raise isn't the norm. If you can't raise the cow knowing where it came from and how it was raised is important. It also connects you to the animal you are eating in a way that you aren't go to get by going to Mcdonald's or Burger King.
I told you I was going to go against the grain. Most people wouldn't think about killing anything to eat it, certainly not in a way that prompts gratitude. I am not most people. I'm grateful to have the opportunities that I do.
(Irrelevant to the fact of killing animals but I also greatly enjoy my garden and it is usually more labor intensive than raising animals except on days I'm cleaning pens. Animals require food,water,shelter, and making sure they are alive. Plants require so much more, especially if you plant a lot of things)
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