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Original
Article About Dexters
"Our Land and Our Bodies: Moonlight, Meat and Me"
by John Paterson
A revised version of an article first published in The Smallfarmer: The
Journal of Smallfarming NZ,
no. 43, August 2002, pages 13-14
In his 1977 book, The Unsettling of America Culture and Agriculture,
Wendell Berry, has written “Our land passes in and out of our bodies just as
our bodies pass in and out of our land.” This intriguing image contains
echoes of food and excrement, compost and humus, decomposition and death.
Berry contends that once our place and homeland have become simplified as
“environment”, as something surrounding us rather than as part of us, then
we have made a profound division between it and ourselves, and start to
treat it as being expendable.
Berry believes that modern humanity’s governing metaphor is that of the
machine. Everything - soil, plants, animals - is a part in a mechanistic
whole which provides us with all we need and desire. Nature can be taken
apart, improved, and put back together like a machine. “By means of the
machine metaphor,” writes Berry, “we have eliminated any fear or awe or
reverence or humility or delight or joy that might have restrained us in our
use of the world.”
“Our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out
of our land.” Many years ago I saw a photo in a book by Laurens Van Der Post
on the Bushmen of the Kalahari. A Bushman hunter has just run down a deer
and is kneeling beside the exhausted animal, hand on its head, just prior to
dispatching it to take it back home to eat. The book’s author comments that
the Bushman is praying to the deer, thanking it for the sacrifice of its
life so that it may become sustenance for him and his family.
This photo speaks to me of a deep respect for animals, even though we eat
them. Animals are not simply units of production, not simply mechanical
things to do with whatever we will.
Some of us distance ourselves from animals, our food, by not naming them, or
by naming them Chops, Roast, Ham and Burger. I’ve never been comfortable
with this - along with the Bushman, I would rather face squarely the fact
that this animal is wondrous, and if I am to eat it, it becomes a
significant and costly sacrifice not to be taken thoughtlessly. That allows
me to be respectful, to enjoy raising and caring for an animal, and also to
grieve when the time comes to slaughter it. It enables me to take meat
seriously. “Our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass
in and out of our land.”
Crofter Mains Moonlight Dancer was born on a nearby dairy farm on 15 August
2000, on the night of the full moon. He was one of our four very first
Dexter-cross calves. His dam was a Jersey cow, his sire (by
artificial insemination) was Meadowpark Fortuna, a Dexter bull. Moonlight
Dancer was transported to Waikoha Smallfarm on the morning of Sunday 20
August, in the back of my stationwagon. He was polled, black in colour with
a red tinge, weighed 32 kilograms and stood 67 centimetres high. He was
raised on whole milk obtained daily from another nearby dairy farmer. He was
named after a song by John Grenell, “Dance by the Light of the Moon”. We
bestowed on him a formal stud name, even though we couldn’t register him
with the Dexter Cattle Society.
I accepted from the beginning that Moonlight would probably end up in the
freezer. It had taken me about three years on the smallfarm before I could
contemplate the idea of eating animals we had raised ourselves.
Moonlight was the first bull calf that I attempted to immasculate, using a
rubber ring. I missed the testicles though he ended up with a shortened
scrotum. Despite this(!), he was a calm and friendly calf. I would often go up to him in the
 paddock and hug him around the neck. He eventually kept company with a
couple of goats and then with a handful of Hereford steers. He grew into
a strong handsome bull, deserving of respectful handling - no more hugs
(lest he toss me over his shoulder)!
I attended to Moonlight daily. I struggled up the hill to check on him in
the cold and the heat, in illness and health. I often called him to me, and
I gave him special treats to recognise his life of involuntary celibacy - a
branch of sweet, juicy karamu leaves, a handful or two of cattle nuts, a
biscuit of sweet hay.
Then, on 20 June 2002, when he was 22 months of age, while I watched
uncomfortably, Crofter Mains Moonlight Dancer and our two pigs were shot by
a home kill butcher and transported away to be processed into beef and pork.
I was disturbed by the sudden death that I felt responsible for. I grieved
at the loss. I could not take it lightly and simply shrug it off. I wrote on
the calendar that day, “Moonlight, Bart and Bernie murdered”. Perhaps I
should have written “sacrificed”. A couple of weeks later, I picked up the
plastic bags of frozen meat and brought them back to the farm freezer. Two
weekends ago, I cooked a roast of Moonlight beef, and shared it with
Heather, who also knew him well. It was delicious.
“Our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out
of our land.” Moonlight died so that I might eat beef. Before, I simply
bought the meat from the supermarket. I took it lightly and easily. I didn’t
really appreciate it. Now I know the sacrifice behind it. Moonlight was
native to this place. He belonged here, and here was part of him. Now he is
part of me, though I miss him. And, in the end, should I be privileged, I
will pass into this piece of land too.
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