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I wish I could plunk you down where the sheep settle every night, to feel the protection of the spot they chose, to wander in the deep and wide hollow there, to connect with the way the hill at their back shapes a partial cocoon. To see the trees that both roof them and ring them, offering shelter from each direction when needed. To walk their foot trails passing and investigating into the abandoned buildings, to watch how the girls settle loosely on the fringe when weather is favourable but tuck deeper into the core when the weather shifts toward ugly. To be in their space and feel the wisdom of their choice, and connect with the natural spirit that that wisdom stems from. I wish I could plunk you down where the sheep settle.

Just about every winter I write about the wise choice these ewes make at picking a bedding ground. And every year it feels increasingly important to see and recognize these traits, in livestock in particular because I worry the majority of livestock raised in North America are losing or have lost these innate, natural traits. That our animals are being steered away from their natural by an increasingly un-natural species.

I feel that people in agriculture are growing further entrenched in the idea that we, the human, know what is best, not Mother Nature. We tell ourselves that our choice to raise the maximum amount of fast food, and the plethora of interventions necessary to do so, is the only choice there is because otherwise we just can’t make it work.  Are we no wiser and more brave than this?

As fast-food agriculture strives ever and ever more to fix production flaws nature never had to begin with, so to do we strip away the natural from the animal and from the land, and by proxy, from ourselves. As the divide between us and nature grows so to does our dissatisfaction with life. Until here we sit, a first world nation of over drugged, generally unhappy, distrustful people.  Are we no wiser and more brave than this?

I’m not suggesting we return all livestock animals to the wild and let it be, but I am suggesting that we’ve gone way past the balance point on this one, and no one seems to be noticing the disconnect. I don’t know if I am making right choices for going forward in the agriculture industry, very possibly not, but I do know taking away the natural these sheep have is certainly going backwards toward a place I don’t wish to go.  I want to be wiser and more brave than this.