Red Gate Farm

With Food Inc. fresh on my mind, I've been evaluating how I can take stronger measures to regulate the meat that I eat in my life, especially now that I am on a college campus, where I have no say in what meat is purchased for the dining halls (at least for the moment). Amongst toying with the idea of becoming a vegetarian while on campus and what that will do to my diet because I usually rely on meat as a protein source, I took a little break from college life this weekend. Saturday evening, I piled into Jen Krain's little red car (which she wasn't in, sadly), with three other members of our rugby team, and headed out to Buckland, MA, to our coach Ben Murray's farm, Red Gate Farm. We were volunteering at his annual Halloween extravaganza: a night of cider pressing, pumpkin painting, hay rides, and a haunted animal maze, all arranged to educate and engage kids in the simple but elegantly rich day-to-day life of a farm. It is one of the larger events that Ben puts on at his farm, but the mission of the event is simply a continuation of what Ben does every day. His farm is designed as an outdoor, hands-on classroom for kids, and to this end he hosts all kinds of groups, including summer camps, school trips and a group of home-schooled kids that come once a week as part of their science curriculum. Just a few of the things that Ben, his family, his workers, and his volunteers (including the occasional rugby player), are responsible for teaching are animal husbandry, pond ecology, composting, timber framing and gardening. You can find a more eloquent description of Red Gate Farm and their mission either by checking out the website here: http://www.redgatefarm.org/index.php
OR you could check out Ben's booth at Smith's Farmers Market on Chapin Lawn, today! (that is if anyone is reading this blog before 11:30 on a Monday, which seems unlikely)

In the spirit of our last class discussion, I think we all know that animals, and how they are raised and slaughtered in the industrial food system, are central to the conversation on food and what it means in our culture today. What I got to see at Red Gate Farm this weekend was such a refreshing sight after the gruesome images in Food Inc. Ben raises all sorts of animals, including goats, sheep, chickens, and oxen; they are all named, and have their own personalities. I got to meet quite a few of them in the process of moving them to and from the "haunted" animal maze; I walked a goat named Clover who was a bit sluggish, meanwhile Ben took on two of the feistier goats, whom he called "the boys" because they were never apart, in one hand, using the other hand to help guide Joe, the burly ox. The maze was essentially the animals acting nonplussed while the kids oggled and petted, and maybe got a little scared because it was in the dark, creaky basement of Ben's old barn. But the purpose of the maze was not to scare, since its target audience was small children, but to entertain. One of my favorite moments from the night was at the end, when I finally got my tour of the haunted maze (during the festivities I was working away at pressing cider): the official "tour guide," one of Ben's students who was also volunteering, described in a comic, singsong voice the "evil, nuclear bomb-designing, scheming chickens," because there was simply nothing terrifying about the placid, disinterested birds, sitting in their cages. They were probably enjoying a show of their own, quietly mocking the insipid humans with their costumes and their good cheer. I was also pleasantly surprised to get a lesson on cow physiology from a middle-schooler; I finally learned what distinguishes an ox from a bull, something that I could never quite keep straight before.

While Ben's farm is not an example of how we can farm sustainable meat, like the "good farmer" with the grass fed beef and the outdoor chicken slaughterhouse, it is still a crucial kind of operation in building a future in which we can hold onto hope: for our health and the health of our planet. The future is quite literally in the tiny hands of the next generation who Ben is training to respect, enjoy, and most of all, care for their environment and the creatures they share it with.

The ruggers and their goats: