How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Today, in between moving the sheep back to Virginia from their West Virginia winter vacation, making a second cup of coffee and patching a section of dilapidated wire fence, I thought about this question, currently being posed by the N.Y. Times: Is It Ethical To Eat Meat?  Here’s my response.  Let me know what you think.

Why Eating Meat Can Be Ethical

 

 

A little movie about our lambs…

Is now over on our Vimeo page: https://vimeo.com/38233375

In the meantime, I’ve just finished the book proposal for Hayseeds, 62 pages of market analysis, a like-minded bibliography, and 31 individual chapter summaries among other things.

Rather like a Master’s thesis, I’ve decided, without the filigreed Latin and sheepskin at the end of the journey…

A big back log of movies to be made, now that the proposal is complete.  Also, a new blog over at www.smithmeadows.com about my friend Jimmy Hogge, the Chesapeake Bay fisherman who passed away this week.  God speed, Jimmy.

Currently reading Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness, as well as David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed By Flames.  They do a nice job of balancing each other out.

New stuff over on Smith Meadows and Vimeo…

Still trying to figure out how to link all this stuff together, but making lots of progress!  I’ve made a few new videos and posted them on our Vimeo Channel, which you can visit here:

https://vimeo.com/smithmeadows

Also, a new Leap Year blog over on our farm page.

Today, I heard the spring peepers for the first time this year.  Can’t wait to hear their full chorus around dusk for the next few weeks…

When about 500 of these little frogs get together, they make a wall of sound.

Thoughts from late February…

We’re taking what’s left of winter 2012 to make some fun (and in theory, educational) farming videos for the first time.  These will be little 5 minute vignettes of the sorts of things we do around here at Smith Meadows… from fixing broken water troughs to explaining hog rooting behavior to harvesting February watercress.

For years, we’ve had apprenticeships here on the farm (hence the Jake Galle shout out in the first video… he was an apprentice who helped assemble several of these hutches), and we’re now hoping that these videos can be part of a ‘virtual apprenticeship’ for a wider audience.  It will take some time, but gradually a larger picture of what we’re about should begin to coalesce.

Let us know what you think of them, and especially if you have any suggestions for topics you’d like to see.

In the meantime, I’ll be blogging regularly over on our farm site, smithmeadows.com