This is Cloudy.
He’s one of five goats born on my central Kentucky farm about a month ago. I wouldn’t want him to hear this, but he’s not the cutest of the lot. That distinction belongs to Luna, one of the females. She’s petite, light brown with silky sprays of white on her flanks, and erect ears that make her look like a tiny donkey. She’s my daughter’s pet.
Truth is, they’re all pets, the two mother goats included. My family has the luxury of keeping goats on our eleven acres just because we want to. We don’t need the milk the mothers produce and, honestly, would probably be more than a little appalled to try drinking it. That’s how insulated we are from the rougher edges of rural living.
A log of fresh goat cheese—from nearby Capriole farm perhaps—nicely sealed in plastic? Sure!
But warm goat’s milk straight from a teat that hangs perilously, pendulously, close to a barn floor strewn with goat droppings? Uh, well…
And then there’s the even more repellent notion of eating Cloudy or any of the others. I’m far from a vegetarian; I’ve consumed everything from rattlesnake to opossum to monkey. I know the taste of goat, too--the most widely consumed meat in the world.
But I find it very difficult to believe I’d ever feel the need, much less the desire, to snatch up and butcher the little creatures that now frolic in my spring pastures. And that sets me apart, I know, from a great swath of humanity. My family doesn’t have to make wrenching choices like those faced by the Mauritanian family profiled in this excellent Washington Post series on the developing world food crisis.
Not yet, anyway.
I don’t mean to sound foolishly alarmist. We’re still a long way in the developed world from the hand-to-mouth existence many millions must contend with. But suddenly it seems plausible that even the most privileged of the world’s consumers will have to rethink their habits. Costs are rising, scarcity is a real issue—and so is fairness.
We owe it to ourselves, if not to the rest of the world, to consider how we get our calories, how sustainable our western diet is, and the steps individuals can take to assure at least some portion of our own food supply—short of butchering Cloudy, that is.
And it doesn’t have to be a grim undertaking. The Gastronauts of New York bring a sense of adventurousness and camaraderie to exploring the bounds of what’s edible and enjoyable, right down to giant water bugs that look awfully like roaches.
We’re a little tamer in Louisville, at least for now. We’ve blindfolded some people before we fed them, but there were no insects on the menu.
I can’t promise that won’t be the case in upcoming ones, however.
Better yet--just so we don’t deliver any objectionable surprises to blindfolded diners--maybe the Idea Festival can be the base for a Louisville chapter of the Gastronauts.
Any takers?
David
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