Making Protein Visible
Every summer, Harvard University hosts week-long executive education sessions on campus for all sorts of professionals. I attended one for educators this past July, and one of the best ideas I came away with was the concept of “making learning visible.” The espoused method helps facilitate learning by calling on teachers to answer students’ time-honored question: “why do we gotta learn this?”
Interestingly, my best experience making learning visible came not from my English classroom, but from a new and completely unexpected angle when I found myself standing outside in the cold on the Sunday before Thanksgiving helping teach a bunch of well-heeled Austin suburbanites how to butcher their own Thanksgiving turkey.
A good friend of mine is a chicken butcher, and he needed help conducting a butchering class at Roam Ranch, near Fredericksburg, Texas — the new home to Taylor Collins and Katie Forrest, who are the young, hip couple pictured on the November 2018 cover of Inc. Magazine. They founded Epic Bar, which netted them some liquid assets when the company was bought by General Mills.
Taylor and Katie’s event drew about 30 conscientious, health-aware foodies to harvest as many heritage, pasture-raised turkeys, which had been raised on the ranch near Epic’s iconic bison herd for the occasion. My son Andrew killed all 27 birds that I then scalded and plucked before handing the fresh, steaming carcasses off to the folks while my buddy coached them on the finer points of evisceration and gizzard preparation.
There were some celebrities in the group. Tim Kennedy, UFC fighter, former Green Beret, and star of Discovery Channel’s “Hard to Kill,” was there with his wife and kids. One of the founders of Brute Strength Training chatted with me for quite a while afterwards. A retired NFL lineman with a big-name fitness business broke the plastic handle of the shears we used to cut the legs off the birds by trying to cut through the bone instead of the ligaments at the knee joint like I had just shown him.
Pulling giblets out of their birds and carving away oil glands from the bases of the tails with knives I kept sharp with a steel, the attendees were stoked — pure and simple. Glee emanated from each station as I walked around, a cheerleader offering tips and tricks.
My butchering credentials are solid. As a back-to-the-land homesteader who was raised by an anti-hunting father on a Texas cattle ranch, I have made it a point to butcher as much of my family’s protein as I can. I’ve killed and butchered full-grown cattle, pigs, deer, sheep, rabbits, chickens, and turkeys. Some were feral which I hunted; others were raised for food. I have taken many animals from a natural state of well-being to the family table, teaching my children in the process.
What was the value for those who attended the turkey-butchering? It was in playing a personal, intimate role in what they were feeding their families for Thanksgiving dinner. In my opinion, Taylor and Katie displayed a level of genius by planning a group turkey harvest as a first for these folks. Poultry is easy to process (a hell of a lot easier than a thousand-pound steer, I can promise you) and is the meat item most commonly handled in full carcass form by the average consumer.
The only thing I would have done differently was to have had each person kill their bird themselves, if they so chose. And I could tell by watching the participants that they wanted to do it. When Taylor gave everyone the option to stand aside and not watch the killing part, only one grandmother stood apart, shielding her two grandchildren from the blood and the fluttering. The grandkids themselves, though, acted like they were missing out. As each bird was killed and bled, the smartphone cameras were up. Almost all of them.
The refrain of “cool,” “oh wow,” never let up as people processed their own meat.
I reminded everyone that only a generation or two has passed since the majority of families killed a chicken for Sunday dinner, or a pig for ham and bacon. Collins and Forrest themselves are former vegans who couldn’t sustain their participation in endurance competition on a vegan diet.
My purpose is not to stir strife among the non-omnivorous, but veganism is neither viable nor the best choice for a massive slice of the global population for diverse reasons. Responsible meat consumption would result when the omnivorous among us play as active a role as possible to procure their own protein.
Suburban homesteading is one way. Hunting is another, and ethical fishing still another. Eggs, venison, fish, poultry, rabbits, pheasant — there are many excellent choices out there for self-procuring meat. Being active in this kind of processing, at least a few times a year, is the logical next step for people who care about good food — people who are already living better lives by paying attention to the ingredients that make up their diets.
If all omnivores procured their own meat even occasionally, we would be more likely to eat sustainable amounts, to pay more attention to how it is raised and harvested, and personal participation would result in making our own food visible.
Surprisingly, you might think someone butchering their own meat would be disgusted by it. That may be true for some, but as I was elbow deep in a bird recently, butchering over 30 meat chickens, my son said “it sounds strange, but I sure could go for some butter chicken with warm naan right about now.” My stomach growled. #archeranglertribe
Ben Christensen is the editor of Archer Angler Unlimited, www.archerangler.com. A former Marine, he currently lives with his family in the Texas Hill Country. He can be reached at riskaverserebel@gmail.com.
