Sustainability and the Environment: "Livestock Comes ALIVE!"

April 9th, 2016, was a Saturday. It was also Livestock Day; probably not wherever you were, but here in Monteverde in the Sustainability program, it totally was. If you're wondering what Livestock Day is, let me explain it to you in blog form. 

Livestock Day is kind of a double-edged sword, in terms of what it does to you psychologically and emotionally. It's super good because it makes you really think about where your food comes from and the manner in which it's raised. The sharper side of that sword is sometimes that process can be a major bummer. Basically, the adventurers went to two different farms on Saturday-- the first farm was owned by a nice guy who we'll call JL, and even though he was a nice guy, his farm was not so nice.

This is the story of JL's farm:

The adventurers rolled up all confident in their opinions about their dietary preferences, pretty certain that whatever they saw today wasn't going to make them rethink their beliefs (note to concerned parents: just kidding, they were super open-minded.) They knew that this first farm was going to be the tough one, so they all buckled down and listened to Sam as he told them all to watch out for sharp objects and holes around the property.

Here's Sam saying, "Now listen, guys, don't fall in any holes or anything..."

 The thing about this farm is that it's JL's livelihood, and that affects the way he runs it. He doesn't see the pigs as sentient creatures-- he sees them as crops, and so the idea of them having a happy life isn't one he entertains with any real seriousness. It's like raising carrots to him, and carrots have no rights (at least for now.) So yeah, this farm can be kind of a bummer, but it's an important perspective to see.

These guys are pretty much stuck inside little areas like this forever; they never get to run around and see the sun 

JL told the adventurers that he used to have close to 300 pigs, but now he has as few as 120; the decrease in number is due to free trade agreements, which have allowed for the import of pork from other places (like Chile) and made it difficult for local farmers to compete.  

JL told the adventurers that the mama pigs are kept inside little cages like this so they can't accidentally crush the baby piglets

Aislyn and Chandler: not psyched 

Halfway through the little tour, JL went over and locked a shack right as all the adventurers were passing it, so Eilish got super suspicious and went over and tried to peek in while nobody was looking. She didn't see anything except "a super sketchy chair," but the photographer was proud of her anyway. 

  Luckily, nobody suddenly appeared and looked at Eilish from the other side 

When they'd walked around the pig farm for a little while and checked out all the pigs, the adventurers headed down to check out JL's biodigester, which is a good invention that allows farmers to safely dispose of the methane that all the animals produce.

Eilish seems a little suspicious about the biodigester too

 JL explained that right now, he was only using the biodigester to collect the water from the poop, in order to prevent the biodigester from getting clogged. At the moment, that water is sort of draining down into a pasture, but JL says he hopes to find a better method of disposal in the not-too-distant future. 

And with that, the adventurers did a last pass of the pig farm and made their way back out.

 A cat that thinks it's a pig made sure to say goodbye to them

When they got back to the study center, the adventurers had a little lunch and then a nice discussion about their thoughts on what they'd seen that morning. Opinions were varied and it was a heated and emotional discussion, but these sorts of things generally are, you know? Luckily, it didn't get physical; there was some verbal jousting, but all in good sport. 

Here's Hector being the referee for the discussion 

After their discussion and some tasty lunch, the adventurers loaded up to go check out a second farm; luckily, this farm was the feel-good farm-- the nicer, less animal-cruelty edge of the sword. It was run by a nice guy named Benito, and he had different ideas about how to run a farm; mainly, he was a lot nicer to the animals. 

Benito gave a quick talk to the adventurers about his cool farm, and then he took them on a little tour to show them what it was all about. 

Benito's parents were some of the very first settlers of Monteverde; pretty cool, huh?

Benito was super stoked to have the adventurers on the farm with him-- he was so stoked that he decided to let the kids help him out with a couple things, so that they could get an idea of what it was like to work on a happy farm. The first thing that he had them help him with was to spread some manure out on a hillside to act as fertiliser. When the adventurers heard that, they got super excited too. 

Here's Aislyn carrying poop in style 

There were just enough bags for everyone but Hannah, Meg, and Tessa-- they seem super bummed about it, don't you think?

Morgan was super careful not to get any fertilizer on herself 

 Once the hillside was all nice and fertilized, Benito had the adventurers pick up these big full bags of grass and carry them back up toward the house; nobody was really sure why at first, but they were just happy not to be carrying poop this time. 

See how happy Leah is to not be carrying poop?

 When they made it back over to the pasture though, they found out what the grass was for-- it was for feeding goats! Dan and Hannah went down there to feed them, and all of a sudden about a thousand (maybe twenty) goats came running over the hill, and all I can say is that it's lucky that goats don't eat adventurers. 

Dan's basically being Santa Claus, but for goats-- Goat Santa Claus 

Well once they decided that the goats were friendly, it didn't take too long for all of the adventurers to head down there to play with the goats as well; they knew that they'd regret it for the rest of their lives if they didn't. 

Emma looks like she thinks she found the goat version of herself 

Here's Ian finally facing his crippling Agerozoophobia (goat-phobia)... from a safe distance of course

Sadia and this goat found that they shared similar taste in hair styles

 Photo credit to Aislyn for this Smashmouth album cover from the '90s.

As the day wore on and the sun moved across the sky, the adventurers began to realize that they couldn't stay here and play with goats forever, even though it was tempting. Like Odysseus on Calypso's island, they could have easily remained here playing with the goats for seven years, forgetting their quest and their beautiful and virtuous wife Penelope, lured by the pleasure of doing nothing but playing with goats all day. (Note to concerned parents: this is a just reference to The Odyssey; none of the adventurers have wives.) But like Odysseus, the adventurers eventually shook themselves out of their enchantment and left the beautiful goat pasture, and carried on their their noble exploration.

Meg and Chandler are just so happy about the goats 

After leaving Goat Pasture, the adventurers were kind of like, "Well this is all great, but it'd be awesome if he had some pigs so we could compare the way he raises his pigs to the other farm..." Well right then Benito decided to take the adventurers down to his little pig-raising area. How's that for divine intervention?

Benito's pigs seemed a good bit happier than the other farm's. They had a little open pasture to run around in, with plenty of space to stretch out and lie down, and they got to look up at the sun all day if they wanted to. The thing you have to remember is that Benito isn't trying to make his living solely off of raising pigs; JL is. It's easy to say "Benito is good and JL is bad," but it's unfortunately not that simple. Nothing in sustainability is. There is no one direction home to Ithaca-- no right answer, only shades of perspective. It's a tricky subject. But that's what this program is all about-- exposing the adventurers to all the different sides of an issue, and encouraging them to draw their own conclusions and formulate their own opinions on a subject. Kind of neat, I think.

Leah got to feed the pigs, and she was only a little bit terrified of them 

After the pigs had had their dinner, there was only one more chore left on the farm-- milking cows! A lot of these adventurers had never done this before, so it was an exciting experience to see where their delicious milk really came from (the undercarriage of a cow). 

You generally don't see people this happy when they're so close to the business end of a cow 

Angela's saying, "You better not let this cow tip over on me..." 

All in all, it was a pretty educational, emotional, and exhilarating day. The adventurers were overwhelmed with the amount of things they'd learned about livestock, and still a little conflicted about their thoughts on the subject. They knew that they were going to have to mull this over for a little while longer. In the meantime, they followed the example of the oldest, wisest goat that they met on Benito's farm-- they just sat back, thought things over, and waited to see what new enlightenment the coming days would bring.

It was not the first thing that a goat had taught them, and it would probably not be the last. 

Lao Tzu Goat