Manure, horses and should we all be vegetarians?
It seems hard to imagine, because the weather has been so awful for the last couple of days, but I actually walked into Eltham a day or so ago, and along the way I saw a little dollop of horse poo. We have a few people around here with horses. I have seen little girls riding them. Why is it always girls I wonder?
Anyway it recalled to me my youth, when lots of services were brought to our houses on horses and carts, and there was always a rush by all the keen gardeners to get out there and shovel up the poo if any was fortunately dropped near your door. It's very good manure for the garden you see - and today you can buy it in big packets from Bunnings and the like. But I'm not sure they sell horse poo. Cow and chicken manure I think are the main ones. I believe chicken manure is very good for lemon trees. You can sometimes buy it out in the country beside the road.
I guess that in the third world, if it's still Ok to call it that - maybe undeveloped countries. Anyway in those sorts of rural economies I'm sure they use any poo that's going - including human poo. Though I have a feeling that this is not good. I confess that when we lived in Donvale we had a huge sand filter into which the runoff from our septic tank ran, and in which I planted a vegetable garden. They did very well - the vegetables. I hope I didn't poison everyone. The sand filter was extremely deep - they had to blast a hole for it out of the rock.
But back to the horses. I remember in particular the milkman and his horse. So I looked for some pictures and found a couple:
It reminded me of the colour and the name - United Dairies. The milkman was a jolly man - I can almost see his face and he would let us feed the horse sugar lumps - which can't have been good for the horse. Maybe we gave him apples and carrots sometimes too. It was a treat for us though. The horse must have been very tame.
I remember being a bit shocked when I went to France and found that the French ate horses - they had specialist butcher's shops dedicated to selling horsemeat. They still exist, but not quite as prolifically as before. And, as you can see, it looks remarkably like beef. I remember it tasting OK - because, of course, I politely ate it.
Why, I wonder do we have such an abhorrence against eating horses - and dogs (the Chinese do) or a whole heap of other animals. Because some are kept as pets? (so are rabbits and ducks) Because we have a closer relationship with them? Surely farmers develop some kind of relationship with their animals that we later eat. There was a recent scandal in England when they found that the Findus frozen lasagne was made with horsemeat. Whether this was because horsemeat was inherently unhealthy or whether is was just false and misleading advertising (fair enough) I do not know. It was a huge scandal though.
Anyway it all doesn't really bear thinking about and from time to time I do think about becoming a vegetarian. There are so many reasons not to eat meat beyond the whole cruelty aspect. Not good for the environment, methane, the waste of all the food they are eating, the degradation of the land, etc. etc. I notice there is a program on SBS about the whole question of how we deal with the animals we eat. Though we haven't watched it. I think I would find it all too distressing.
But still I eat meat. I manage by not thinking too hard.
And all this from a dollop of poo. Well it's not much really, but it is something I think about from time to time.
