Kookoolan Farm

Since reading Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals this March, I have been itching to find and visit a farm that raises animals in a humane and respectful way. I gotta be done, done, done with supporting factory farming – even if that support is unwitting. I can be happy eating a vegetarian diet, but I have three big dogs to feed and no reason to believe that a vegetarian diet is best for them, so it's off to search out sources of meat that I can truly believe in.

Kookoolan Farm (www.kookoolanfarms.com) is a small, family owned farm in Yamhill, Oregon. A pleasant one-hour drive from northeast Portland in the middle of the day, I enjoyed winding through Gaston and Yamhill before turning into Kookoolan's drive. I was met by Chrissie, who waved to me with muddy hands from a veggie patch, rain running off her bright yellow slicker.

"You must be my two o'clock!" she hollered and smiled. "Sorry about this," she said with a glance at her hands. What else would I expect from someone working in a garden under steady rain? "No problem." I answered.

After slipping out of her mud-covered boots and washing up, Chrissie gave me a tour of the self-service store. Complete with freezers and fridges, I can buy fresh, raw, unpasteurized milk and yogurt, home-brewed kombucha tea (good for what ails ya), complete cheese making supplies, and fresh eggs. Whole chickens and ducks (feet and all) were available in the freezer yesterday – and she assured me that until you make chicken soup using the feet you haven't really had chicken soup at all. The chicken is a heritage breed – Le Poulet, though some Cornish Cross (the ubiquitous grocery store breed) was also available. Twice per month during the summer and early fall, the Heritage chickens will be available fresh on the day of slaughter.

Kookoolan raises their animals on pasture under fresh air and sunshine. Their chickens, cows, lambs, and this year pigs, are provided with adequate light, room to roam, the food nature intended them to have (not corn and soy and god-knows what else), and appropriate social groups. They raise all their chicks – boys and girls, so no chicks are gassed – to maturity before they are killed. They have on-sight chicken processing, so the chickens never have to be rounded up and carted off to slaughter under unknown or questionable circumstances. Raising a small number of mammals for food – the cows, lambs, and pigs – Chrissie says that she is present for every single death, to make sure it's done with sensitivity rather than callousness. That's commitment and responsibility, that's the way it needs to go down.

When we eat animals, we are responsible for taking their lives. For me, it has become critical to know that the lives they lived were lives of beauty; not lives of desperation, fear, loneliness, and agony.
Their end should come swiftly, without terror and undue suffering. Chrissie tells me that meat from animals killed without panic, who are not filled with adrenaline and lactic acid, is sweet and tender. I think that's great, but there is a reason more important than taste for me to drive an hour from home to buy meat and milk from a farmer I can meet and shake hands with.

For me, it's all about soul. If I buy and eat food from animals who lived and died tortured lives – even if I don't directly know it – my purchase fuels that cruelty. I have to wonder if aside from pesticides and herbicides, antibiotics and hormones, unnatural fatty acid balances, and inferior nutrient quality, does agony and despair come right up the food chain? I think it does.

I was happy just being at Kookoolan, seeing the laying hens putzing about in the rain, scratching and pecking to their delight; watching Chrissie and a couple of helpers work the garden carefully by hand, and seeing the dry barns and the sizeable rolling green pastures.

A glass of milk or a dish of whole milk yogurt can be a delight – passed from animal to human with a touch of grace. I came home with glass containers of raw milk and yogurt, two chickens (with feet), beef heart, livers, and bones for the dogs, and kombucha tea. I'll be driving out to Yamhill several times this spring and summer, and I look forward to it; maybe you'll join me.