[Patricia Brooks]

A fascinating, and quite wide ranging, discussion that you have prompted here, Takumi Uto, I have been going through my own mental battle about this issue for some time hence by you broaching this subject here and prompting others to share their thoughts about this topic has been very helpful and timely for me; thank you.

For most of my life up age 79, I have enjoyed what I can best describe as a “miscellaneous” diet, meaning that I’ve never given much thought to what I have eaten apart from studiously avoiding any form of the “McDonalds” fast-food types of sources of food with rare exceptions.

However, when confronting turning 79 in 2019, it finally occurred to me that, even though I have been healthy with no discernible health issues for so many years that I hardly ever met the doctor within my changing locality with whom I had registered “just in case of need” whenever I had moved to somewhere new, my mother who had successfully lived for 93 years loomed up as a potential target to beat and thus following a healthy diet suddenly became a new fixation for me.

Hence, after fasting for 5 days on a water-only diet followed by 20 days of fasting by in-taking nothing but fresh, home juiced, organic orange juice – losing around 50 lbs in the process that was neither expected nor part of my motivation for this extreme fast action – I switched to attempting to become vegetarian, even vegan, to explore how that would work and feel.

Well, it did seem to be working quite well except that I had become a trifle alarmed by how much BMI weight loss that I had experienced and my new diet was not adding any weight back nor restoring my BMI and, during the winter/spring season of 2019 going into 2020, I had suddenly started to experience the cold weather to an extreme level of discomfort that I had never previously experienced.

So, after a couple of years of this vegan/vegetarianism experiment, I changed my mind about rigidly being a non-meat eater and started adding back into my diet the occasional beef and occasional roast organic chicken.

While eating chicken appeared to be accompanied by no ill effects, I did notice that too much beef in successive meals did leave me feeling a little lethargic, sluggish, heavy and uncomfortable; chicken, not so much.

Now however, after thoroughly reading all 9 of the English translated versions of the books – some of the books more than once – I’ve recommitted to the vegetarian diet based upon the notion that “it is perfectly reasonable to great fully accept and consume the output that the animals freely produce and give to Man without them being harmed or injured in any manner as a result of providing such a healthful gift”.

With that being said, I am absolutely against all forms of commercial animal, poultry and fish production methods; these are an abomination and must be outlawed for the good of Man, the animals, poultry and fish as well as for the good of our Mother Earth.

I am also very much in favour of, and fully support, the Ved Rus approach to growing our own food while also including holistically incorporating the ethical humane treatment of all desired animals and poultry whether of not these animals are growing up and serving within a Kins Domain or within any form of holistic, natural, free-range farming.

Nonetheless, I am still having to consider how we/I should deal with the perplexing issue of managing the inevitable question around the seemingly inevitable ever growing size of an otherwise uncontrolled domestic animal and poultry self-reproduction situation. This discussion clearly needs to be continued with careful, insightful and thought: I trust that we will see more of these carefully-considered, thoughtful responses to help flesh out this discussion so as to help clarify, and perhaps even finally conclude, the ethical issues confronting the question of do we or do we not kill animals for food or the management of food when we have created for ourselves a bountiful supply of authentically produced excellent Kins Domain style grown food – within our own domain respectively per Anastasia’s own prescription – available for our our own and our Kins consumption?

• This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by  Patricia Brooks. Reason: Fixed some grammatical errors and resolved some ambiguities plus added some clarification and addition

[Patricia Brooks]

Hi, Michelle, I am filled with great respect for your most thoughtful and insight response about the issues surrounding the question regarding the slaughter of living creatures to provide a food source versus the intentional good husbandry management of livestock that seems inevitably to include the necessity for culling – killing or otherwise reducing – a potentially ever growing flock or herd of animals.

You have raised many good points worthy of much further deliberation and consideration that affect my own ideas around the handling of livestock on a farm that is intended not as a source of animal flesh as human consumption food or hides for human clothing and footwear but rather as potential resources in terms of utilising the benefits that can be accrued from cultivating managed small herds for the purpose of regenerative farming of the land itself.

Thank you.

Namaste. \patricia

[Patricia Brooks]

Great response to my post about meat, Carla, thank you.

Clearly there has to be some kind of trade off when we switch from eating what might perhaps best be described as “an everyday typical somewhat miscellaneous diet that usually includes meat” over to a diet involving no death of any creature that has been living and growing either on land or in air or water and thus otherwise to a strictly vegetarian or vegan diet around food that we have succeeded in growing for our self and our loved ones.

You have explained this challenge perfectly and I empathise with you as well as encourage you in your quest to effectively become self-sufficient as a vegetarian and/or veganite.

I am intimately familiar with this challenge especially as I am currently living in a shared rental space of a house with a very small yard most of which has been covered with concrete!

So happens that my current “landlord” is a self-confessed alcoholic who, though he has been in the habit of cooking some relatively seemingly “good food” for himself albeit that it has rarely been around using either organic and/or non-GMO sourced food components and, almost invariably, his meals have been around consuming some form of killed – and even factory farmed – living creature that has been made the center piece of his meals; he is not interested in growing any of his own healthy food items. On the other hand, he has covered whatever growing space there is here with a multitude of flowers and palm type trees.

Hence I have resorted to creating my own raised vegetable beds in small spaces that I have adopted for my own purposes and needs and have also grown the classic “tomatoes in small containers” that have produced reasonably well over each of the past 2 summer growing seasons here in SoCal.

I wish you every success in your adventure.

Namaste, \patricia