Canine-Induced Death of Livestock
Changes (almost) Everything
For the Chearcus

(Autumn begins either on the Equinox of September, or the Cross-quarter of August 1st)

A re-wilding dog attacked our alpaca herd on the last day of July, 2015. Chelsea & I have different systems of values and protocols regarding livestock. Before July 31st we could partially ignore that divergent thought-life within the Chearcus. In other words, prior to the dog attack in which one life was lost this Summer, we had agreed that any animal killed by a predator while under our care would lead to immediate re-housing of all other livestock (to cut our losses and/or to ensure no more deaths). That meant giving them to other families who can house them in more secure settings which allegedly block out predators. With the trauma of July 31st & August 1st, we instead worked on building own better fortresses against predators. The Catholic Worker Farm is in the Wild West, where most folks DON'T use fences to keep their property securely IN, and, bucking the system, the nearby hamlet of Sheep Ranch follows opposite protocols to most frontier towns, where folks have to build fences if they wish to keep the sheep OUT. MORE INFO BELOW on the murder of Classwar.
August is turning out to be less traumatic than the first few days felt. Life is back to normal, including daily milking of the goat.

While Unicorn took a job off-the-farm, those remaining harvested some crops for subsistence.

Nuclear Abolition Activity Continued...
Info on monthly vigils at Livermore

The Chearcus went to Livermore (111 miles from the CW Farm) for the annual protest against nuclearism. Over 200 participants with over 50 arrests. Here is the full story (Labor Video), and here's photos from Indybay, and more from CBS-TV as well as the San Jose Mercury newspaper. Although we couldn't make it to New Mexico for the Campaign Nonviolence activity, we are glad that our WWOOFers made it possible for us to leave the farm for a few days for this essential complementary activity to our Catholic Worker farming. Pegasus & Unicorn participated in the 70-hour fast for a peaceful end to the nuclear age, beginning at 8am on Hiroshima Day and ending at 6am on Nagasaki Day.

We were delighted to see friends from the foothills and mountains (our region of California) plus our Bay Area friends and their kids on-site at the protest:


As the Summer Ended

We did some of our late-summer harvest with the help of volunteers Aida & Yuri:

Tom, Pegasus, Yuri & Aida did the weekly duty of Monday/Wed/Friday harvesting of zucchini, bunching onions, scalzo beans & golden beets. We also have some chioggia beets.. Cynthia's a great photographer, so thanx for the pictures, Cynth! Yuri's a great graphic artist, so he'll be posting the new signs around the CW Farm to help strangers and guests identify where they are when coming to visit this remote, rural, lovarchist farmland.

CROSS-QUARTER CLASSWAR FULLMOON CRAZINESS


It was a highly stressful blue-moon date, that bizarre Friday the 31st of terror and death. I took the survivor (Leander) to the animal hospital for an overnight caregiving session. We now are giving daily injections of penicillin (since an oral injection would mess with the ruminant's rumen) and wound cleaning (no stitches were made, despite the enormous wound inflicted by the neighbor's canine ironically named "Monster". Our dear friend Don was a witness to the monstrosity of trouble when Monster invaded and attacked our three alpacas. Traumatizing indeed was the scene. All we have here are the evidentiary photos Don shot in the process:

Dogs apparently cannot be truly re-wilded without the help of the rest of the pack. Monster's pack was human-based instead of dog-based, so it's unknown how well he will be rewilded, or if humans aware of his potential killing spree will kill him on-site, which of course is legal in the county for such a violent dog. This situation is a good demonstration of unjust death of livestock for me, because of my anti-dogdom stance which encourages a re-wilding of dogs. The killer dog is a canine becoming re-wilded by beginning a rampage in this territory, starting with taking bites out of Leander and sucking the blood out of Classwar until death did him part. Our nice neighbors helped us dig the hole to bury poor Classwar, and the tragedy stings us at the core. As with other unjust killings (such as murders of humans) the answer is NOT to kill further (no more eye-for-an-eye, as Jesus told us to love our enemies). Mr. Monster simply needs to be avoided. It is irresponsible for humans to continue to feed and care for a wild animal, whether bear, wolf, or cockroach, and some humans feel it necessary to kill such pests. As a pacifist i can never support such vindictive behavior (against human or non-human), and as a safety-minded adult, i try to stop people on our land trust from feeding such critters. That's why we have fences--to keep other animals (wild or domestic) from injuring our livestock. I believe nobody should hold dogs as slaves, unless medically necessary, because i value human life over non-human life when push-comes-to-shove. Usually, we can honor the lives of many species while still getting human needs met. Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated emotionally retarded wolves into human companions and called them dogs. Those mutants were selected because they were less dangerous to humans, making better slaves for humans. But that was so many centuries ago, and we can't change the past. We can only change the future. Re-wilding all dogs, except work-dogs including medical assistant dogs, is a good step towards justice for canines, but must be done in tandem with helping humans receive human companionship. As a species, we need to take care of each other first as individual humans, and other species secondarily. Again, more of this is in the Dog Liberation Manifesto, and this current situation facing the Chearcus and the rest of the Catholic Worker Farm is a serious one: how do we protect the potential prey (chickens, goats and alpacas) that we keep as part of our non-vegan farm here? Other predators await in our future, so we will feel sad if they achieve their goals of ravaging our livestock, so where do we draw the line for livestock protection?

As you can see, the wound is closing up:
And here's Leander in recovery:


We can't ever be sure that any enclosure is strong enough for a wild animal determined enough to eat our livestock as their prey. But we have ramped up our efforts to strengthen the habitat of our livestock. That's the good news for now, with the benefit of continuing to operate animal husbandry scenarios at the Catholic Worker Farm.