The Learned Pig

Art – Thinking – Nature – Writing

Tag: farming

  • Eating Meat

    Eating Meat

    In nearly every case, something died for you to go on living. Even a vegan or raw food diet requires suppressing some forms of life. With no exception, the lives of microbes, insects, plants, and indeed, a great many animals, are at stake each time we take a bite. Whether we like it or not,…

  • Forgetful Worlds

    Forgetful Worlds

    Milking parlours are the place of an everyday cleanliness that is found nowhere else. It is difficult type of cleanliness to describe: not tidy in a domestic way, nor sterile, like that of the operating theatre or science lab, but more a work-a-day scrubbing that ensures the milk passes from udder to tank as pure…

  • Proper Burial / Clean Machines / Wheat Head

    Proper Burial / Clean Machines / Wheat Head

      Proper Burial Each thing we take from the earth requires we bury something of equal value. Dinosaurs buried each other, where they fell, feathered, and massive. Still later, we bundle whole ships with furs for warmth, and spices to trade beneath the earth. One age buries another, patting dirt upon civilization. Dogs understand the…

  • Walking in the Sky

    Walking in the Sky

    A small brown kestrel rises over the crest of a hill and pauses, hanging in the wind, scanning the fields below. With a tilt of its wings, it shifts vantage point twice, three times, hangs for a moment, then suddenly slides downwards, a gleam of silver under the high sun. Six foot from the ground,…

  • No Rural Fantasy

    No Rural Fantasy

    The anti-pastoral of Cynan Jones I’m a Londoner through and through; a city person fascinated by everything the city is not. The rural worlds outside of mine are compelling, attractive, and occasionally frightening. I admit, as I head into my thirties, I feel the pull of an idea of being out in the country somewhere….