One Hard Moment

When it comes to raising animals for meat, most people put up a wall. They don’t hold them, they don’t talk to them, they don’t get too close, because it makes the end easier.

We’ve chosen the opposite. Our rabbits are held, talked to, and given love every day. We know the kits won’t live past twelve weeks, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know comfort. Ethical care, to us, means giving them affection and attention right up to the end.

That choice comes at a cost. It’s harder to process animals you’ve grown close to. But we believe it’s better for them to have weeks filled with good moments than to spend those same weeks ignored or kept at arm’s length. In the end, they face one hard moment. We carry the weight of it, so their short lives are worth living.

The system we left behind thrives on walls. Distance is built into it. Animals become units of production. Workers become numbers on a timesheet. People become “human resources.” The less you see, the easier it is to keep going. The easier it is to accept what should never feel acceptable.

We wanted no part of that. Choosing to interact with the animals we raise, even though it makes our work harder, is the same choice we’ve tried to make in the rest of our lives. To refuse the comfort of distance. To reject the lie that efficiency is more important than care.

There’s a cost. Every harvest day hurts. There’s no trick to make it easy. But we believe the weight belongs with us, not with the animals, and not with the people whose labor and time are drained away by systems that value profit above life.

One hard moment is the trade we’ve made, again and again. On this farm, that trade means rabbits that know warmth until their last day. In our lives, it means walking away from careers that promised security but delivered dependence. It means rejecting the endless convenience of consumer culture in favor of the harder, slower path of real independence.

It would be easier not to feel it. Easier not to look too closely. Easier to accept distance. But easier isn’t better.

One hard moment, carried honestly, is better than a lifetime of looking away.

That rejection runs through every page of Exit Farming: Starving the Systems That Farm You.