When he enlisted me in the dressing of a deer or the beheading and plucking of a turkey, he would make the point that our food isn’t just something we buy, that if we don’t labor directly to produce it, we need to remember that others do labor to provide it for us and that often their labor is of an unpleasant kind that we prefer not to do ourselves. This is true not just of the food we eat but of everything we need in life, and its a truth about which we become ever more ignorant as our technological progress steadily distances us from the sources of life’s necessities.
