1. My Journey to a Vegan Diet For much of my life, I ate meat, milk products, and eggs, just like most other people do today. It''s estimated that over 85 percent of the world''s population include meat in their diet, and this number is expected to rise as poorer countries raise their standard of living.1 Like most people, I grew up consuming a wide range of animal products. They were simply part of my daily diet, which included milk on my morning oatmeal and slices of mortadella in the sandwiches in my school lunch box. (The first thing I did was to pick all the pistachios out of the processed meat.) Even as a child, I understood what it meant to eat meat: an animal had to die. Despite being aware of the connection, I found it easy to suppress the images that briefly flashed through my mind.
When I was six weeks old, my father accepted a job as a community forester, and my parents moved from a tiny rented basement apartment in a small town to a cozy forester''s lodge in the Eifel, a range of low mountains in western Germany. The lodge was out in the country, surrounded by green fields and forest. The best thing about growing up at the lodge for me and my brother, who is two years my junior, was the huge yard. We spent almost every day in the yard, where many large trees invited us to climb them. They were great places to play hide-and-seek. Our favorite was a Douglas-fir with sturdy branches the length of its trunk that allowed us to climb almost to the top. My father''s predecessor had raised Christmas trees on the property, and the firs left over from his tenure were now all grown up. There was hardly any lawn, and the patches of ground between the mature Christmas trees had become overgrown.
My parents spent most of their spare time outside, reclaiming the yard. Even so, they left a large part wild, not because they didn''t want to put in the effort to clear it but because they valued the ecological benefits of wildness. My father left unmown patches at the front and back of the house, where a riot of grasses, wild herbs, and flowers grew, making our property a veritable paradise for insects. In summer these wild grassy patches were bursting with flowers, full of oxeye daisies and brilliant purple fireweed. Deer wandered through to nibble on the bounty. The yard had space not only for wildlife but also for us. My parents put in a large vegetable garden surrounded by an attractive wooden fence. My father had single-handedly sharpened every fence post with a chain saw.
When he was done, he built a small wooden bench for my mother, which was mostly occupied by me and my brother while my mother indulged in her favorite activity: hours of meticulous weeding. In summer, we harvested fresh fruit and vegetables. The currant bushes and strawberry plants offered irresistible snacks. Every day produced fresh supplies of lettuce and zucchini. Beans and cabbages had to be picked and processed. Potatoes were dug in fall after the green foliage on the plants had died back, and my brother and I were enthusiastic helpers. We had a great time digging in the soil, wondering which of us would unearth the largest potato. My mother stored the potatoes along with the parsnips in the cool, moist cellar of our 1930s lodge.
The root vegetables kept for many weeks, and the supply was usually so plentiful that we hardly ever had to buy potatoes from the grocery store. My mother also did a lot of canning to preserve the rest of our produce so we could keep eating homegrown fruits and vegetables even in winter. She labeled each jar meticulously and then placed them all in the cellar. As soon as winter was over and it was time to seed vegetables in spring, my mother drew up detailed plans, carefully colored in crayon, so she knew exactly where and when everything was planted. My parents raised animals as well as vegetables--and not only because animals are beautiful and you can pet them. After they lived happy lives in our yard and neighboring pastures, they were slaughtered. On the designated day, my parents went out into the barn or pasture armed with a bolt gun. As the animals were enjoying their favorite food one last time, their lives were abruptly terminated.
My brother and I were never allowed to watch when the animals were killed. Our mother called us to come outside only after they were hung, head down, from hooks attached to the doorframe of our shed. We often tried to get a glimpse of the proceedings through the small window in our father''s office--luckily, we never succeeded. When it was all over, we grabbed our little chairs and sat in front of the open shed door. Now we could watch as our father slipped the animals'' skins down over their ears and then removed their innards. When he was finished, my mother brought what was left of our animals into the house. There, she washed the meat before processing it. She packed the rabbits into freezer bags marked with the date and weight before storing the bags in the large freezer in the cellar.
One year, my father even found a use for our cuddly rabbits'' soft fur, trying his hand at tanning and sewing warm mittens from their pelts. The meat from goats and sheep was ground, and sometimes my father made homesmoked sausage, using a smoker that lived in our shed. A marvelous aroma wafted out while the meat was smoking. My mother''s roast rabbit was a special treat. First, she simmered the animal in a vegetable broth. She reserved the broth, and many meals started with a hearty rabbit soup. A highlight for us children--it sounds really macabre when I think about it now--was the kidneys, which my mother always simmered along with the rest of the soup ingredients. One kidney per child.
After the rabbit had been simmered, it went into the oven to be roasted until it was nice and crispy. My brother and I each got a leg so we could nibble the meat off the bone. Our school friends or children from the village often came over to visit. We played together in the yard and especially enjoyed spending time with the animals. We might grab a handful of dandelions and squat down in the spacious rabbit run, or we might decide to visit the goats in the pasture. It was especially fun when the animals had just had babies. But, sooner or later, someone asked a question I felt uncomfortable answering: "What do you do with the rabbits and goats when they grow up?" When I finally told my friends--all of whom ate meat, by the way--what was going to happen to the animals, I always felt I was making a confession, and I was worried about how they might react. My worries turned out to be justified, as in most cases the children were deeply shocked.
The rabbits and goats were so adorable. How could anyone be so heartless as to kill them, let alone eat them? When I was young, I didn''t understand this. After all, other people spread liverwurst on their sandwiches and grilled sausages for supper. My friends'' reactions told me my family must be coldhearted because we slaughtered animals--animals that had wonderful lives and never had to endure being confined in tiny stalls. Animals that were allowed to live in family groups, got medical attention when they were sick, and didn''t have to suffer when they were killed. *** My position on killing animals has fundamentally changed since then, but for a long time it didn''t bother me in the slightest--especially when it came to the rabbits--that they were going to end up roasted for dinner one day. When I ate, I didn''t consider my connection with the animal. I didn''t worry at all that what was now lying on my plate had been bouncing happily around on green grass just a couple of days before.
But at some point, things changed. I forged an especially strong connection with the goats. Anyone who has raised goats knows that they become extremely tame and affectionate, almost like dogs. Our favorite goat, Schwänli, whom we had for almost sixteen years, was unusually affectionate. The goat pasture was a couple of hundred yards away on the other side of the road. When Schwänli spotted us in the distance making our way out to the little herd, she would run down the hill in the pasture to the goat shelters. As she was the highest-ranking goat, the others would follow her, and their mad rush was accompanied by the clanging of the bells around their necks. The moment we arrived at the pasture and climbed the fence, Schwänli greeted us and never left our sides.
She also didn''t tolerate us petting the other goats, forcing herself between us and them and insisting we pay attention to her and her alone. The goats spent the winter in the goat shed by the house, with a small outdoor run in the yard. The warm shed protected the goats from wind and weather, which was important because the kids were born in late winter--often at night. When a kid was due, my mother would make the birthing stall comfy by adding a thick layer of hay and turning on a warming lamp so the kids, which arrived in this world covered in a layer of amniotic fluid, were immediately warm and cozy. When we were young, my brother and I spent every free minute in the goat shed. Some kids were so trusting that after bouncing around their winter quarters like little rubber balls they would cuddle up to us and fall asleep. Sometimes my mother had to raise a kid by hand and bottle-feed it, either because its mother didn''t have enough milk or because she had rejected it. To make sure the babies had enough to eat, my mother trudged back and forth to the barn multiple times both day and night.
These hand-raised kids were particularly trusting, and we became especially fond of them. The kids had names, of course, which my brother and I were often allowed to choose for them. In spring, when the grass shot up and.