I was a vegan for more than 20 years. I used to think that all human interference with animal life was cruel and contrary to our purpose here on earth. I was convinced I was right about that and my dietary choices demonstrated my higher spiritual evolution. Much of this time I battled with drug, alcohol and nicotine addictions and anorexia and then bulimia, so it wasn't that my body was a temple, but that every thing on God's earth deserved the right to live in peace.

My dietary choices were a pain in the proverbial for my family, friends, and stressed waitresses in restaurants in the days before you could chop and change everything on the menu to suit your selfish needs. I didn't subscribe to any group or read any literature and this was long before Google or information on tap. I made up my own mind based on my beliefs.

Sheep need to be shorn every year just like we need our hair cut. Credit:Nicolas Walker

And then a naturopath told me my body was starving and I had to eat eggs or sardines. Well there was no way I could eat little fish in cans so I bought chooks, loved them and was grateful for their gorgeous golden eggs every day. A few years later I bought my riverside paradise, met a man (who I converted to vegan), settled down, got married, had a baby. And I wondered, will I know if he needs meat, and if he does, will I cook it for him? I wrestled with that a lot. And then one day, like a bolt from the blue, I looked at my toddler and knew he needed meat. So my journey to source ethically raised and grown meat began. In the end I realised we would have to do it ourselves.

Nature is cruel. I have rescued and wept over sheep ripped apart by wild dogs. Chooks taken by foxes and wild boars. Ducks stolen by wild dogs, and hunted by sea eagles. Chicks swallowed whole by pythons. Cattle, alpaca, sheep and piglets felled by paralysis ticks. Alpaca attacked by wild dogs, birth deformities and so on.