When people imagine home-school economics, they often picture balancing a checkbook, playing Monopoly, or running a lemonade stand.
But in my house, home-school lessons have fur, teeth, and twitching noses. My children recently pooled together $135 of their own savings to start raising meat rabbits. They bought one buck, Peter, and four does—Flopsy, Mopsy, and two young females. Within the first week, both of the young females died of unknown causes. My son immediately asked me to refund his money, but I reminded him that’s not how business works. Risk is part of any investment.
The remaining does, Flopsy and Mopsy, became the foundation of their little rabbitry. And as it turned out, Flopsy was already pregnant when she arrived. That discovery, while unexpected, gave the children a way to grow their operation. They realized they could keep some of her female young to replace what they lost. It was their first real lesson in how responsibility, problem-solving, and adaptability go hand in hand with opportunity.
We are still at the beginning of this endeavor. I don’t know how it will turn out. But so far, the children are engaged and remarkably responsible. Even last week, when they all came down with colds, they bundled up and went outside each day to feed, water, and care for their rabbits.
The children have approached this with seriousness. They bought a wall calendar from Amazon and use dry-erase markers to track gestation dates and due dates. They discovered that water bowls tipped too easily, spilling onto bedding, so they researched and purchased bottles with nipples that attach to the cage. Cleaning out cages became such a dreaded chore that they convinced their father to raise the cages on cinder blocks, letting droppings and hay fall through the bottom. Every morning, they forage for rabbit food, carefully Googling which plants are safe and which are not.
They are also thinking like entrepreneurs. Before the first litter has even arrived, they’ve been promoting their January rabbit sales to family and friends. They’ve already worked out a revenue-sharing agreement with their father, who will handle the harvesting, cleaning, and vacuum-sealing of the meat. This is education in its most practical, grounded form. My children are learning about risk, investment, marketing, supply chains, and profit—not through hypothetical examples in a workbook, but by living it.
Not everyone is comfortable with children raising animals for meat. Even within my own family, people express concern that it could damage them emotionally. They worry that harvesting rabbits will traumatize them, or make them desensitized to suffering. I suppose it’s possible. But I doubt it. Children have lived alongside the raising and processing of food for most of human history. They gathered eggs, milked cows, weeded gardens, and helped their parents butcher chickens or pigs. It wasn’t considered traumatic—it was considered life.
The separation between children and food production is a modern phenomenon, born from the industrialization of agriculture. Slaughterhouses, refrigeration, and national supply chains put distance between us and our meals. Today, the majority of Americans fall into one of three categories: those who care deeply about animal welfare and try to source meat from farms that treat animals with dignity; the majority, who consume meat with little thought of where it comes from; and those who avoid meat altogether, living by strict dietary convictions. I believe we need more people in the first category: people who understand that loving animals and eating them are not contradictions.
One of the most surprising lessons of children on the farm is their different reactions to animal death. When an animal dies unexpectedly—from sickness, old age, or accident—they cry. They feel that loss deeply. But when an animal is harvested for food, they do not cry. Instead, they pray and give thanks. They express gratitude for the nourishment the animal provides. This, I believe, is healthier than the disconnection most Americans experience. My children know exactly what pork is: When my son asked recently whether the meat in the pan came from the pig his father butchered last week, and I said yes, he nodded and said, “It’s good.” To him, eating is not abstract. It is honest.
What makes this all the more striking is that I was vegan for most of my life. I once believed that abstaining from animal products was the most ethical path. If you had told me years ago that I would one day be overseeing home-school lessons involving a rabbit meat business, I would have laughed in disbelief. And yet, here I am. I no longer see raising and eating animals as incompatible with compassion. In fact, I see them as inseparable. To love an animal while it lives, to give it good food and clean water, to protect it from harm, and then to consume it with gratitude—this is the most honest way of eating I know.
What my children are learning goes far beyond business math. They are learning about responsibility, life cycles, and the delicate balance between care and consumption. They are experiencing firsthand the weight of risk, the need for adaptability, and the rewards of hard work. These are home-school lessons of real food—not just dollars and cents, but also gratitude and grief, problem-solving and perseverance, reverence for life and acceptance of death. For all the concerns people may raise, I believe my children will emerge from these experiences with stronger character, clearer values, and a deeper connection to both the food they eat and the world they live in.
