When I first learned to slaughter sheep my job was to choose the animals from the sorting pens one by one and lead them into the killing shed. Initially, I hesitated, saving the cutest looking animals until last, or sparing, temporarily, the handsomest rams with the gentle caramel-coloured eyes.

But then I wondered if it was crueller to make them wait: after all, none would be spared and I could do nothing to stop the process.

I soon learned that there is no cruelty: the moment of death, fearfully imagined, was extremely quick. A bolt “gun”, looking something like a small kitchen hand blender, is applied to the back of the skull and fired. There is no anticipation or panic and the sheep drops likes a stone and is immediately lifted onto a wooden rack at waist height. My next job is to insert a very sharp steel knife with an eight-inch blade behind the windpipe. The skin is tough and you have to push quite hard, making sure the knife penetrates to the other side and out. Then the blood flows: but the animal is brain dead, its pupils fixed and unresponsive. Finally, I saw through the neck completely and remove the head, placing it on a rack, for it too will be eaten.

Almost nothing is wasted here. The bucket of blood is as red as a Christmas poinsettia, a milkshake-thick swirl that froths slightly as I stir it vigorously with a stick to stop it clotting. It will go to make black pudding, along with the intestines for sausages and the claggy white fat from around the descending colon which will be rendered into a great congealed slab that will be sliced and melted in a frying pan to garnish fermented fish. The thin belly muscles will be separated carefully and rolled and seasoned, then placed into a wooden press to make rullapylsa, a delicious cold cut of mutton. A bucket of ram’s testicles sits nearby, a treat for the sheepdogs which have worked so hard during the muster. Soon, there are dozens of cleaned carcasses swinging gently in serried rows like suits on a giant carousel at the dry cleaners.

Here in Faroe Islands, the meat is cured by hanging in the hjallur, a curing shed with slatted wooden sides, which allow the wind to pass through. No refrigeration, salt or chemicals are used, and the meat is soon covered in a bacterial bloom, green, gold, bronze and black as it goes through several stages of drying: moist, semi-dry, then dry and finally, fermented. At Christmas there will be ræst riv – fermented ribs, still slightly moist and pungent like cheese. Already there have been convivial dinners where all that is served are sheep’s heads and boiled potatoes accompanied by lots of schnapps. There isn’t much meat on the head, the tastiest parts are the cheeks and the little knobbed tongue, but my Faroese friends relish the nakkaspik, the thick lump of fat and gristle at the base of the skull which is full of flavour. Fat is king, and traditionally the sheep with the largest bellies were valued the most – because they provided the most calories and flavour.

You see little kids playing with stretchy strings of intestines and dismembered hooves

Last winter, a friend of mine took his five-year-old son to watch a bull being slaughtered at a neighbouring farm. When he returned home at about ten in the evening his wife was angry, but not because the child might be traumatised by the sight of the 600kg animal being shot in front of him. She was simply irritated because the boy should have been in bed at eight, and a late night would make him tetchy next day. At sheep slaughtering time, from September to November, small children are often present. They collect sheeps’ heads and stack them, or carry the heavy, blood-flecked, richly coloured fleeces that have been peeled from the warm carcasses to dry outside. You see little kids playing with stretchy strings of intestines and dismembered hooves. It’s all just part of the circle of life, and the cycle of the seasons in a country where the sheep heavily outnumber the human population. It’s hard to be squeamish about animal slaughter when you’ve seen it up close as a toddler. My Faroese friends find it hard to empathise with outsiders who grimace at the sight of blood.

Before I spent so much time in Faroes, I had done very little killing. There were fish of course, a few injured birds and rabbits suffering with myxomatosis, a muntjac mauled by a dog – these were creatures I had despatched out of mercy. In the islands I learned to slaughter and butcher sheep, to hunt hares, kill a gannet with a knife and catch fulmars with a net at sea before wringing their necks. It’s not sport: all of these animals and birds were things I would later eat.

In England, I live surrounded by neighbouring farms. Sheep and cattle are all about, and I see them daily as I walk the dog. I’m a naturalist, and bird watcher, but for most of my life I’ve regarded the sheep with indifference. They seemed relatively inert, and farming friends emphasised how difficult they could be to keep alive, and how (thanks to supermarket pressures) they were often a barely profitable enterprise. Here, the slaughtering and butchering of the animals we eat is contracted out to other people, and due to animal welfare and health regulations almost none of it is done on the farm. That, to me, is another symptom of how in the UK, we have become increasingly distanced from the process of food production. Ironically, having now killed a significant number of sheep, I find them utterly endearing and fascinating animals, and I am interested in their biology and welfare.

My wife and children are vegan and vegetarian, principally out of concern for the planet. We talk about this stuff a lot. Once, my wife asked me what kind of animal I might like to be if I were reincarnated. For the gift of flight, I envied some types of birds, but most wild species on our beleaguered planet face so much habitat loss and anthropocentric threats that I rejected them as recipients of my spirit. The most majestic wild mammals are hunted, poached, or kept in captivity. And I didn’t fancy being a short-lived bovine kept indoors for much of its existence, or a pet dog or cat at the mercy of a lazy, possibly cruel owner. In the end I chose a Faroese sheep, because it lives a semi-wild life, and only comes into contact with people two or three times a year. Hardy and independent, it gives birth unaided after feeding on a natural diet of rich, unfertilised grass. Death when it comes is swift, and local; no long stressful journeys crammed into a lorry. It increasingly seems like a good life when I compare it to pretty much anything else. The noble beasts we claim to admire are in retreat, and we continue to persecute, reduce and abuse the natural world as our species consumes more and more wild space.

I derive a visceral joy from my time catching sheep in the Faroes. It seems, as the saying goes, “something real” in this dystopian digitalised world. Mustering and slaughtering the animals is a convivial, social time of year. It requires skill and physical fitness in this rugged landscape. Unsurprisingly, the Faroese claim it’s the best-tasting lamb and mutton on earth, but none of it is exported. Even the professional classes, who live largely in the capital Tórshavn, often still keep a few sheep – or at least have a share in a communal flock. Lending a hand at slaughter time and helping round up the animals on the windswept hillsides is the price you pay for a share of the meat. It’s not really a commercial business these days, but it’s very much an intrinsic part of Faroese culture. And, more than that, it imparts a sense of balance in their lives. They value knowing where the meat comes from, how it lives, and witnessing and participating in how it dies.

Tim Ecott is the author of “The Land of Maybe: A Faroe Islands Year” (Short Books)