For what you tell now, is what I used to listen to, sitting with my grandparents as a kid. In awe of their lives as children on their parents' farms.
You've brought my memories back to life and I'm grateful. You've also continued to share all the bits and pieces of what is possible for all of us. Thank you - to you; and today, to Harold, Maude, and their goslings. 🙏
Tara, Thank you for putting into words the whole story. I always struggled with the “harvest” of any creature we raised or cared for because of what it meant to that animal, and us the humans that depended upon the nutrients that they gave us. Reverence, respect and thankfulness - so important to understanding this cycle of life. Your words today deepened my understanding. One thing that I cannot respect is big Ag - the heartless machine that depersonalizes and separates us from the world and the cycle of life - that true whole cycle you shared today
Thank you, Guy. I feel the same. Big Ag - the monster rolling along, gobbling up fertility and making waste of the precious gifts we have been given. Now, having destroyed soils and running out of profit margins to increase, it is trying to convince us that waste is food and the lowest scraps of edible nothingness is a righteous way to save the earth. Bugs and garbage. No, thank you. That's not the design. I'm sticking with the design. 🙂
You write and I cry, I release, I come home, I am enlivened and uplifted. I want to be you, I want to embrace you, I want to work for you, I want you to know how much your writing and your work means to me and inspires me. I want to stop myself from writing this silly comment for fear of it seeming superficial and trite.
I don't want to protect my heart from connection anymore and every time I read your writing my heart is softened further, my spine comes into better alignment, and my vision becomes more clear. So deeply grateful for your stories, they are medicine.
Such beautiful words as always, Tara. We had the privilege of harvesting a moose this year; my husband’s first!! It was great to bring our young boys out to see the moose and discuss what it meant with them. For us, having a moose tag filled means that we were able to share from our abundance in a very meaningful way to some other families. The moose has now joined the salmon and the cow in our freezer. I am grateful to know where this meat all came from and have seen the grasses it ate and known the waters they swam in.
Congratulations, Demetra! What a lovely gift for you and your family. And moose is so delicious! Your boys are so blessed to have these experiences in their lives.
This is really beautiful - we are new to being connected to our food (we’ve lived on our homestead for almost a year now and are slowly adding livestock as we are able). Anyway, we killed our first rooster a couple days ago and I found it so much harder than I’d anticipated (afterall, the dude was not known for being the nicest boy in the yard). I have a difficult time, mentally processing the purposeful loss of an animal (i project too much humanness on the animals - but you have given me the words for my feelings about it all. I love the concept that animals feel loss but also live in the moment). Your words have given me a way to reconcile the story of an animal from birth to death to the dinner table - it’s easier, mentally, to be detached from food and I’m learning to appreciate the attachment we *should* have. Not sure if my gratitude is coming through or if this makes sense at all, but thank you.
Thank you, Melissa. I feel honoured that what I share may have opened up some new perspective for you. I think it’s natural to struggle with these things. If we don’t struggle, how do we come to an honest, well-earned answer that fits the size of our hearts just so? 💕
I think the struggle is vital ... I would be dismayed to witness someone who could kill an animal for any reason without feeling the weight & import of ending a life. To wrestle with death in this way I think polishes our capacity for gratitude & reverence. It’s no small thing to kill an animal for food. Finding ways of being grateful & respecting the precious food that animals give us in their bodies & from their bodies ( eggs, dairy, honey ) is so important.
This one is one of your very best. I am recalling my childhood roots with my mother's family who owned a farm in Georgia--and rejoiced daily in the food they produced, shared, or got from friends in the small community where they lived. A friend sent me a video of the old homeplace recently--and I wanted to cry. All the grace and beauty was gone, wiped away by all the changes that sent people to cities over the last 60 or so decades and transformed the land with industrial scars. Those who remain have no memory of that rich and beautiful life I knew. I am so grateful that you and yours are holding the place, the space, the practices that give all lives lived close to the land so much more meaning and nourishment.
That’s heartbreaking. But things are changing, Louisa. Hard to see or measure but ear-to-ground and you can feel the echos of the pounding hooves in your chest. ❤️
I was sharing with friends the other day, that my great grandmother and even my grandmother, for most of her life, lived as you live. They raised and harvested everything that went on the table. How quickly those stories were erased from our memories. Big AG is not that old and certainly not old when compared to our dependence on the land for sustenance. The separation from the land, it's inhabitants and our food sources and the natural course of life has left us empty and hungry. It's funny but by participating in the yearly cycle of birth, life and death we become more compassionate beings, not less.
So very true, Bonnie. The shift was lightening fast. Now we feel like a life separated from us by only a few generations is millennia away. But things are shifting, ever so subtly, but steady.
May I have permission to share this writing of yours on an email list? It’s a group of farmers (Practical Farmers of Iowa) and there’s a current thread regarding “no-kill” (lab-made) meat. Your story would be such a helpful contribution to that discussion.
I really appreciate your emphasis on personal story-telling. It's discouraging how often discussions have people making blanket statements based upon their own personal opinion/experience. Ex: One person's response to my sharing your writing included something like "Humans do not need to eat meat to be healthy." It's ok by me if she believes and lives that way but I think it's her opinion and perhaps her own story to tell. We should be able to share our personal experiences without someone insisting they are more right. How and why are we all so eager to judge? I work on not assuming others are wrong. Sometimes I wish there was more of that, in the spirit of trying to have community with some diversity, too.
Yes, I agree but this person is missing the entire point. It’s not a story of meat. It’s a story about our connections and stories. It’s common for people to throw out a straw man argument that deflects from an issue and points at another when they’re not open or prepared to have the conversation around the topic at hand. Just some people’s psychology. It is too bad, but it is all the same.
As an aside, one of the more discouraging things about vegan diets is the need of monocultures and imported foods. I find it most sad that in their desire to be soft on the planet they are contributing to the practices that hold us separate and divided from the intimacy we need to cultivate with the food that nourishes us. The industrialized food system’s dream.
I agree with you. But I'm also working to focus on commonalities rather differences, because we are all right in our own minds, right? To add some context, I think there's many in Iowa who have decided the only way to discourage factory farms (millions of pigs and chickens in confinement around here) and industrial ag in general, is to stop eating all forms of meat, altogether. That's why I believe your focus on telling your story and your experience is on point. We have to work and to live by our own convictions and truths. And we can share our experiences for the benefit of each other. What more can we do?
Yes, agreed. We can share with the intention of finding that commonality, but how it’s received and interpreted is out of our hands. Exactly what I keep in mind every time I sit down to write or share my opinions or beliefs.
I’m also leery of the direction we are going in that suggests we all have a “truth” or that everything is merely perception. I think judgments are good and necessary and there are hard and fast truths we can, and need, to use as touchstones lest we get lost in the quagmire.
Ok, ok. She came back talking about tofu and stevia, so there I was, back in the dogfight. Exhausting. I did have one person write directly and thank me for sharing your writing. He said it was the best he'd read on the topic and he planned to follow you. So there's the silver lining.
Tara, I willingly stay up past 3 am —anytime— to read your posts! You are an amazing writer and a fascinating individual. Thank you for sharing your gifts.
Ohhh this is SUCH a good one! I can’t tell you how happy I am that I saw the post about subscribing to your work, it would’ve been a big loss to have missed this post. So many thoughts going through my head as I’ve been thinking about this a lot since getting our first cows a few days ago and picking up little piglets today. I can’t shake these intrusive worries about their eventual last day. I really needed to be reminded that that day is just one day, and to enjoy every single day we will have together and in this world until then. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, Sarah. And that last one day is not just a day. It’s the culmination of life and the fulfillment of purpose. There is nothing more devastating in raising an animal and have it end up sick, making it inedible. It’s life with waste instead of life feeding life. Life never ends with death. 💕
What an absolute treasure to eat food in the glorious way that you do. You’ve seen them born, you cared & watched them be cared for, you stewarded the land that fed their beautiful lives and then you beautifully and gratefully take them to feed yourself is just such a gift.
I'm determined and full of zeal to blaze forward and write my own food story. Yet at the same time it can feel insurmountable. I'm the product of my raising with little stories and connection. Yet I'm also more than that.
There's a little fire burning inside lighting the way little by little. Reading here has served to keep that fire going and growing.
I have the chance to participate and appreciate the harvest, the killing, the butchering and the wrapping of animals. I was introduced to hunting via my husband and whose father and uncles hunt every year.
The hunting culture that I have been socialized into is a patriarchal one with plenty of booze, smoking and nonsense. While I'm thankful for having a stepping stone into the world of hunting and having a better understanding of the story behind what I eat, I know there's still a better way.
It can be confusing, intimidating to hunt in this type of culture. Yet I'm as determined as ever to continue learning and building skills.
Josée, such a great comment. I wanted to tell you that when we moved from Alberta to Ontario, my husband was invited to hunt with a group of friends. Here, it’s common to have “hunt camps” which is a week long drinking party, just like you mentioned. Much bravado, hunting with dogs, the “bang bang bang bang“ approach to aiming - that sort of thing.
My husband, and the friends he hunts with (including me sometimes) prefer the immersion into nature, the quiet, the sacred solemnity. There are people that hunt in that way. It’s just hard to connect with them.
More and more I’m seeing on-farm harvests being taught. Farmstead Meatsmith has one you might want to check out.
I'm 26 yrs old and slaughtered/ butchered my first chickens about a month ago; I've been having uncomfortable flashbacks/nightmares from the experience, specifically of the loud squawking and the mother chicken's reaction when her younger ones were gone. I began noticing that I was paying less attention to the remaining chickens, knowing that I was going to slaughter them next year; like my subconscious didn't want to admire their life because it was going to be gone eventually. What a lie...
Your essay brought understanding and peace to me. It reignited my yearning to sit with my chickens, and observe them, to be a proper steward to them. I can see the situation as a whole again. As Jeanie wrote in another comment, "I am here for it. Every last bit of it."
Oh, Mycah, how blessed we all are that your thoughtful, open heart is in this planet at the same time we are. What a lovely gift you’ve just given me. ❤️
I love this. So beautiful. Thank you Tara for writing with all your heart and soul and for helping me to see the world more clearly for how beautiful it truly is. In life and in death. We had a mated pair of geese and the female was grabbed by an owl I think, so our male “remarried” the remaining female. We manage to save most of the eggs from his first wife and incubated them (our first ever incubation attempt) and we hatched 8 beautiful goslings! He knew them right away and would honk at them from across the yard with two fences between them. As soon as they were big enough we let them join their papa and step mama. He took right to them and became a wonderful protector. It took the step mama a little while to warm up to them though. I love how familial geese are! I never knew!
Thank you, beautiful story of food that I am coming closer and closer to living. My children came with me to pick up our meat from the farmer who raised it (He is ex-military too). We talked to him, they hugged him, we have enjoy the nourishing food. So when my twin girls kindergarten teacher, whom is a homesteader, shared with the class that she had killed her pig and put in her fridge, my girls were not alarmed. Yet, their friend was upset that someone would do that to their pet goats, and her mom got upset. Her mom, a friend, was raised on a farm, her parents are cattle ranchers, yet she found it inappropriate that the teacher would share this story of food. I told her I thought it was great, kids should know where their food comes from. She kinda agreed and I am glad we had a chance to share our views. At our parent teacher interview the teacher apologized about sharing the story as either may friend or another parent expressed their concern saying it upset their child. We told her we were glad she shares about her homesteading adventures. I hope she does not stop and to learn from her. She has a diary cow now, all types of egg layers, pigs etc.!
I’m so glad you expressed an alternative viewpoint to your friend. I think in these small interactions we make the most profound change. Talking to each other, face to face, learning from one another. I wish that teacher was mine back in the day. She sounds like a gem.
And on another point entirely ... I’ve found myself wondering the week - gently with delighted anticipation about the arrival of a certain newbie ... anyone else feeling like this ?
The "whole" story.
I am here for it. Every last bit of it.
For what you tell now, is what I used to listen to, sitting with my grandparents as a kid. In awe of their lives as children on their parents' farms.
You've brought my memories back to life and I'm grateful. You've also continued to share all the bits and pieces of what is possible for all of us. Thank you - to you; and today, to Harold, Maude, and their goslings. 🙏
Well that just warms the cockles of my heart. Thank you, Jeanie. The wisdom we all once knew and had - still there waiting for us all. xo
Tara, Thank you for putting into words the whole story. I always struggled with the “harvest” of any creature we raised or cared for because of what it meant to that animal, and us the humans that depended upon the nutrients that they gave us. Reverence, respect and thankfulness - so important to understanding this cycle of life. Your words today deepened my understanding. One thing that I cannot respect is big Ag - the heartless machine that depersonalizes and separates us from the world and the cycle of life - that true whole cycle you shared today
Thank you, Guy. I feel the same. Big Ag - the monster rolling along, gobbling up fertility and making waste of the precious gifts we have been given. Now, having destroyed soils and running out of profit margins to increase, it is trying to convince us that waste is food and the lowest scraps of edible nothingness is a righteous way to save the earth. Bugs and garbage. No, thank you. That's not the design. I'm sticking with the design. 🙂
You write and I cry, I release, I come home, I am enlivened and uplifted. I want to be you, I want to embrace you, I want to work for you, I want you to know how much your writing and your work means to me and inspires me. I want to stop myself from writing this silly comment for fear of it seeming superficial and trite.
I don't want to protect my heart from connection anymore and every time I read your writing my heart is softened further, my spine comes into better alignment, and my vision becomes more clear. So deeply grateful for your stories, they are medicine.
Dear Bella, thank you for not stopping yourself from “writing this silly comment”. Not silly, just beautiful and real and it made me cry, too.
So there we are, two strangers, connected through words and stories, sharing tears that flow from open hearts. What a miracle! ❤️❤️
I second Bella’s comment, I read it saying “yes, me too”.
All of this ... so much yes yes yes
Such beautiful words as always, Tara. We had the privilege of harvesting a moose this year; my husband’s first!! It was great to bring our young boys out to see the moose and discuss what it meant with them. For us, having a moose tag filled means that we were able to share from our abundance in a very meaningful way to some other families. The moose has now joined the salmon and the cow in our freezer. I am grateful to know where this meat all came from and have seen the grasses it ate and known the waters they swam in.
Congratulations, Demetra! What a lovely gift for you and your family. And moose is so delicious! Your boys are so blessed to have these experiences in their lives.
This is really beautiful - we are new to being connected to our food (we’ve lived on our homestead for almost a year now and are slowly adding livestock as we are able). Anyway, we killed our first rooster a couple days ago and I found it so much harder than I’d anticipated (afterall, the dude was not known for being the nicest boy in the yard). I have a difficult time, mentally processing the purposeful loss of an animal (i project too much humanness on the animals - but you have given me the words for my feelings about it all. I love the concept that animals feel loss but also live in the moment). Your words have given me a way to reconcile the story of an animal from birth to death to the dinner table - it’s easier, mentally, to be detached from food and I’m learning to appreciate the attachment we *should* have. Not sure if my gratitude is coming through or if this makes sense at all, but thank you.
Thank you, Melissa. I feel honoured that what I share may have opened up some new perspective for you. I think it’s natural to struggle with these things. If we don’t struggle, how do we come to an honest, well-earned answer that fits the size of our hearts just so? 💕
I think the struggle is vital ... I would be dismayed to witness someone who could kill an animal for any reason without feeling the weight & import of ending a life. To wrestle with death in this way I think polishes our capacity for gratitude & reverence. It’s no small thing to kill an animal for food. Finding ways of being grateful & respecting the precious food that animals give us in their bodies & from their bodies ( eggs, dairy, honey ) is so important.
This one is one of your very best. I am recalling my childhood roots with my mother's family who owned a farm in Georgia--and rejoiced daily in the food they produced, shared, or got from friends in the small community where they lived. A friend sent me a video of the old homeplace recently--and I wanted to cry. All the grace and beauty was gone, wiped away by all the changes that sent people to cities over the last 60 or so decades and transformed the land with industrial scars. Those who remain have no memory of that rich and beautiful life I knew. I am so grateful that you and yours are holding the place, the space, the practices that give all lives lived close to the land so much more meaning and nourishment.
That’s heartbreaking. But things are changing, Louisa. Hard to see or measure but ear-to-ground and you can feel the echos of the pounding hooves in your chest. ❤️
I was sharing with friends the other day, that my great grandmother and even my grandmother, for most of her life, lived as you live. They raised and harvested everything that went on the table. How quickly those stories were erased from our memories. Big AG is not that old and certainly not old when compared to our dependence on the land for sustenance. The separation from the land, it's inhabitants and our food sources and the natural course of life has left us empty and hungry. It's funny but by participating in the yearly cycle of birth, life and death we become more compassionate beings, not less.
So very true, Bonnie. The shift was lightening fast. Now we feel like a life separated from us by only a few generations is millennia away. But things are shifting, ever so subtly, but steady.
I feel it too, Tara.
May I have permission to share this writing of yours on an email list? It’s a group of farmers (Practical Farmers of Iowa) and there’s a current thread regarding “no-kill” (lab-made) meat. Your story would be such a helpful contribution to that discussion.
Yes, of course, Linda. Please just include proper attributions. Thank you for including me in the discussion.
Thank you, yes, of course! I hope and imagine you may gain some subscribers.
I really appreciate your emphasis on personal story-telling. It's discouraging how often discussions have people making blanket statements based upon their own personal opinion/experience. Ex: One person's response to my sharing your writing included something like "Humans do not need to eat meat to be healthy." It's ok by me if she believes and lives that way but I think it's her opinion and perhaps her own story to tell. We should be able to share our personal experiences without someone insisting they are more right. How and why are we all so eager to judge? I work on not assuming others are wrong. Sometimes I wish there was more of that, in the spirit of trying to have community with some diversity, too.
Yes, I agree but this person is missing the entire point. It’s not a story of meat. It’s a story about our connections and stories. It’s common for people to throw out a straw man argument that deflects from an issue and points at another when they’re not open or prepared to have the conversation around the topic at hand. Just some people’s psychology. It is too bad, but it is all the same.
As an aside, one of the more discouraging things about vegan diets is the need of monocultures and imported foods. I find it most sad that in their desire to be soft on the planet they are contributing to the practices that hold us separate and divided from the intimacy we need to cultivate with the food that nourishes us. The industrialized food system’s dream.
I agree with you. But I'm also working to focus on commonalities rather differences, because we are all right in our own minds, right? To add some context, I think there's many in Iowa who have decided the only way to discourage factory farms (millions of pigs and chickens in confinement around here) and industrial ag in general, is to stop eating all forms of meat, altogether. That's why I believe your focus on telling your story and your experience is on point. We have to work and to live by our own convictions and truths. And we can share our experiences for the benefit of each other. What more can we do?
Yes, agreed. We can share with the intention of finding that commonality, but how it’s received and interpreted is out of our hands. Exactly what I keep in mind every time I sit down to write or share my opinions or beliefs.
I’m also leery of the direction we are going in that suggests we all have a “truth” or that everything is merely perception. I think judgments are good and necessary and there are hard and fast truths we can, and need, to use as touchstones lest we get lost in the quagmire.
Ok, ok. She came back talking about tofu and stevia, so there I was, back in the dogfight. Exhausting. I did have one person write directly and thank me for sharing your writing. He said it was the best he'd read on the topic and he planned to follow you. So there's the silver lining.
Tara, I willingly stay up past 3 am —anytime— to read your posts! You are an amazing writer and a fascinating individual. Thank you for sharing your gifts.
😁 Thank you, Diane.
Ohhh this is SUCH a good one! I can’t tell you how happy I am that I saw the post about subscribing to your work, it would’ve been a big loss to have missed this post. So many thoughts going through my head as I’ve been thinking about this a lot since getting our first cows a few days ago and picking up little piglets today. I can’t shake these intrusive worries about their eventual last day. I really needed to be reminded that that day is just one day, and to enjoy every single day we will have together and in this world until then. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, Sarah. And that last one day is not just a day. It’s the culmination of life and the fulfillment of purpose. There is nothing more devastating in raising an animal and have it end up sick, making it inedible. It’s life with waste instead of life feeding life. Life never ends with death. 💕
What an absolute treasure to eat food in the glorious way that you do. You’ve seen them born, you cared & watched them be cared for, you stewarded the land that fed their beautiful lives and then you beautifully and gratefully take them to feed yourself is just such a gift.
It really is a gift. A gift earned - the best kind. I am never stingy in my gratitude around all of my life.❤️
I'm determined and full of zeal to blaze forward and write my own food story. Yet at the same time it can feel insurmountable. I'm the product of my raising with little stories and connection. Yet I'm also more than that.
There's a little fire burning inside lighting the way little by little. Reading here has served to keep that fire going and growing.
I have the chance to participate and appreciate the harvest, the killing, the butchering and the wrapping of animals. I was introduced to hunting via my husband and whose father and uncles hunt every year.
The hunting culture that I have been socialized into is a patriarchal one with plenty of booze, smoking and nonsense. While I'm thankful for having a stepping stone into the world of hunting and having a better understanding of the story behind what I eat, I know there's still a better way.
It can be confusing, intimidating to hunt in this type of culture. Yet I'm as determined as ever to continue learning and building skills.
Anyone taking on hunter, butcher apprentices?! :D
Josée, such a great comment. I wanted to tell you that when we moved from Alberta to Ontario, my husband was invited to hunt with a group of friends. Here, it’s common to have “hunt camps” which is a week long drinking party, just like you mentioned. Much bravado, hunting with dogs, the “bang bang bang bang“ approach to aiming - that sort of thing.
My husband, and the friends he hunts with (including me sometimes) prefer the immersion into nature, the quiet, the sacred solemnity. There are people that hunt in that way. It’s just hard to connect with them.
More and more I’m seeing on-farm harvests being taught. Farmstead Meatsmith has one you might want to check out.
This is beautiful... My body is full of emotion.
I'm 26 yrs old and slaughtered/ butchered my first chickens about a month ago; I've been having uncomfortable flashbacks/nightmares from the experience, specifically of the loud squawking and the mother chicken's reaction when her younger ones were gone. I began noticing that I was paying less attention to the remaining chickens, knowing that I was going to slaughter them next year; like my subconscious didn't want to admire their life because it was going to be gone eventually. What a lie...
Your essay brought understanding and peace to me. It reignited my yearning to sit with my chickens, and observe them, to be a proper steward to them. I can see the situation as a whole again. As Jeanie wrote in another comment, "I am here for it. Every last bit of it."
Thank you.
Oh, Mycah, how blessed we all are that your thoughtful, open heart is in this planet at the same time we are. What a lovely gift you’ve just given me. ❤️
I love this. So beautiful. Thank you Tara for writing with all your heart and soul and for helping me to see the world more clearly for how beautiful it truly is. In life and in death. We had a mated pair of geese and the female was grabbed by an owl I think, so our male “remarried” the remaining female. We manage to save most of the eggs from his first wife and incubated them (our first ever incubation attempt) and we hatched 8 beautiful goslings! He knew them right away and would honk at them from across the yard with two fences between them. As soon as they were big enough we let them join their papa and step mama. He took right to them and became a wonderful protector. It took the step mama a little while to warm up to them though. I love how familial geese are! I never knew!
What a lovely story. What a good papa. Thank you for sharing this. Such a testament to things that cannot be measured.
Thank you, beautiful story of food that I am coming closer and closer to living. My children came with me to pick up our meat from the farmer who raised it (He is ex-military too). We talked to him, they hugged him, we have enjoy the nourishing food. So when my twin girls kindergarten teacher, whom is a homesteader, shared with the class that she had killed her pig and put in her fridge, my girls were not alarmed. Yet, their friend was upset that someone would do that to their pet goats, and her mom got upset. Her mom, a friend, was raised on a farm, her parents are cattle ranchers, yet she found it inappropriate that the teacher would share this story of food. I told her I thought it was great, kids should know where their food comes from. She kinda agreed and I am glad we had a chance to share our views. At our parent teacher interview the teacher apologized about sharing the story as either may friend or another parent expressed their concern saying it upset their child. We told her we were glad she shares about her homesteading adventures. I hope she does not stop and to learn from her. She has a diary cow now, all types of egg layers, pigs etc.!
I’m so glad you expressed an alternative viewpoint to your friend. I think in these small interactions we make the most profound change. Talking to each other, face to face, learning from one another. I wish that teacher was mine back in the day. She sounds like a gem.
And on another point entirely ... I’ve found myself wondering the week - gently with delighted anticipation about the arrival of a certain newbie ... anyone else feeling like this ?
Ha! I’m wondering, too! No baby yet. We wait with bated breath!