Happy Memorial Day from Harrison Farm!

Memorial Day is a just time to honor those brave souls who gave their lives that our way of life might continue.  For each generation of Americans, we must re-define and refine what our way of life means.  My perception of the dream that is America will always be influenced by history.  But history -- for me -- is a collection of stories.  Especially those stories of my youth, shared to me by my grandparents.  As a child listening to my grandfather, it was easy for me to envision him as a child listening to his own grandfather.  And that grandfather did not seem so very distant from me, when I was told of his youthful walk at age twelve to the Ohio Statehouse to pay his respect to the assassinated President Lincoln.  As a child listening to my grandmother, I could imagine her as a child playing with her favorite cousin Ray, just as I played with my beloved cousin Jim.  Thus, I could easily sympathize with her lifelong sorrow that her cousin survived the landing on D-Day, only to give his life at the Battle of the Bulge.  History is a collection of stories, and these stories are much closer to us than we often realize.

I am constantly amazed by the caliber of the friends in my life.  Part of the human experience is self-doubt, which can lead to great melancholy.  Even on my most melancholy days, though, I cannot fail to acknowledge the vast riches I posses in my friends.  I am blessed that many of the people whom I admire most in this world are the individuals who are my friends.  I have likewise been truly fortunate that God has sent such amazing young people to me to work as my student assistants and my interns.  When I meet these young people for an interview, I share with them the mission of our farm to connect people with animals and with farming.  I tell them that I love celebrations, and animals, and teaching.  We discuss their dreams & goals, and how this farm can serve to enrich their life.  Somehow, in all those discussions, the young people with whom I have worked have ended up becoming many of my closest friends.  They are truly my farm family.

The young ladies, with whom I have the pleasure of working this summer, are a dynamic, intelligent, and beautiful group.  While I have the lofty goal of providing internships to help make their lives better, the reality is that they have enriched my life immensely.  I am constantly inspired by their honesty, their desire to learn, and their willingness to share their experiences with me.  I do not worry about the future of the world or our country when I am in the company of such resourceful, amazing young women!  

As part of our summer internship program, we have instituted Friday Fun Day.  Our first Friday Fun Day coincided perfectly with Memorial Day weekend.  We attended the wreath-laying ceremony at the Statehouse in honor of Memorial Day, and got to hear presentations by a truly inspiring woman who lost her husband in Afghanistan, as well as a speech by Lt. Governor Mary Taylor (one of my favorite women in politics).  Afterwards we walked through the Statehouse and I shared with them why it is one of my very favorite places: the paintings, the history, the architectural beauty.  Holly Golighty had Tiffany's, and I have the Statehouse.  We did a pop-in at the office of State Senator Kevin Bacon, and his aide kindly allowed my interns to see his office.  We even took advantage of a fortuitously placed podium to recognize Intern Marissa's two months of work at Harrison Farm, and her promotion to Senior Intern.  After a respite at Starbuck's and a stroll along the riverfront, our group had a remarkable private tour of the Ohio Supreme Court.  We all learned a significant amount about the building, and had a marvelous experience there!

I love teaching because it provides the opportunity to share so many wonderful things about life.  I hope that this experience was an opportunity for my interns to understand why patriotism is vastly important to my life, why I believe in our democratic republic, and how immediate history & politics can be in each of our lives if we embrace them.  In discussion after our adventures, it was clear that the tour of the Supreme Court was a huge hit, and that my random stories about history & politics were appreciated.  That being said, everyone's favorite moment was a brief & beautiful one that we witnessed by chance.  In my eternal quest for shade, we had grouped under a tree at the side of the Statehouse as our vantage point to watch the wreath-laying ceremony.  A grandfather & his grandson stood in front of us, each holding the American flag.  We were also standing behind two members of the Air Force who were helping to coordinate the plane that flew overhead after the wreath-laying.  One of my interns snapped this picture of the young boy talking intently to the patient gentleman representing the Air Force.  I know a couple of my interns had tears in their eyes watching this gentleman give a patch from his uniform as a memento to the boy.  

We live in an amazing country.  It is our duty to share our love of it with those who come after us, so they grow to appreciate the beauty of the dream that is America.  It is likewise our sacred duty to live our lives in a way that honors those who showed the greatest devotion to this dream by giving their own life.  My grandfather was touched by his grandfather's deep respect for the assassinated president who held the Union together.  I grew up knowing keenly what it meant for my grandmother to experience the loss of her beloved cousin in World War II.  I hope my interns will never forget the quiet moment they saw of a member of our military demonstrating dignity and love of country to a child.  May God bless you this Memorial Day, and may God bless our great country.

Double Tough

On my best day, I will never be even half the woman my mother was on her worst day.  This time of year always causes me to be reflective on her life and her loss.  My mother passed onward May 15th --  thus every year I experience her absence on the holiday of Mother's Day, followed just a few days later by the anniversary of her death.  Such a loss never gets easier, however, the passage of time does allow us more perspective.  I am profoundly grateful to have had a smart, strong, funny, talented woman for my parent.

My mother soloed a plane on her 16th birthday, and had her pilot's license before her driver's license.  She could drive a truck, a motor home, a motorcycle, a tractor, and a skid steer.  She baked beautiful wedding cakes -- and only did so as gifts for the people she loved.  She learned to make baskets and to throw pots.  She sewed and crocheted and embroidered.  Her pies and breads were legendary.  She could butcher a goat, deliver a lamb, and repair a haybine.  Babies loved her -- of all species.  She could quiet any fussy human baby and heal any struggling orphan lamb.  She could run a bandsaw and a meat grinder.  She had a beautiful smile, a wicked sense of humor, and the ability to make a sailor blush with her predilection for colorful cursing.

She was a tough parent to have when I was a child.  My mother expected me to be independent and resourceful; she required me to have integrity and endurance.  When I signed up for a 4-H project, I was required to finish it.  When a horse bucked me off, I had to get back on.  Birthday presents & Christmas presents were not to be enjoyed until notes of thanks were written to the giver.  My mother believed that challenges made a person stronger, and children only learned through responsibility.  She never helped with homework; it was my responsibility to succeed or fail based on my own resources.  But she arranged her own schedule day after day to make sure I could take advantage of any opportunity I had in life.  She expected a lot of me, but she was always in my corner.

My relationship with my mother suffered during my teenage years.  She was struggling greatly with life, and had to face those challenges.  This was very hard for me as a young woman grappling to find my own place in the world.  I learned many powerful lessons, however, from my observations of what my mother experienced.  Do not be afraid to fail, but always learn from your mistakes.  If you hurt someone, make it right.  Never give up that things can get better.  Never stop believing in the healing power of love.  Surround yourself with good friends who will support you & love you -- and let them be your role models as you master the journey that is life.

I was very fortunate that as an adult my mother was truly my best friend.  We took wonderful trips together as adults.  (Although, I will always maintain that my childhood "vacations" on the wagon train were some of her worst ideas ever.)  We laughed a lot, we went to church together, we drank margaritas, and we planned all the wonderful adventures we would have together in the future.  My mother loved my friends, willingly accompanied me to ballets and goat shows and bull riding competitions, and supported me completely when I was confirmed in the Catholic Church.  It was hard for my mother to ask for forgiveness, but she spent my adult life making sure that our relationship was everything we both wanted it to be.  It was awesome.

Watching my mother at the end of her life was inspiring.  When she was told she had six months to live, she made it clear to the doctors that was not enough -- that was not even to Christmas.  And she did make it to Christmas, and to her birthday, and to Valentine's Day, and to Easter, and finally to Mother's Day.  As the cancer ravaged her physical self, her spirit seemed to shine without any temporal barriers limiting it.  Some of the most beautiful photographs of my mother were taken right at the end of her life; it was as though the camera somehow physically captured her internal light free of any worries of hair or weight or makeup.  There will never be a tougher woman than my mother facing the end of her days with love and grace and fierce rebellion against the reaper who was stalker her.

When my mother passed onward, my cousin (of the Dominican order) reminded me that death was the conduit by which Jesus was able to always be with His disciples.  By this freedom from the constrictions of the temporal realm, our spirits can also likewise be freed through death -- and thus my mother would always be with me.  I miss her every day.  There are so many times I wish I could tell her something exciting, make her laugh with my misadventures, ask her advice when I have a conundrum on the farm, or receive a hug from her when I simply want to cry.  I am grateful, though, for all the wonderful things I have to remember about her.  Her toughness and her resourcefulness.  Her beautiful smile.  Her pear pie and her lasagna made with goat sausage.  Her fearlessness in the face of a flat tire, or a divorce, or a diagnosis of cancer.  I was uniquely blessed to have this amazing woman for a mother.  I hope I can live up to the standard she set for me.

The Tough Realities of Farming

As I walked up from the compost pile, with a stomach in one hand and a knife in the other, while covered in so much blood it had soaked through my overalls to my pajama pants underneath, it occurred to me that with my luck this would be the moment when a visitor would stop by Harrison Farm.  It was not even ten seconds later that I saw Auntie's big white Cadillac pulling into the barnyard.  She kindly inquired if I was trying to save an animal or if I had lost one.  I gently shared with her the reality of my difficult day as a farmer.  Unfortunately, the carcass lying a few feet away was proof positive that I had failed in my efforts to save this goat -- and the chickens were fighting over the lungs just a few feet from the driver's side door of the Cadillac as I spoke with my aunt.

I love to share the joys of farming.  There is nothing that makes me happier than welcoming friends to my farm and introducing them to my beloved animals.  Alas, sometimes the realities of farming catch up with me.  Not every day is a blissful one with adorable babies and healthy mothers.  Most days are rife with the usual frustrations of my world: sheep that waste feed, goats that knock me over, chickens that break eggs, water lines that do not work, old buildings that desperately need repair.  Some days, though, are particularly tough ones.  These days force me to acknowledge the reality of farming.

On the day in question, I took Bonnie Blue Pooch on her morning walk to the barn when we awoke, in order to turn off the night lights and check water buckets.  I observed that Mercy the Goat (in her first pregnancy) had a little hoof emerging from her.  I returned Bonnie to the house and pulled my overalls on over my pajamas -- expecting that this would be a quick exercise in helping a first time mother welcome her firstborn into the world.  Two hours later, Mercy & I were both exhausted from a failed labor.  It was becoming obvious to me that she would not -- she could not -- deliver this baby.  I called my neighbor, who kindly stopped by and confirmed what I feared: nature had completely screwed this one up.  The mother was small, it was her first time, and her baby was so giant that she could not pass it through her birth canal.  The day before she had been a beautiful goat awaiting her first offspring; now she was exhausted and in pain.  I could not rectify what nature had cruelly put upon her.

I am a farmer who raises animals for meat, and I have butchered hundreds of animals in my life.  I want my animals to have a pleasant life and a quick end.  I cannot bear to see them suffer.  I could not bear to see Mercy Goat in pain, and the only solution was to end her pain by putting her down.  The reality is that each animal has the value of what it can contribute to the farm, and that same standard applies to me as well.  If I had sold Mercy, she likely would have brought about $100.  To get a vet to come to the farm, it is a minimum $75 farm call fee just to get them there. To diagnose, medicate, and do surgery would have run a thousand dollars or more very quickly.  I do not have the funds to provide each animals with this type of medical care (even I receive very basic medical care myself!), and there are fewer and fewer vets who do this kind of work with livestock.  The last time I had a terrible labor and I asked a vet to come to the farm, the vet declined the opportunity.  That was the day that I realized that if I was to have livestock, that I had to be competent enough to provide all their care.  And when nature works against me, and I cannot save an animal, I have to be brave enough to provide it with a quick end.

I took my butchering knife, and ended Mercy's pain with a quick stroke of the knife to her carotid & jugular.  This immediately renders the animal senseless, and she bled out quickly.  As soon as reasonable, I performed a Caesarean section in the futile hope of saving the baby.  It had likely died, however, long before.  Perhaps if I had put Mercy down when I first found her, I might have saved the baby -- but I could not have known at that point what lay ahead and just how bad the situation was for Mercy.  The baby was giant.  It was absolutely unthinkable that this petite first time mother would have created such a baby.  In my pajamas & overalls, kneeling in the grass of the barnyard, with a dead mother and a dead baby in front of me, covered in their blood, I had a very significant crying jag.  Katherine before coffee is always a bit scary.  Katherine covered in blood all the way from her overalls to her glasses having a crying jag before coffee is an intensely scary experience.

I wanted Mercy's life to have value, so I then butchered her for my freezer.  She was a healthy animal, and her meat will nourish me so I have strength to work off-the-farm in order to earn money to buy more feed & hay to give to the animals that waste it and knock me down.  I will be sad to eat Mercy, but it is a reality of farming.  She was a good goat, and I will miss her.  I also wanted her child to have value, so I saved the baby to do a necropsy with my student assistant Kaity.  It is incredibly important to me to provide lessons to my interns and my student assistants on the reality & the value of the circle of life.  We are all a part of that circle of life, and learning the role of animals in it allows us to better understand our own role.  

I used the baby to share with Kaity some of the things that I see when a newborn arrives.  We discussed humane slaughter and I showed her how a proper ritual kill is done.  Then we opened up the baby so she could see the layout of the internal organs.  I taught her the trick to tell if a baby goat was born alive or dead: drop the lungs in a glass of water.  If it took breaths, the oxygen will cause the lungs to float.  Even in their death, we can learn things about animals.  Terrible losses weigh on me very heavy, and I was grateful to have Kaity's company after she got out of school that day.  I am incredibly fortunate to have amazing young people who work as my student assistants & interns.  Kaity knew my heart was sad, and she kindly kept my spirits up as we finished processing Mercy's meat.  

Several days prior to this, Kaity had given a presentation in her speech class on how to draw a goat using some pictures of our Harrison Farm goats.  I had asked her to make a picture herself that we could hang on the wall in the farmhouse.  It just happened that Kaity brought me her beautiful painting that day.  It was a tough day, it was a sad day, but it was a day that reminded me how fortunate I am to be at this farm.  To know one's place in the circle of life is a gift, and farming gives that to those who labor in service of the land and the animals.

I believe in my farm, and I believe in the animals and the humans who are a part of it.  I want to share with you that there are joys and frustrations and great struggles, but that this is the work to which I am called.  Through my efforts at this farm, I want to make the world a better place by enriching the lives of those around me through connecting them with animals and with farming.  I want to illustrate to you that farmers care deeply about their animals, that eating meat is an honorable part of the circle of life, that the hard work of farming bears great dividends to those who do the labor.  The reality is that farming is crucially hard work.  It is exhausting and it is physically back breaking.  I am usually tired, and in pain, and broke.  Yet I believe so deeply in farming, and I know I am living out my God-given purpose as a farmer.  I never fail to be filled with joy when my friends meet my baby animals, when my interns master new skills, and when I see myself carrying on the farming tradition of my family.  I hope that my writings allow you a window into the realities of farming, and I hope this encourages you to support the farmers in your own community.  It is the support of our communities -- and the love of our friends & families -- that allows us to keep farming.  And there is no endeavor as noble as the care of the earth and God's creatures.

The Official Harrison Farm Statement on Bathrooms

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a conference out-of-state to represent a farm organization -- and on this trip I had one of my classic Katherine embarrassing moments.  While sitting in meetings all day, I inevitably take several breaks to stretch my legs and visit the restroom.  At this particular conference, I ducked out of a presentation for a few minutes to take a break during a very long day.  I headed for the ladies' room, and walked into the stall immediately in front of me.  While in there, I observed that there was someone in the stall next to me.  My observant nature operates at all times, so I realized it was a member of the cleaning staff by the uniform of their pants leg.  My mind -- always running -- thought to itself, "That poor lady . . . They really make the cleaning team wear such awful shoes!  Those shoes are just so manly.  What a terrible uniform for a lady!  Wait a minute . . ."  I hurriedly looked around the stall, and realized there was no discreet box on the wall for waste as would be present in every ladies' room.  And it suddenly occurred to me that I was observant enough to be judgemental about the shoes of the "cleaning lady" in the stall next to me, but not cognizant at all that I had just walked into the men's restroom.  I pulled myself together, stepped out of the stall, and as luck would have it there was a gentleman washing his hands at the sink.  He looked at me with questioning eyes.  I smiled and said "lovely weather we're having!" . . . And then hustled out the door as fast as my non-manly stilettos would take me.

My friends have laughed about that story for years.  As embarrassing as this story is for me, I love to make my friends laugh and thus the experience had a purpose.  Blissfully, I was not arrested for using the restroom of the gender to which I was not born -- a concept which never entered my mind when I made this mistake years ago.  Now we are oddly in a world where such things are being debated.  It seems to me to be a most ridiculous debate.  A bathroom is created for a specific purpose.  No one angrily chased me out of the men's room when I made my error.  At my church, there is inevitably a group of women who end up in line for the ladies' room during the "halftime bathroom break" that is the offertory.  In an effort to move things along -- and reserve the ladies' room for mothers with children -- some of the ladies will instead use the men's restroom (which never has a line).  I can report that the ladies' room is usually a bit better organized and cleaned, but both rooms are there for a specific purpose.  Arguing over who gets to use it is not a constructive use of our time.  Animals relieve themselves in front of me (and sometimes on me) all the time, so I am very happy that as humans we actually use dedicated restrooms.  Beyond this, it was not that long ago that my grandparents were using an outhouse at Harrison Farm.  We should be filled with joy that as humans we have the technology to offer real functioning bathrooms!

This morning in the Wall Street Journal, there was a photo on the front page of a bus that was bombed in Israel, injuring many.  There was an article inside on the hundreds of people who died in the earthquake in Ecuador and the current humanitarian crisis facing the survivors.  There was in-depth follow up on the terrorism in Europe over the last year and the intelligence failures that permitted these atrocities.  A particularly intriguing article discussed the struggles of aging parents in China (a culture that expects adult children to provide for their elderly parents without a strong safety net by the government) who lost the only child to which they were restricted to have by the government, and now have no one to provide for them.  And in the United States we are arguing about who gets to use a bathroom.  Our country has had 240 years of freedom and liberty, and we choose to exercise our First Amendment rights by arguing about bathrooms.

Friends, this post is not to attack anyone's beliefs.  These words are to remind you that our country is engaged in dialogue on a trivial matter: who gets to use a toilet.  I happily endorse that there are differences between the genders, and I happily promote that we are all unique individuals.  Parents who are concerned about their children using a public bathroom should always go with their child.  ALWAYS.  Women tend to go to bathrooms in groups -- this is both social and basic good safety.  In Wyoming, my girlfriends & I visit the woods in groups when we camp to help protect each other from bears of all genders!  It is as equally ridiculous that government bodies are trying to regulate the use of bathrooms, as it is that other government bodies are trying to protest this regulation with their own proposals.  I doubt there is a government entity in this whole great country that does not have at least one rule on the books that would be offensive in some manner.  Move on, and address issues that truly matter.

And if you end up in the wrong bathroom, just comment on the lovely weather!

Iron Ladies 2016

I have come to believe that to be a great lady, one must first be a true bad ass.  While the rules of etiquette provide us with the standards for which to interface in a genteel & respectful manner, these are only arbitrary dictates if they are not first inspired by a sincere desire to treat others with love & understanding.  And that desire comes only from a heart that has complete confidence of its place in the world and a deep understanding of life -- two things which come from encountering joy & pain, from loving sincerely, from losing things & people of value, from struggle, from laughter, from being forced to start over unexpectedly, from learning what truly matters in life.  Once a woman has done all of these things, she becomes a bad ass.  She knows what is important and what is not.  She has the ability to be completely confident in her actions no matter what others think, and yet she chooses to treat those around her in the manner that she would want to be treated.  Those are also the hallmarks of a great lady.

In April of 2013, Baroness Margaret Thatcher passed onward.  Several of my best friends gathered at Harrison Farm the following weekend in their black cocktail dresses to celebrate the Iron Lady.  This event has now evolved into my annual Harrison Farm Iron Ladies Party -- a celebration of the strong and remarkable women who inspire my world.  We gathered on Saturday 4/16 for a wonderful night of conviviality.  The event usually starts with cocktails, then a potluck, dessert, bourbon, and cigars.  It is the one night of the year that smoking is permitted in the farmhouse . . . Being surrounded by inspiring women (all in their favorite black dress) while having a libation and enjoying a cigar is a joy-filled experience!

My friends are cognizant how important equality of opportunity is to me.  I believe we are all endowed with certain rights by God, and we should have the freedom to exercise our abilities and shape our own destinies through personal hard work -- regardless of gender or color or creed or orientation.  I am interested in individual achievement, and I want to compete on a level playing field.  That being said, I also believe in celebrating what makes us different.  I love being an American, I love having blue eyes, I love raising goats, I love being a Catholic . . . And I also want to encourage others to love what makes them a unique individual.  Finding connections with others can be uplifting, thus I firmly endorse finding support networks of those who help to celebrate what makes a person remarkable as individual.  Being able to gather with other strong women to laugh, to cry, and to support one another is such a joy.  It is also my personal celebration of what it means to be an American woman: my friends were able to drive themselves to the home of an unmarried woman without any male chaperones to pray as we wanted, drink as we wanted, and talk about what we wanted -- all while wearing fabulous black dresses.  Think of all the places around the globe where this small party could NEVER have happened due to restrictions on behavior.  To be an American woman is a great gift, and we must never lose sight of the routine freedoms which we have thanks to our birth in this great country!

I am extremely grateful for my inspiring friends who joined me for this year's event!  I truly believe that Margaret Thatcher would be proud!

Babies

My mother used to say that one of the worst parts of farming is picking up the dead ones -- and the more you have, the more you lose.  Behind this thought is the reality of percentages.  If you lose ten percent of your animals in a given season and you only have ten animals, that is only one loss.  And if you have one hundred animals and lose ten percent, there are now ten lost.  The emotional reality for me -- even after forty years on a farm, even after so many animals lost & buried -- is that I feel the impact of every single loss.

Baby Goat Elizabeth passed peacefully this morning.  After so much time spent around the dying, I can usually tell from their body how they slipped away from the temporal realm.  Elizabeth's peaceful state tells me she simply slept away sometime after 5am when I last checked on her.  Her body was so relaxed.  My nature is to over analyze any situation that does not go as I wished.  What could I have done differently?  What signs did I miss?  How could she have been doing so well on Saturday morning, and dead on Sunday morning?

Unfortunately, sometimes these things just happen.  After all, Elizabeth originally came in the house because she was not able to walk or nurse after birth.  There is already something not right if a baby has to come into the kitchen to warm up; any baby who cannot make it in the barn with their own mother is already a lost cause.  I know this, I have lived it over & over, but I still cannot leave a baby simply to die alone & cold. Elizabeth drank her milk very well on Saturday morning.  She drank reasonably well on Saturday afternoon and spent time in the barn with her mother & and her brother.  Yet, by Saturday night she was in a terrible state when it was time for her to come back in the house for the night.  Did I miss a warning sign?  Even though I keep asking myself this question, I know she was doing very well when she went out to the barn for the afternoon.  Her digestive system was functioning well -- both intake & output -- and Elizabeth was quite alert. But something was already not right with her, and apparently it triumphed over her ability to fight it.

It is a struggle to start your day with a dead baby.  Frustration, disappointment, sadness, and self-castigation do not make for a positive start to a morning.  Mornings always require too much as soon as I wake up: walk the dog, let the chickens out, check water, turn out the night lights, feed the orphans.  Managing these activities prior to coffee can be plenty for this farmer to handle, and then the added loss of a little one inevitably adds to a negative outlook.  My back was already sore from working hard the last few days on trimming hooves & basic herd maintenance.  A headache was already raging from inconsistent sleep last night: first falling asleep while holding the baby and sitting at the kitchen table, then getting up in the night to try to give it milk, then getting up again to give it nutritional supplement, then another effort at giving it milk drop by drop from a syringe.  No matter my efforts, no matter how I drive myself to work on the farm, no matter how hard I work off-the-farm as well to earn the income which the farm does not provide -- still these losses come, and still they break my heart.

I raise animals for meat.  The animals will live, and they will eventually die, as will I.  It is the circle of life, and it touches each and every one of us.  Yet, in the time they live, my job is to provide the best care I can for these animals.  I want their days to be good, and I want the end to be quick.  Especially on a farm that focuses on meat production, I want their days of life to be good days.  I hate to see a little one lose the opportunity to enjoy those days.  I recognize that it would be easier for me to manage the losses if I did not get so attached to the animals.  After all, Baby Elizabeth was only in my world for sixty hours and she was just a goat.  That stark reality does not change, though, the desire I had to nourish & care for her, or the emotions I felt as a result of our time together.  The animals work for me, just as I work for them, and we live together in a symbiotic connection.  I have a unique vantage point on the circle of life.  I see my animals born, I raise them, and sometimes I am the one who butchers them.  From this vantage point, I have learned much on the value of life.  I have learned to never give up on a person or an animal.  I have learned that kindness is always of more value than profit.  I have learned to accept failure with courage when I know I tried my absolute best.  The integrity which comes from farming is priceless.

After I bury Elizabeth, there will be more babies that come along.  Some will thrive, and others will be lost.  I will cry over more deaths, and I will have more sleepless nights of care taking.  But I will also have more of those amazing moments that inspire me along the way.  When I sit in the barn at night and watch the babies playing while their mothers quietly relax, I am filled with a great sense of peace.  I know my place in the circle of life, and I know that I am meant to be doing what I do.  Our mission at Harrison Farm is to connect people with animals and with farming.  Sometimes animals make life happier and sometimes they make it sadder, but animals always enrich our lives because they teach us how to be better humans by understanding our place in the world.

Mardi Gras Farm Table Dinner

The Mardi Gras season has always been one of my favorites times of the year, with its emphasis on conviving with loved ones & enjoying delicious meals in preparation for the Lenten Season.  This year I hosted a small group of friends for my annual Mardi Gras dinner: the Mistic Krewe of Ro Bo.  A "Krewe" is a social group that celebrates Mardi Gras, and I have been fortunate to host many wonderful friends to the farm for this event over the years!

One of the items I always serve is Robey's Red Beans and Rice.  Red beans & rice is such a simple yet hearty dish, and it can be flavored in many ways.  To make a pot, I start with cooking two cups of rice in four cups of water, following the instructions on the packet.  Once the rice is simmering, I watch it to add the red beans before all the water cooks down.  For this quantity of rice, I use three cans of red beans -- and I pour them in with the juices from the can.  This allows for plenty of liquid to enrich the flavor of the rice . . . And it allows you to simply leave the pot on a low temperature until you are ready to serve your guests!  

I like to flavor the dish with lamb sausage.  I use one pound of delicious Harrison Farm ground lamb, and brown it on the stovetop with onion salt, garlic powder, and black pepper.  I serve the lamb sausage on the side so that my guests have the option of the carnivore version or the vegetarian version of Robey's Red Beans & Rice.  It is such a simple dish to prepare, and I received many compliments on it this year.

As a tradition, I enjoy serving the red beans & rice in a dish that has been in the Harrison Farm Family for generations.  The note that sits inside of the dish when it is on the shelf reads (in the handwriting of Ina Marie Harrison dated January 14, 1970): "Tureen belonged to John Lum Harrison and Phebe Thrapp, his wife, married July 6, 1851, parents of James Virgil Harrison, grandparents of Frank Edwin Harrison, great-grandparents of Virgil Grube Harrison, great-great-grandparents of Janet Susan, Rebecca Jane, and Virgilea Ann Harrison".  In a line at the bottom of this note, dated March 23, 1983, it reads further that they were the great-great-great-grandparents of Katherine Harrison Haley and James Virgil Davidson.  Props to The Grandmother for her labeling abilities!

I shared this story with my friends who attended the Mardi Gras dinner, as well as the information that John Lum Harrison had been fortunate to survive an arsenic poisoning that had killed some of his siblings.  From family legend, David Harrison took his four oldest sons (including John) hunting one day, while the younger children stayed home with their mother Mary.  She baked biscuits for them, using "baking powder" which she had purchased recently from the store -- sadly, she had been given arsenic instead of the baking powder she had requested.  My grandfather Virgil had always told the story that the younger children eventually died of arsenic poisoning because they ate the biscuits while they were hot, but the older children survived because they did not have the biscuits until they were cold.   I can recall my grandfather telling this story whenever we would visit the cemetery at Martinsburg, where these children were buried, but I never knew the veracity of this poisoning situation.

I owe great thanks to my Emma, who investigated the scientific properties of arsenic, and was able to share this information with me after the Mardi Gras party: "So, I looked it up and arsenic poisons you by creating oxygen radicals that interfere with oxidative phosphorylation (how your cells create energy). Thus, your cells cannot create energy and die. It stands to reason that this would happen more when the arsenic was hot because heat is a form of energy. It takes energy for electrons to be displaced from the arsenic atom and create radicals. Thus, if some of your relatives ate the biscuits when they were hot there would, in theory, be more radicals that could lead to a more severe reaction (i.e. more cell necrosis). Then, when the arsenic cooled down it could be less toxic because the arsenic atoms had less energy so there were less free radicals bouncing around and messing with the cell's energy production. Another reason could be that there were antioxidants in the biscuits themselves (e.g. nuts, ground cloves) that "soaked up" some of the free radicals as the biscuits cooled down. Thus, they were less toxic to your great great great grandfather when he came back from hunting."

Family history means a great deal to me -- and my friends mean even more to me -- so bringing all of this together to celebrate one of my favorite holidays was extremely wonderful!  I hope you will have an opportunity to enjoy my recipe for Robey's Red Beans & Rice with Harrison Farm lamb sausage . . . And I encourage you to serve it with crusty French bread, and NOT homemade biscuits!