Anyway, I'm Kristen, and I've been writing for a living for nearly 12 years now... I was editor of the UNM Daily Lobo in 1994, moved on to the Gallup Independent (motto: The Truth Misspelled), lived on the Navajo Reservation for a while, worked as a reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican for 4 years. I quit that job right after 9/11, in order to move up here and do the freelance thing, grow some stuff, and have babies. That's when life started to spin out of control.

 

I still do some writing, mostly for the Santa Fe New Mexican. I also have a stringer gig with People Magazine (some of the nicest editors around), as well as various other little jobs hither and yon, most of which pay: Squat.

 

My dearest and oldest friend, who has known me since I was 13, informs me that I should pontificate a bit here about what in the world we're thinking, dragging our family off into the wild hinterlands with no running water to grow a bunch of stuff.

 

I mean, it's not like my kids are going to starve if I don't grow enough heirloom winter squash. It's not like we really need to eat rabbit -- even on our budget, we can afford meat from the store. There's no reason we can't buy organic strawberries at Whole Foods from time to time and surrender our strawberry bed to the spring frost. And it's not like the world is lacking in fine specialty garlics.

 

In other words, in this day and age, being two sane adults with college degrees, why farm?

 

At risk of sounding something other than flip (admittedly my favorite mode): Because I believe it's important.

 

In fact, I think it's one of the most important things a person can do in this crazy, terrorized, mono-cropped, hybridized world ... maintain a relationship with the land, the soil, the plants, the creatures that sustain us. I think our industrialized world has created a situation where we don't think enough about what we're eating, or where it comes from. An egg is just another ingredient for custard until you've got a chicken that lays the egg for you ... then suddenly an egg is something of a miracle.

 

I believe we'd all be healthier if we thought about what we're eating... This hamburger I'm ordering, it came from a cow stuffed into a feed lot with 1,000 other cows being force-fed genetically modified soy and being pumped full of medicine. One minute it's a Happy Meal, the next minute, it's a terrible tragedy -- if you let your brain go there.

 

So that's my story, for the moment. If you want more blather from me, please visit my blog....