Former vegan's sweet little ballerina kills her first deer!

Daddy didn't let her pull the trigger, but she spotted the
herd and picked the target deer.

When I was a city girl, I ate an earth-friendly, responsible, fair-trade, organic, local, non-hybridized, sustainable and indigenous diet which was appropriate for my genetic ancestry. I first read "Supersize Me" as a young mom and swore off McDonald's for nearly a decade. Once you catch the healthy living bug, it turns into a buttery slope into veganism, then RAW. My husband remembers well the summer when I converted the whole family to vegan rawness, throwing out all the milk and bread and replacing it with a kitchen full of seeds, nuts, veggies, and legumes at various stages in the sprouting process.He kept the local pizza place in business for a few months until I got hungry and bloated and tired of running a full-time sprouting operation. I ate a COOKED organic cracker with CHEESE one day, and that was the end of raw veganism. The mostly meatless organic lifestyle continued for the next 16 years, and I attribute our family's great health to the blessing of healthy food. But moving to a small town in Arkansas immediately cut off my supply of roasted tomato hummus, fresh raw goat milk, and non-GMO corn chips. I went into a tailspin this Fall, dropping literally down to 104 pounds because I couldn't get organic free range chicken or heritage grains at the only grocery stores in town. Wal-Mart at least carries organic kale and the occasional pomegranate for the Lockhead Martin employees, but that's about it.

     I made a conscious decision to eat some meat as long as it was humanely sourced and free of harmful chemicals. We raised our own little flock of backyard chickens for a while, but it was hard to enjoy slathering barbecue sauce on Roosty and Rosie. When I made the choice to practice appreciative and responsible carnivorism, I never dreamed that my sweet little ballerina would be sitting in the deer stand all day in 26 frosty degrees with my husband searching for dinner one Saturday. She volunteered to go with him, filled up the thermos with cocoa, washed her lavender scented curls with anti-human-smell shampoo, tossed her camo outfit into the dryer with some dirt odor wafers, and hit the woods for a long, cold, dark adventure. She came home covered in blood and pine needles, doing a little dance and singing something about she can bring home the bacon. She said "who needs Jack the Giant Slayer when Chloe the Deer Slayer is in the house?! Boo ya!" Somewhere deep down a few remaining vegan cells in my brain sort of screamed out silently about the cruelty of reveling in the loss of such a beautiful life, but it was short lived. A million small rodents and bugs and other critters are inadvertently slaughtered with the grain harvest on our huge family farm every year, and this beautiful deer lived a clean, organic, peaceful life before dying quickly under the oaks. I have a deer roast in the fridge waiting for Sunday dinner, and my daughter knows completely the cost of acquiring what will be a delicious meal. Good job Chloe and Jason!

Chloe being a girly girl in her pre-Arkansas days.