How To Avoid Killing Anyone

I don’t want to kill anyone.

That’s how I found myself standing on an old tile floor, surrounded by cinderblock walls in a food packaging research lab at Clemson University.

I couldn’t help but consider the juxtaposition between my beloved ranch in north-central Montana and a food lab in South Carolina.

They are the endpoints along one path of converting soil nutrients into delicious food for humans.

The path is arduous and expensive and we can’t live without it.

At one end of the spectrum, my sheep and cattle collect nutrients from the soil through the grass that grows on my ranch.

My role is to facilitate as much growing grass as possible and be sure every animal has access to water.

Occasionally, I assist with a birth or two.

Sometimes, I’m not much help.

The other day, my daughter, Abby, and I performed an emergency caesarian on a ewe that had twins stuck inside.

Long story short, I did my best, but it did not turn out well for anybody except the magpies who hang around Dead Hill.

My second role on the ranch is to time births to optimize survival of newborns while balancing their growth on fresh green grass and their mothers’ ability to breed again for next year.

So the other day, I turned the bulls in with the cows so that calves will arrive just as the grass is greening up next spring.

The same day, I pulled the rams from my flock so I won’t be shocked by surprise lambs born in December.

At the opposite end of the food provider spectrum, I sell beef and lamb.

If ever there were a food that has the potential to kill people, it’s meat.

Strange people who thrive on studying harmful bacteria tell us that meat needs to either stay cold, hot or in a sterile environment.

My trip to Clemson taught me a lot about how to package and then heat meat so hot that any bacteria are dead and keep the package sealed so no bacteria can enter.

And vegetables.

Anybody can cook and seal meat so it maintains its flavor and appealing texture and color.

Yet adding vegetables to the pouch of meat and then cooking them together adds complications.

Unless a person enjoys slurping baby food.

The food packaging lab at Clemson University has a massive, super-efficient pressure cooker so I tested my meat and vegetable recipes to find out if I could make shelf-stable food that is safe and tasty.

I needed to know whether the pressure cooker could make the meat safe without making the vegetables mushy like they are in cans of soups and stews.

I shipped most of the ingredients across the nation, but I packed frozen meat into my checked luggage.

I could have purchased those ingredients at a local Clemson store, but my anxious nerves wouldn’t allow that uncertainty.

When I arrived, I was relieved to find that my meat was still frozen after 12 hours of travel, but I discovered my box of ingredients had collapsed enroute. My spice packets and most of my vegetables were gone.

I purchased more ingredients at a local Clemson store.

Then four PhD technicians helped me prepare pouches to test four recipes.

We documented temperature and measured safety by inserting thermocouples in five pouches for each recipe.

Then I held my breath and crossed my fingers.

When the retort pressure cooker cooled, I opened a pouch of beef stew.

The meat was tender. The vegetables were solid.

My soil fed cattle that became meat that combined with vegetables to create ready-to-eat, shelf-stable food for all of us.

And I didn’t kill anyone.