Farmer Kristin: How Playboy Changed My Life

Some of my hockey boys

In the early 2000’s I was fortunate enough to attend the University of Delaware's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. In between taking classes in Animal Science & Wildlife Conservation, working at an insect lab, and participating in a few student clubs, you could find me with the guys on the roller hockey team. A bunch of them lived together and I was often at their house hanging out while they did weird boy stuff like play video games and let mold grow on their dirty dishes. One afternoon I was sitting on the couch reading a Playboy magazine and one of the articles literally changed my life! Amongst pages filled with naked girls, many life lessons could be learned such as how to splint a broken limb in the back country. Despite comparing my body to the centerfolds and feeling bad about myself, Playboy actually created a huge shift in my health and the way I eat while inadvertently leading me to become a farmer! I read an article about the detriments of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and how this ingredient is hidden in common foods such as bread, applesauce, marinara sauce and MOST processed foods. I was horrified to learn that HFCS consumption could lead to cancer, diabetes, and tooth decay and is the leading cause of obesity. If I wanted a shot at being on the pages of Playboy I obviously had to eliminate all HFCS from my diet! I went home and read the labels of the food in my kitchen and most of them had HFCS as one of the top three ingredients! Being a poor college student I couldn’t just throw it all out but from that day on the only food that was going into my cart at the grocery store was HFCS-free! I became an avid food label reader which really made me become a healthier person. My focus went beyond HFCS as I realized we should be eating real food and know how to pronounce the ingredients on labels.

Another event occurred while at college which furthered my quest for a healthier lifestyle. I became severely anemic due to poor diet which forced me to learn about nutrition and what my body needed. I started to eat spinach, kale, chickpeas, black beans, and other iron rich foods while restricting or eliminating foods that inhibit iron absorption such as cucumber peels, dairy, soy, tannins found in black tea & wine, and beer. Cutting beer out of my diet was really hard considering it is one of the top food groups of college students but I did not drink alcohol for three months while I was gaining my health back. That is dedication! Being that animal science was one of my majors, I took a nutrition course, worked on our university’s farm as well as learned about how we are feeding corn to cows in the food system even though it is not their natural diet. Did you know that corn-fed cows livers are full of lesions and abscesses because their bodies are meant to eat grasses and not grains?! Learning about health, nutrition, and livestock production became an interest of mine as I continued to dive deeper into the rabbit hole of our food industry and government relationship with big ag. Furthermore I am studying to become a holistic health coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition so that I can learn how to guide others into creating a healthy lifestyle and diet.

The information that I have gained over the years, starting from that Playboy article about HFCS, and continue to learn has led me to become a farmer. Raising livestock and growing produce can be done in such a way that is available, affordable, and healthy for people and the planet. I am proud to be a part of making that happen. And who knows, maybe after my first year of farming, I may literally work my butt off and be skinny enough to grace the cover of Playboy as the first farmer centerfold! (It's a joke mom, relax yourself!)

Transplanting Parsley

Chef Christine "forced" us to be the guinea pigs and try the two pot pies she created from scratch. I have been wanting vegetarian pot pie for so long and she delivered! It was so delicious and I even got to take the left overs home! Yum!