Perennial Plate: A Vegetarian-Turned-Rancher Shares Her Story | Civil Eats

Perennial Plate: A Vegetarian-Turned-Rancher Shares Her Story

How falling in love with someone on the “other side” opened one woman's eyes to a type of agriculture in the middle.

The first film from Season 4 of The Perennial Plate, our web documentary series about sustainable food, takes place in Del Norte, Colorado. It follows Keri Brandt, a former vegetarian and associate professor of Sociology and Gender and Women’s Studies at Fort Lewis University, as she shares how she came to terms with raising and eating animals after marrying into a Colorado ranching family. The Off family has been raising cattle for close to 150 years in Southern Colorado, where there’s a long history of ranching.

We were interested in the perspective of a woman and outsider coming into a family with such deep roots and loved the fact that Keri’s story was non-dogmatic. We also liked how falling in love with someone on the “other side” opened her eyes to a type of agriculture that lies somewhere in the middle.

Keri concedes that she still isn’t sure if we should eat animals, but that it’s hard to eat anything without causing harm, whether it’s vegetables or animals. After she came to live on the ranch and learned more about what it takes to raise animals, she began to understand the complexity of farming. She is now really invested in how we can all move toward causing less harm with the food we eat.

newsmatch 2023 banner - donate to support civil eats

We’ll bring the news to you.

Get the weekly Civil Eats newsletter, delivered to your inbox.

Daniel Klein is a chef, activist, and filmmaker living in Minneapolis. He has cooked in the restaurants of Thomas Keller, Heston Blumenthal, and Tom Colicchio. For his current project, Daniel has been documenting his culinary, agricultural and hunting explorations on film in a web series called The Perennial Plate. Every week he covers a diverse set of sustainable stories from squirrel hunting to community gardens. Follow him on Twitter @perennialplate or Facebook. Read more >

Like the story?
Join the conversation.

More from

Animal Ag

Featured

Injured divers work on various exercises in a small rehabilitation room at the hospital. Dr. Henzel Roberto Pérez, the deputy director of information management at the hospital, said that one of the many problems with the lobster diving industry is “Children are working for these companies. At least one of the companies is from the United States.” (Photo credit: Jacky Muniello)

Diving—and Dying—for Red Gold: The Human Cost of Honduran Lobster

The Walton Family Foundation invested in a Honduran lobster fishery, targeting its sustainability and touting its success. Ten years later, thousands of workers have been injured or killed. 

Popular

This Indigenous Cook Wants to Help Readers Decolonize Their Diets

author Sara Calvosa Olson and the cover of her book about indigenous foods and foodways, Chimi Nu'am. (Photo courtesy of Sara Calvosa Olson)

This #GivingTuesday, Help Us Celebrate Our Successes

prize winning squash for giving tuesday!

With Season 2, ‘High on the Hog’ Deepens the Story of the Nation’s Black Food Traditions

Stephen Satterfield and Jessica B. Harris watching the sunset at the beach, in a still from Netflix's High on the Hog Season 2. (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

Op-ed: Walmart’s Outsized Catch

Photo of a shark swimming through a school of fish, with a gritty overlay including walmart's yellow and blue colors. (Photo credit: Scott Carr, Getty Images, illustration by Civil Eats)