By Ron Evans
Out in the rugged lands of the Methow Valley lives one of the most unique humans I have met. Harmony Cronin. A self-proclaimed Viking Warrior Princess For The Apocalypse, which may sound like hyperbole now - but likely won’t by the end of this article. This May 13-15 Cronin is holding her sixth 3-day class on killing, butchering and utilizing entire animals in a respectful and thoughtful way. I sat down for an interview with Cronin who arrived at our meeting looking exactly as you’d imagine. Adorned with clothing and accessories handmade from animals she has killed or road kill she found, slightly wild hair and an enthusiastic grin that widened as she slid into the chair across from me.
And a warning: this will likely be a very polarizing story even among meat eaters. Vegans may just wanna skip it, but everyone else -including vegetarians- should truck forward. It’s a fascinating look into a more natural and timeless perspective on how we eat. And if you only feel more drawn toward the veggie side of life after you read this, that’s fair. But even for the rest of us, it may be a good time to reassess what it actually means to eat organically and ethically.
So tell us about this class and the philosophy and experience you put into it.
One of the things that I’ve dedicated a lot of my life to is figuring out how to become worthy of asking an animal to die, so that I can live. A lot of people struggle with that guilt, and they want to have more intimacy with their food, so they want to learn how to kill an animal and to use every part. That’s kind of the perennial question for me - how can I become worthy of that act? It’s not enough to simply kill efficiently.
So in the Honorable Harvest class we go really slow. We talk a lot about it and we really explore what it means to kill an animal and all the different ways…and then we’ll kill animals. And we’ll do our best to honor the gifts that they give us in class.
I also talk about living off grid and I love to show people that you don’t need fancy tools, expensive knives and big metal hooks to properly butcher an animal. After we kill and butcher the animal I show them how to treat the meat in the traditional ways, curing and smoking. All using materials you already have around you. I talk about the importance of maintaining the environment and food sources for the animals we eat. You are supposed to feed what you eat. We have lost some of that.
We provide guests with two fine crafted meals a day using locally harvested ingredients and we camp out for all three days of the class. It’s beautiful.
How did you get going down this road? Were you born into it?
Oh god no. I was born in Denver and my family are all city folk through and through. They’ve never seen a dead animal except on styrofoam packages in supermarkets so my awakening happened later on when I was living in Olympia. It really started with me picking up road kill.
I was riding my bicycle and there was a dead squirrel and as I rode past it I could hear the squirrel say, if I was a dead human, would you just ride past? And I stopped and I thought holy shit, how have we become so numb and disgusted by animal death? And how is there this life hierarchy now where human death is somehow more potent or important than animal death? And so I went back and I picked up the squirrel and couldn’t even touch it. I was so afraid even though I knew it was dead. But I just sat with it until I could touch it. I took it home and buried it in my yard.
And I just kept doing that because I figured if they’re left on the asphalt they’re going to bring in more animals that are going to get hit by a car. So I started burying them. And they were so beautiful. I remember holding that squirrel and thinking … people used to use every part of the animal, right? We have that kind of cultural story that in some golden past, we used every part and I wondered - what does that even mean? How would I skin this animal? The first animal I ever killed was a rat in my house, because we had a really bad rat infestation on the west side. And it was so massive for me, I wept, holding this rat and I thought…I’m gonna use every part. So I skinned the rat and I ate it. And then I tanned the hide. And that kind of started me on this whole path of like, picking up as much road kill as I can, skinning it, tanning it, eating it. And the more I did that the more road kill I would find and then I got on this hunter’s path. Now I’m a big game hunter as well, and I teach people how to use every part of an animal and so it developed from an obsession into kind of an anthropological obsession.
So you eat all road kill you come across? Skunks, coyotes…kitty cats?
You know, for some reason I can’t eat domesticated animals. It just feels…different and I can’t even really explain it. Maybe because I know some little kid loved that cat and it seems incorrect to consume it. But skunks, hell yes.
Is there any critter that you have found to be better (or much, much worse) to eat than others?
It’s all actually pretty good, but you know what’s really good? Porcupine. I was surprised.
Let’s talk about ethical killing. If someone is a vegan, and they just tell me that they don’t like the idea of killing animals and eating animals, I totally get it. What I don’t get are meat eaters that are fine buying stuff off the styrofoam platters but have trouble with the notion of hunting and slaughtering your own meat. In an age where so many people seem interested in grass fed, organic, cruelty free, free range…take your pick - we still have this pocket of people who don’t understand why you’d kill a perfectly good animal when you can just go buy one that’s already dead.
Yeah and that also supports a terrible industry - the meat industry. If you eat meat I strongly suggest you kill at least one animal. Experience it. Understand it and truly respect it. Just once.
Even if you decide to not continue doing it, it will have a lasting impact on how you think about your food.
When I’m hunting, I bow hunt, and I rifle hunt. But when I’m slaughtering a domestic animal, I use a knife. I used to use a gun.
Why don’t you use a gun anymore?
Well that’s a complicated answer… I think I’ll start with the logistical side. First, I like roasting heads, I like eating the cheeks and the eyeballs and the tongue. And when you shoot an animal in the head, you can’t really do that. So it helps preserve more of the meat and makes it easier to collect the blood because we eat the blood too. We use it for baking and all kinds of things. And then the philosophical side…guns are really, really new. And in nature, animals usually die slowly, right? Wolves and coyotes can take 24 hours to kill an animal. And I think that they’re actually evolved to bleed out. They’re not evolved to have their brain exploded in an instant. And every animal that I’ve ever shot, there’s a lot of thrashing and it feels violent. And when I bleed an animal out, it’s a whole different matter.
Attendees of this class will be killing their own goat. Have you ever had anyone show up to your classes and decide they can’t be a part of it and flee back to the safety of the grocery store meat section? Or go all salads all the time?
No, everyone that has been part of my class over the past several years has continued to use and grow with what they learned there. Everyone will kill, harvest and take home an entire goat as part of this class. It’s pretty unique.
One of the things you talk about is the use of animal products in foods that most people might think are vegetarian. Like cheese. Tell us about that.
Okay, so rennet is an enzyme compound that lines the stomach of a baby cow or goat. This enzyme curdles milk which is an essential step in making cheese. In the dairy industry the cows need to have one calf a year to keep the milk coming. So they have all these calves that they just kill. They then process the rennet for cheese, the meat for veal and the rest is likely wasted. So if you’re a vegetarian you’ll wanna make sure your cheese is rennet-free.
You mentioned not wanting to waste anything earlier so I have to ask… you do eat the eyeballs?
Eyeballs are delicious. You can also use them for lots of things like beauty products - it’s really good for the face. It’s also a medium, I paint with it.
Do blue eyes make blue paint and brown makes brown?
Hmmm. That’s interesting because most animals have brown eyes and it does make a brown pigment. But, I’m not really sure about that one. You can also extract the clear goo inside the eye without the iris and you will get a clear substance you can add pigment to. I actually cover a lot of this stuff in the class. There are all kinds of parts of the animal you can use for all kinds of things, people are surprised.
(Here Cronin proudly displays her bladder purse.)
How do people sign up for the class?
You can sign up on my website
gatheringways.com - the class is $800 for three days and I promise it will change your life. Also coming up: May 28 - One Day Class: The ancient, magick, medicine, and methodology of mead-making. Each student leaves with one gallon of their own mead. $70 per person - limited spots available.