When I first joined The Free Press last spring, Bari told me about a writer who lived on a farm in upstate New York and wrote the most beautiful sentences. Her name was Larissa Phillips, and she’d sent us an essay about an education program she runs—for urbanites who want to go back to the land. We titled it “What City Kids Learn on My Farm,” and its fundamental lesson was this: When you pay attention to nature, you have to accept that humans can’t control everything. “It doesn’t matter how desperately you want to find more eggs, the hens don’t lay on demand.”
Larissa’s message struck a chord with readers, even though—or maybe because—this is a digital age. Dozens of you wrote in to share your own childhood skirmishes with nature. (We published two of the most delightful letters here.) Since then, we’ve published several gorgeous pieces by Larissa, about everything from riding horses to killing turkeys. And the weekend before the election, her deeply personal piece about setting aside political differences went viral—and was featured on Bill Maher’s show. It was called “Whatever Happens, Love Thy Neighbor.”
I could not be happier to tell you that, as of today, Larissa is officially a Free Press columnist. Her essays will be appearing in your inbox more frequently—about once a month—and I guarantee they’ll make you want to turn off your notifications, close all your tabs, and think about what really matters. Larissa’s first official column is about sex, death, and the miracle of life. You know, nothing major. Scroll down to read it now. I hope you love it as much as I do. —Freya Sanders, associate editor
In April, my husband and I walked out to the sheep pasture with a .22 rifle.
We found the lamb in the three-sided sheep shed, alone. Its mother had moved on by then with her healthy offspring, leaving behind this one, born two days earlier with a rigidly bent leg that we had been unable to massage into any kind of movement.
The other ewes, milling around the shed, yelled at us as we carried the lamb away. They followed us to the gate, continuing to bellow as we walked along the fence line into the woods. When we were fully out of their sight, I laid the lamb on the ground, and my husband pointed the rifle toward the back of her head. Then he shot her.
We didn’t want to do this. But we’d determined, through talking to farmer friends, that a quick end to this lamb’s life was the most humane outcome.
This was not what I imagined, 20 years ago, sitting at our kitchen table in Brooklyn, when I said to my husband and our then-young children, “What if we left the city? What if we had a farm?”
