You can tell that farmer Kathy McCaskill is good around baby animals -- just listen to that soothing voice. Her farm, Old McCaskill’s outside of Camden, South Carolina, started as a hobby for this homesick farm girl, but now it’s grown into a compound of sorts, with a sprawling farm house that serves as a home for she and her husband as well as a bed and breakfast, barns and hatch houses, pastures and gardens, a DHEC-approved kitchen, and even an old fashioned root cellar that seems more at home in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. This once hobby farm has now become a centerpiece of the community, its children visiting during field trips, and its brides wanting an idyllic backdrop for their special day. But make no mistake, this is a working farm that raises a variety of animals for meat, so we get down to business talking about butchery and the business of animal husbandry.

We both feel it’s important to understand that meat comes from once living animals, so this conversation is far away from those grocery store Styrofoam containers.