Moonlight Elk

Today I'm talking with Christie author of Moonlight Elk. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00 You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Christie Green, the author  of  Moonlight Elk,  One Woman's Hunt for Food and Freedom.  Christie is in New Mexico this morning. How are you, Christie? Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you for having me.

00:25 You are so welcome and thank you for visiting.  love it when I get to people who are  into nature and also write books about it. um What's the weather like in New Mexico this morning? Well, it's unfortunately very warm and sunny and dry. We've had unseasonably uh mild weather. It's been in the high fifties and we haven't had uh much snow for a number of weeks. So it's really precarious here. It's not good when we don't have snowpack.

00:54 But we're hoping for some form of moisture, at least in the new year. We'll see. I will keep my fingers crossed for you. And I wish I could send you all the rain we got this morning. Oh, man. I do, too. I have a friend up in North Dakota, and they get snow and those cold temperatures. And I wish they could just push it down here. Yeah, it was so weird. I was looking at my Facebook memories, because I look at them every morning, because I sit down with my coffee and scroll through Facebook to find people to talk to.

01:23 looked at my memories and a year or so ago it was raining on this date as well. I'm like, okay, so is December 18th a rain day? Hmm. Yeah, interesting. It seems like it would be too cold up there for rain, but moisture is moisture. Yeah, I'm, I have an appointment tomorrow at 9 45 in the morning, half an hour from here and it's all wet out there. The temps are supposed to drop.

01:50 hard this afternoon and it's supposed to snow a little bit on top of whatever freezes.  And it's not supposed to warm back up until tomorrow afternoon. like, I may not make that appointment. We'll see how the roads are.  Go slow.  Yeah. Making appointments in the Northern tier States in December or January, February is a real  iffy game a lot of the time.

02:15 But it's fine. I love winter. Winter is my favorite. Well, fall is my favorite season, but I love winter because it's when we all kind of cocoon and  get cozy and eat really good food. So that's right. That's right.  All right. So Christy, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.  Well,  I  am  55 years old  and  I am originally from Alaska and now I live in San Diego, New Mexico. I've been here for

02:44 let's see, 28 years or so. And pretty much my whole career as I'm a landscape architect and I'm also an author and a designer and my work revolves around food and cultivating connection to each other and to place through the catalyst of food. And so in my work as a landscape architect, I focused on

03:10 building soil, harvesting water, and growing heirloom varieties of food for  people, like in the homes, but also in larger kind of contexts like housing developments and public spaces. And then I also work with native plants  and um doing like passive water harvesting landform grading techniques like berms on swales and bio-swales and things like that. And then uh I am a hunter. uh

03:39 As some people say, an adult onset hunter, started hunting when I was 40. And the original intent was to harvest my own meat, right? So I was growing all this food for myself and for other people. And I thought, well, what about, you know, meat? Why couldn't I hunt as well, you know, to fully round out this sort of self-sufficient way of gathering food.

04:08 I thought I was going to get food, so to speak, and what I ended up finding was this revelatory new relationship to place  and to myself, really,  through the animals and through the hunt.  So I started writing about  those experiences with the animals here in New Mexico and other places too, but mostly here  in the West with elk and deer and turkey. And these  stories ended up

04:37 becoming this compilation of braided essays and then a whole braid of a book,  which is Moonlight Up, which was published  last September. Very nice. um You said self-revelatory regarding hunting. give me a couple examples of that.  Well,  what I didn't realize, so I'm a mother and at the time my daughter was five  and  I was always, you know,

05:05 responsible and on. Like had to be home, you know, make food, go pick up my daughter from school, you know, attend a business, you know, very scheduled,  loaded life in terms of obligations, you know, and all of those I loved, but em I didn't realize  how  off balance I was in terms of my own unscheduled time and the freedom that that uh

05:33 affords like the feeling of being unencumbered.  And when I went hunting, it was the time I could be wholly  my own self without attending to anybody. And it was actually for lack of a better way of saying it, the time hunting was when I could become my own  animal, I could be as animal me as the animals were themselves. Because, you know, when hunting, you have to kind of become

06:02 that animal and understand how they move, what their habits are, where they're spending time, where they're crossing, all of that. So it was like I got to shed  all of these layers  of the human world and become wholly immersed in the animal world. And when I got a taste of that, I just wanted more and more of it because then I got to actually listen to myself, my own desires, my own inclinations in a way,  you know, like follow my nose.

06:32 And that's just become an essential part of my life that has translated into my regular sort of scheduled at home work life in  knowing how to listen to my body,  listen to my own instincts and follow my own way.

06:50 That is amazing. That's beautiful.  And the one thing that I will say about being a parent, especially being a mom,  is for me, I've  raised four kids, birthed three, have a bonus child from my husband, which is great.  And uh my favorite moments of being a mom, and people are like, I don't know why I would be so bored, but I wasn't bored,  was from the moment I got home with that baby for the first three months when

07:20 when you just cocoon in and you  focus on getting to know this little person that you brought into the world and you attend to them.  And you attend to yourself too, because if you can't be there for you, you can't be there for a baby. But  it's very baby focused and people come to visit  the baby. mean, they'd say they're coming to visit you, but they're coming to see the baby.  It's this very nurturing, very calming, very

07:49 animalistic  experience because  animals are very attentive to their babies. I mean, you don't think that they are because  wild babies are born ready to go, most of them.  But if you watch a mama deer,  she is  very attentive with her fawn.  So the one thing that I will say though is once that baby becomes a toddler,  it is time for mom

08:17 to take some time for her and hopefully sooner than that, but definitely once they start to walk  because you cannot lose yourself in your children.  It's not healthy.  No, it's true. We have to be our own individual selves. And it is interesting like that, those first moments  and days and weeks and months after the birth that

08:46 I feel the same like what you're saying that the clock goes out the door.  It doesn't matter. Any sort of routine doesn't matter because everything revolves around the body and the bodily needs  of that baby. So it is like this  sort of whiplash,  yank into a different world, a different uh realm of that very animalistic child, because the child isn't operating from the mind of

09:16 you know, a rationale of,  what time is it and what am I supposed to be doing? It's all driven by the visceral, by the needs. yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that I want to throw in here really quick, because you hit all the buttons for me with this, um is when you're a new mom, like when you have that first baby,  you have got to ask for help.  I didn't know that.

09:41 I didn't ask for help. was really lucky. I lived in an apartment building and I knew my neighbors.  And my first child was a girl,  the only girl out of the four kids. I was 20 and she was teething and she was having a very hard time with teething and she would cry and scream and cry and scream.  And one of my neighbors knocked on the door and I opened the door and I hadn't slept in three days, you know, up with baby all night.  And she said, can I hold her?

10:11 And I said, she bothering you? I'm really sorry. She was like, no. She said, you need sleep.  She said, she said, has she been fed? I said, yeah. She said, when was she last changed? I said, half an hour ago. She said, okay, I got it from here.  Go lay down, get some sleep.  Your daughter and I are going to get to know each other.  And I was so grateful because it had never occurred to me to ask for help. So anybody out there who's a brand new mom who is drowning, ask for help. People want to help.

10:41 No, it's true. need that community, not respite.  Yes, absolutely. So, sorry, I didn't mean to get all weird about babies, but I don't know, you hit a button this morning for me and I was like, oh, there are things people don't know about having babies that are very important. oh Okay, so I am not a hunter, but my parents both hunt  and I got taught by osmosis how to hunt.

11:10 One of my favorite memories  of the hunting season  is my dad would get up early in the morning and he would get all his stuff. He'd get all his stuff set out at night, but he would pack everything up the next morning really early.  And he would always clean his guns before hunting season started.  One of my favorite scents on earth is gun oil.  Oh, that's funny. Positive association, huh?  Oh yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And my mom hunted too.

11:39 And I've told the story a couple times in the last six months. It's really weird. But she actually got a doe when she was very pregnant with my sister. And she's so proud of that. that she went when she was pregnant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were so able when we're pregnant. I I worked almost up to the day my daughter was born. I was out in the garden and hoisting and shoveling and all kinds of things. It's like for most of her human

12:09 lineage, we were out working and hunting and doing all those things. weren't, you know, sitting on the couch waiting for the baby to be born. We had to survive, right? Yep, exactly.  So, so having said all that, I learned about hunting because my parents did all the things and talked about it ad nauseam for a month before hunting season started.  I cannot break down a gun. I will be honest, it's not my thing.  And  I don't hunt.

12:38 I  love the process of looking for animals in the woods. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. That's the hunt. Hunting is more hunting than killing, that's for sure.  Yeah, that part I love and I'm really good at it. Like I can spot a deer before seasoned hunters spot a deer because I understand the shape of their body and how they move.

13:03 And I just, love being in the woods, but the idea of taking a creature's life when I don't need to eat that food, I just can't do it. I cannot do it. It kills me. Just the idea of it. And I am all for people hunting. think it is an amazing, I don't want to say sport, I don't know, endeavor to hunt and kill and use an animal. It's not for me.

13:32 No, that's,  there's a lot of feelings like that. think every, every feeling and response  around hunting is valid. don't, um, I don't need other people to hunt. I don't need other people to agree with how I hunt or to want to.  I feel like we all have our own ways. And I think the most important thing that any of us can do is to pay attention to and honor what we, um,

14:02 desire and what we respect in our own ways. think m part of what's interesting to me in this book and Moonlight Elk and some of the traveling around doing book readings and events is uh the questions I've gotten from people. And some people  are hunters, of course, and want to talk about hunting stories and  the details of those hunts and the animals. Some people aren't hunters and feel strongly against it. ah Ask me things like that. Well, how could you do that? How could you take a life when

14:31 We have plenty of domestic meat we could be eating. And some people want to say, wow, you really inspired me. I want to learn how to hunt. Will you take me? So there's, you know, every range of experience and response. And I feel what is  so critical right now is to be open to the conversation and to be open to the questions and the dialogue. feel like uh adhering to a particular polarized perspective or only one view or one side.

15:01 is uh destructive, we have so much more in common than we don't. And I'm just really interested in learning how to make connections with people in all the ways that we do  share in common, like what values do we hold in common? And that there are more, I just so believe that there are so many more um connections than disconnects, you know? And it's just been  interesting that through hunting, is a,  people have very strong opinions about it.

15:31 practice, you the animals, also like, you know, brought up guns. There's a whole lot of  feeling around guns. And I agree. I feel like we should be talking about those  points of view  and  options and perspectives. And that's one of the biggest gifts of having written this book  is the,  just right now we're having this conversation, being able to be in dialogue with people and, and, and allowing myself to be open  to hearing new perspectives.

15:59 And I feel that for me, what's most important  is that there's respect. I mean, I don't expect anybody or need anybody to agree, ah but I do want respect going both ways  and  not even understanding. don't think that's one thing it seems like when people, you know, get in conversations like, I'm going to keep talking until you understand.  I don't actually feel that. I don't need that. think it's...

16:26 I don't need to be understood. don't need to be agreed with, but I would like to be respected and vice versa. You know, it's just critical for who we are. We're all on this earth together. We have to get along. We just have to. Yeah. Right now, especially. My goodness. It's been a heavy, heavy six months. I talked to Joel Saliton, the renegade rebel farmer, whoever he is. The other day. Yeah. Yeah. He's such a nice man.

16:56 And I was going to ask him about the cost of beef prices and the whole snap benefits fiasco that is going on. And just before I hopped on to talk to her, was like, I don't want to talk about those things.  It's too much. It's too heavy. Everybody is feeling this and we need to talk about something positive. And I asked him before we started talking, I said, can I just ask you where you've been this year,  what you've learned, what surprised you? Can we just talk about

17:25 positive things just for a little bit. And he was like, absolutely.  And it was so good. I was so thrilled to just have something positive to chat about, you know? Yeah. No, he's, he's so inspiring. He's been in the, he's been like this pioneer in the, the food industry for decades.  And I remember years ago, I used to work for the Bioneers and he was one of the speakers at the conference  and

17:53 just how revelatory his practices are with, you know, rotational grazing and cover crops and just honoring the animal.  as even raising them as a domestic food source, knowing full well, of course they're going to be killed and  eaten, but to  try to offer the best life possible and also the most healthy practice for the land. So yeah, he's always been one of my heroes.

18:18 Well, you will be thrilled to know that he is working on a new book this week and next week.  Oh, good. What's it about? I asked him the working title and he said, I said, it have a working title? And he said, oh, yes, food emancipation. And I was in my head, I was just like, oh, thank God. Oh, good. Yes. So I'm very excited. It won't be out for,  oh my goodness. think he said a year,  but.

18:43 He had just started writing the first two chapters two nights ago. And I'm just like, yes, please write another book.  Oh, good.  So I um was just going to ask you if it's okay. mean, in your practice as a homesteader and your offerings  of, you know, eggs and breads  and  goods from the garden, like, have you noticed  anything changing or shifts in your customers? oh

19:13 points of view or what they're asking for, what they're  hungry for, both literally and metaphorically,  what is the attraction  to what you offer and has that changed over time?  don't think it's changed over time. Now bear in mind, we've only been doing this for five years because we didn't have a homestead until five years ago.  But  what really has stuck out to me over the last year is

19:41 We have not been able to keep eggs in our farm stand for sale  for more than 24 hours. We have 19 chickens  and  the eggs are gone every day because people know we have them and they come in and pay their five bucks and go home with a dozen eggs.  And before all of this bird flu  stuff started and um before inflation really hit hard in the last year and a half,

20:08 People would stop by and buy eggs, but it wasn't like we have to stop by and buy eggs. Yeah. Yeah. I see.  And  here at our farm and here in Minnesota, the last two years have been really hard growing seasons. It was really rainy  in the spring for a month, both summers.  And it's been really hard for people to grow anything  like they had been. mean,

20:36 Four summers ago, we had so many tomatoes, we were giving them away.  These last two summers,  two summers ago, we had hardly any tomatoes. It was just so wet and then it was so dry that the tomato plants didn't stand a chance. And this summer, this past summer,  summer 2025 was better and we did sell tomatoes and people were like, oh, thank God you have tomatoes.

21:02 Because the thing that people want to do around here is can tomato sauce for the winter. Yeah. Yes. And so other than those two things, I mean, I think that people really realize back during COVID that it's a really good thing to know your neighbors and know your producers in the local area because you can't always count on the grocery store having the thing you need. Yeah. I feel like that changed everything.

21:32 Yes, yeah, I do too. It's also, I feel like when I, for example, if I host  a  dinner or something and offer the meat that I've hunted,  there's such a different experience  knowing  the person  and the place  where that food source came from and even hearing the story about it.

21:58 people like even people who've lived here, let's say in New Mexico their whole lives and know about elk or maybe where elk live don't understand that much about the animal and may have never even tasted the animal. So it's like offering a taste of the meat, but then also, you know, like if I have the elk hide or the antler or ivory, you know, tooth or something, it's interesting how  drawn people are to learn more and

22:27 The meaning behind the food makes the difference in how they are connecting, I think, to that source of food, but then also the experience of what I call, this isn't original, I know, but like the experience of communing, know, it's real communion with each other.  And I feel like our culture is  starving for that, literally, because we've become so individualized, we rely on

22:53 uh sources of whether it's food or anything else, we push a button on Amazon, get it delivered to our door. We relate to our devices more to each than each other. And I believe that coming back together through something as simple as  the egg or the meat or the apple is just critical right now. And it's a way of feeling at home,  I think in ourselves and with each other through food.

23:20 Absolutely. We have become so disconnected from where everything comes from.  Everything comes from the earth.  We've become so disconnected from the earth. We think that everything comes from the store  or a delivery truck  and it doesn't. Everything starts with the earth.  Absolutely. The ultimate provider.

23:53 It's um, it's so weird to me.  I grew up in Maine and as a little kid, I spent a lot of time outside in the trees, in the woods. And I used to go out to the edge of the swamp because there was a swamp behind our house  and every spring there were tadpoles. uh

24:19 I was always so excited to get a jar and have little tadpoles  that lived in the jar.  And it's probably not very nice, the tadpoles, but my dad wasn't going to tell me no. And  watching those tadpoles develop from these little  fishy looking things, two full-fledged frogs with  legs and a tail, actually. The tail  is still there, it's just very short. um And that was my exciting thing in the spring.

24:48 And then the rest of the summer was playing in the woods and gathering pine cones and acorns and making things out of them. And there were no tablets. There were no cell phones. was no,  there was, there was no internet. now kids don't do that anymore.  No, I know they're on their devices. I was just talking to a friend the other day saying, Oh, it breaks my heart that so many people on the earth have no reference of life without a device.

25:19 You know, they  were raised with them  and I think it's  really too bad. know, like how do you undo that kind of programming and go back to something that's tactile and visceral and sensory, exploratory, all of that, like direct relationship to the earth. know, something's definitely lost, I think.  Yes, absolutely. And the closest thing I can think of at this point for kids

25:47 is having a pet, an actual pet like a kitten or a puppy  and raising that pet from baby to adult pet.  Because dogs and cats are not, they're technology,  they're biology. Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, of course some kids do  live on a farm or do have gardens or do have close proximity to the outdoors.

26:15 There's more familiarity and comfort with that. then some, you know, so the majority of the world's population live in urban centers. And, um you know, and there is some access maybe to something that is soil or green or water, but a lot less. So  I don't know. It's, it's  how do we, how do we foster connection and remember,  you know, really, I feel like it's a remembering where we came from and what's  essential in our own selves and our own.

26:45 beings, like where are we rooted and how can we be rooted to the earth now given  all of these changes in the world? Well, you're doing a good job by writing the book and I'm trying to do a good job by sharing on the podcast.  And really, I think that  you have to be the change you want to see in the world and that sounds very trite and that is not my line. I don't know who said  it, but you're being the change that you want to see in the world.

27:14 Well, it's just,  I don't know, living in  what I believe in. It's my own sanity, actually.  In some ways, it's,  when I feel my best, then I can be my best outwardly too. So just learning as I make my way for sure and trying to share what I'm learning.  Plus, I have more questions. I don't really have answers. I have more questions. So em I'm open to  exploring those with people because I think we're all hopefully trying to discover and to be better.

27:44 Yeah, absolutely. And if you aren't, you should be. And  I don't want to direct people's traffic, but really just be the best you you can be.  So oh is this your first published book, Kristy?  It is my first. I have another that I just finished the manuscript. It's called Salmon Dreaming, Coming Home to Alaska. And that will also be published by University of New Mexico Press. And that'll come out in summer 2027.

28:12 And then there's a third that's published by UNN Press that's coming out two years after that. So  I'm deep in the writing and loving it  and looking forward to sharing the second book, which takes place in my home state of Alaska.  That's exciting. ah I'm going to tell the listeners that the hardest part of writing a book isn't the writing the book. It's the promoting, marketing, and selling the book. It's definitely its own.  It's, you know,  it's a

28:43 Something that I'll speak for myself, well, other friends of mine who are authors,  we're not good at that part of it.  And I didn't know how much, ah how much that is a part of the whole process that, you know, getting it out there and sharing it. And, and I just am very thankful for opportunities like this  to share the book and to reach audiences, you know, beyond my immediate network here. And  thank you for, for having me and for being.

29:13 uh, let's see, interested in and honoring that Moonlight Elk is in the world.  Oh, I do. I absolutely do honor it because I'm in the middle of trying to write a book myself  and  it is a hard thing to do.  It is, I don't know how to explain it.  When it's going well,  nothing else is happening.

29:38 You're in the zone.  The house could explode around you and you'd be like, Oh, what was that? Yes, exactly. But when it's not going well and you're trying to find the right sentence to convey the thing that's important for you to convey,  that's when it's tough. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's that flow state. And sometimes it's easier to tap into that than others. um But I don't know. I don't know if this is your experience. I feel like

30:08 If I can just stay open, basically what wants to come through, it's almost like using me as  as a, um, as a conduit or catalyst, vehicle to get the story on the page. And I feel like when I'm open enough and not resisting or not trying to force it, then it, then it can flow more easily.  Yes. And I always have to remind myself of that when it's, if it gets frustrating, I get up and go do something else for a while.  Because then I stopped trying to force it.

30:38 Um, so have you been doing any book touring? Are you just doing the things like writing blog posts and doing podcasts and things like that? No, I've been so fortunate to do some touring and I really like reading with other authors. So I got to do  reading here and in Virginia with a dear friend of mine, Erica Hauser, and her book is called The Age of Deer  and it was shortlisted for the Penn Award. oh

31:07 And  so she and I have done a couple of readings together. She was in Virginia and I was also in Vermont. I got to do a couple of readings in Vermont  and I did a reading with my friend who is an author, Gretchen Legler, and she's written a couple of books. Her most recent book is called Woods Queer and she's in Maine. And so we got to do a reading in Rockland this past spring  and I've done different readings here in New Mexico.

31:35 Yeah, so I've gotten to travel around, I love. And then also being part of these kinds of conversations  online has been really fun. And to meet all kinds of people, it's just opened up amazing different connections with people I didn't even know were out there and people doing such amazing work like you.  Thank you.  All right, Kristy, where can people find you and where can they buy the book?  Anybody can find me at KristyGreen.net.

32:02 And then the book is available. It's distributed by Simon & Schuster.  You can find it at the University of New Mexico Press online.  You can order it anywhere. You would order a hard copy.  There's hardback and paperback books. And then anywhere you find your audio books, it's available on an audiobook form anywhere you would go  to find your own audiobook and then on Kindle as well. So you can pretty much find it anywhere. Fantastic.

32:31 As always, people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. And if you want to support the podcast, you can go to a tinyhomestead.com slash support. Christy, I loved this. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. Thank you so much, Mary. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the cozy season of dormancy. Yes. And Merry Christmas and happy new year, Christy. Merry Christmas. Thank you, Mary. You're welcome.