Tara Ruby: preserving food traditions

Tara Ruby: preserving food traditions Photos by Tara Ruby

by LeeAnna Tatum

Editor’s Note: Tara Ruby is a fine art portrait and event photographer who currently has a studio in Hinesville. She is a veteran, a military spouse and a mother of three. She has won multiple awards for her ground-breaking photography which focuses on motherhood and the military. Often combining those two. I met Tara (though somewhat indirectly) when we both attended the Boucherie Festival held at Comfort Farms earlier this year and she has since done some of the photography for Southern Soil, sharing her gift with all of us! But this isn’t an article about photography.

This is an article about food. Catching food. Hunting food. Growing food. Preparing food. And maybe, most importantly, creating shared experiences around food.

Tara Ruby is a modern woman with a successful career, her own business and a husband who serves in the Army. Even with a busy life, she devotes a great deal of time and attention to sourcing and preparing food for herself and her family.

This lifestyle choice is one that Tara makes because of the many benefits she receives through it. Not only does it afford her the opportunity to enjoy good food that is prepared well, but it also connects her with nature, provides many health benefits, builds community and keeps family ties strong.

Raised by her grandparents, William and Amelia Berry, in Maryland, Tara grew up in an environment where food was the center of family activities; in large part because getting food on the table required a joint effort. Whether it was fishing, hunting, butchering chickens, working in the garden or foraging; there was a lot more involved to meal preparation than simply making a quick run to the grocery store with a list of items to buy.

“Looking back now as an adult,” Tara explained, “I’m pretty sure we did it because it was just cheaper. But it’s also better. Everything in my house growing up was centered around the table. Normal, everyday life was around the table.”

It may have been a practical way of life for a Depression-era couple to feed their family, but it also served as the basis for many of Tara’s childhood memories. Sure, some of those memories were of experiences not fully appreciated at the time, but they are things for which she is grateful today.

“We lived on a deadend street, we would walk down to the very end of the street where we had a plot sized garden. I remember carrying 5 gallon buckets down to water the stupid garden,” Tara recalled with a laugh, “and when you’re a kid you don’t really pay attention to it, it’s just another chore.”

But now, as a mom herself, she appreciates those shared memories that were created around food and hopes to keep some of those traditions alive for future generations.

On a recent trip back to Maryland to visit family, Tara was able to create new memories with her kids around food while also teaching them new skills and strengthening family connections. In addition to foraging for wild berries and making jelly with her grandmother, they also got a literal handson experience with sausage making.

“My uncle is the meat guy in the family. He put in 100 pounds of deer and we put in 100 pounds of pig (wild hog) and we made our own sausages together. But we did that with my kids. So it was me and (husband) Gary and my two younger ones and we spent all day … and we learned how to do it,” Tara said.

“My kids got their hands in there … you have to teach kids to really get their hands in there because of that initial reaction, ‘oh my god, I have dead pig on my fingers’, you have to get past that thought process,” she laughed. “And then we cooked it right there. So we were actually eating it while we were making it so we could see what it tasted like. And we talked about all kinds of stuff. So, it’s back to that family thing of communication.”

“And when your fingers are dirty, you can’t have your cellphones,” She added. “So everybody had their cellphones off for the day!”

“Above and beyond what we’re eating,” Tara said, “I’m very protective of our time together.”

But it’s more than making memories that compels Tara to be more involved in providing her own food, it’s also about the quality of the food - tastier and healthier!

“This tastes better and I know where it comes from, I know when it was killed,” Tara said of eating meat that she and husband Gary have caught or processed themselves.

“The more we do it, the more that’s what we want,” Tara said. “Now, I think the only time we go and buy meat is usually beef. And that’s just because I cannot raise a cow in my backyard. I tried,” she said after a brief pause, “Gary won’t let me.”

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She may not be able to raise and slaughter her own cow, living with neighbors nearby and all, but she does keep some chickens. The chickens not only provide her with a steady stream of eggs, but she will also harvest them for meat when their egg production falls off.

“My uncles had chickens, cows, pigs, ducks. My grandfather actually had rabbits. We were never allowed to name them, you weren’t allowed to pick them up and cuddle them. You went out, you fed them, you watered them, you cleaned the cage and then you went back inside. Because there was never that emotional attachment and I think you have to have that. I don’t have any attachment to mine. If they quit laying, they’re done,” Tara explained.

Unlike her childhood experience, however, Tara learned through Jon Jackson and her experience at the bucherie how to butcher the chickens without causing them undue stress.

“I remember going to my uncle’s and cleaning (chickens). The main thing I remember is cutting their heads off and they’d flap everywhere,” Tara recalled. “But then, going to Jon’s (Comfort Farms) and watching them through the process and keeping the animal more calm and contained, that was when I thought, ‘I can do this!’.”

“We just believe if we can do it ourselves and save money doing it, it’s just so much better,” Tara said. “I have Gary help me a lot of times, because what I find is that I’m not strong enough, physically. Sometimes it’s not that easy. There’s a process to doing it and doing it the right way.”

Tara is not afraid to learn new skills. Whether it’s finding a mentor or watching how-to videos on YouTube (which is how she learned to skin and butcher hogs), she’s always expanding her knowledge base and learning new skills.

“When we clean a pig, I skin it and butcher it, Gary’s there for the strength because it takes a lot of physical strength sometimes to do this and I just can’t,” Tara said. “And he’s really good at coming home and cutting it up and then he does all the grinding, because he’s just better at it. So, it’s learning what you’re good at and what you’re not good at doing is part of the process.”

Food also connects Tara to community, something that military life doesn’t always facilitate.

Whether it’s fishing with the “regulars” on the pier and learning from their years of experience, sharing an overabundance of eggs or preparing a meal for others; food has a way of bringing people together.

“We’ve given eggs to all of our neighbors, we give eggs to post, we do bartering now,” Tara explained. “The lady who makes all my onesies for my studio … they have three boys, so they go through eggs like crazy. So, we’ll trade services.”

“We still do a big Thanksgiving,” Tara said. “We’ll invite single soldiers over to the house. We have had quite a few guys come over who had never had fresh carrots or even a home-cooked meal!”

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“I make all my veggies from fresh and they’re mind-blown that something could taste this way,” Tara said of the young soldiers who visit. “I feel bad for this whole generation that was just so used to processed everything. How could you have gone your entire life without a true home cooked meal?”

Just as military life can make it difficult for families to have strong community connections, it also makes it difficult to put down literal roots as well. Though she would love to have a large garden and fruit orchard, it’s impractical at this time. Tara makes do with a small garden and some potted herbs that she can harvest fresh when she needs them.

Food plays a vital role in every person’s life. It is life-sustaining and necessary. But not everyone embraces that fact as wholeheartedly as Tara and others like her who choose to be so closely connected to the food they eat. But the benefits to live this way are undeniable.

By choosing to source her own food directly and prepare it from scratch, Tara is actively involved with the natural world - sunlight, earth, fresh air, animals, vegetation. These are all proven to be essential for our mental and physical health.

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Bringing food to the table in this way is inherently more active than relying on processed foods. It’s also inherently more social and conducive to developing relationships and building community. By making food preparation a shared experience, memories are made and ties are strengthened.

There was a time in our shared history when it was necessary to make these choices in order to eat. Today, we have a sometimes overwhelming number of easier, cheaper and much more convenient options available to us. But what’s the trade off?

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