Gina Keenan-Klages

My name is Gina, and my husband's name is Patrick. We have three children, ranging in ages from 1 to 5 years. Our household also includes my mother, who is living with us from September to May. She watches the kids on the days I work. We also have a dog, Minka, two corn snakes (Corny and Cactus) and numerous fish.

My husband works as an IT consultant, and I work as a hydrogeologist. We have lived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for three years. We moved here from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we had lived for 14 years. My husband and I are both from Minnesota originally, so as many people do when they have kids, we moved closer to our families.

Both my husband and I grew up on farms of sorts in southern and west-central Minnesota, respectively. My husband grew up on a hobby farm (16 acres), where they raised a large portion of their food on their farm. They had chickens for eggs and butchered over 300 chickens in a year (they had six kids-five of them were boys-all of who are over six feet tall). Claudia (my mother-in-law) had, and still has, a large garden, and they would raise and butcher a cow and/or pig. I, on the other hand, grew up on a 180 acre farm, and though it started out as a working farm (sheep and grain), our family was much more removed from the growing and harvesting of food from the farm for our own family's consumption.

I am interested in all aspects of food, from growing, harvesting, preserving, and cooking it. I have worked on a community supported agriculture (CSA) farm, and before kids, we thought about buying my family's farm and doing a CSA. However, as with everything, kids bring a different reality to everything. I am lucky to get a garden planted now.