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What the Neighbors Think | Ambrook Research

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At the far end of the large white room sat the casket, my father-in-law Leroy inside, pale as a literal ghost, a man who would have turned 91 on this day. At the other end of the room was a table, shiny Happy Birthday balloons bobbing in the dim light, refreshments poured and plated. John, my husband, and his sisters had given the ok for balloons at the visitation — it seemed innocent enough to “celebrate” Leroy’s birth as well as his death. Read Next Notes From a Dairy Farmer's Daughter Is Every Farmer an Influencer Now? Requiem for a Pig A cake with Leroy’s face on it (the kind digitally created from a photo and laid out as frosting on a cake) had been given the thumbs down. Yet there it was beside the balloons, someone having missed the memo forbidding the cake. The hushed, reverent crowd circled back one by one and two by two after visiting with the body and cut a slice, enjoying a piece of his shirt or the background, not a single one daring to eat the dead man’s face. There were

When Beth Hoffman and her husband moved from the Bay Area to farm sustainably in rural Iowa, they tried some things their neighbors had never seen. Did it ruffle any feathers? At the far end of the large white room sat the casket, my father-in-law Leroy inside, pale as a literal ghost, a man who would have turned 91 on this day. At the other end of the room was a table, shiny Happy Birthday balloons bobbing in the dim light, refreshments poured and plated. John, my husband, and his sisters had given the ok for balloons at the visitation — it seemed innocent enough to “celebrate” Leroy’s birth

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