A Midwest Goodbye to 2025
Good riddance.
Wow, hey—hello.
I wasn’t planning to post again until my birthday (spoiler alert: January 6, and I do have some words for it). But you all had other plans. A post I wrote back in early November went unexpectedly viral, and suddenly there are a lot of new faces here. So I figured I should probably (re)introduce myself and say a Midwestern goodbye (i.e. much too long and through a car window) to 2025.
Hi. I’m Mallory. I wrote No, Seriously. Some Rural Communities Want to Die.
When that post hit 10,000 views, I was… terrified, honestly. I had a brief, familiar spiral. A little imposter syndrome. A moment of “who do you think you are?” But then the trolls showed up and started swinging and I remembered who the hell I was.
Because I meant every damn word of that post. And every other post here, too.
If you’re new here and wondering what this space looks like when the algorithm isn’t telling you what to do, The Garlic Bread Farmer is a good place to start. It’s an essay about a little boy on a school bus in Iowa dreaming about becoming a farmer.
But, welcome. I’m glad you’re here because we have work to do.
I’m a food farmer, a disability advocate, a mom, a wife. I’m a writer, sure, but at the heart of it all, I’m a storyteller. And I’ve got stories. Some come from my own kitchen table. Some come from my day job in the messy middle of food systems working alongside farmers, schools, nonprofits, organizations, and policymakers to translate how decisions on paper land on plates, in our water and soil, in paychecks, and across rural communities.
But that work didn’t start by chance. It started at home.
When my husband and I started our family, our first child suffered a brain injury at birth. Advocacy stopped being theoretical real fast. I learned how to fight for her. Then for myself. Along the way, we started asking harder questions about everything, including food. We began growing what we could ourselves and seeking out the highest-quality food available around us, not as a lifestyle choice, but as part of caring for our family.
That work threads through everything I do now, including my food system work, which I believe is inseparable from justice. For everyone.
I also want to be clear about the broader backdrop here. The current administration is steering this country toward full-blown authoritarianism; stripping protections from the vulnerable, policing the poor, and codifying violence against Black and brown bodies. That reality shapes everything I write. Silence isn’t neutrality. It’s compliance. I’ve never been interested in compliance.
2025, Personally
Is this the part where I humble-brag about my kids? Because I could.
I won’t go too hard. Partly because of the aforementioned scary trolls, and because their stories are theirs to tell. But it has been a genuine joy to watch them grow, learn, and find their footing this year. They’re doing great in school. They ask good questions. Their teachers are saints. Saints who are wildly underpaid.
My husband and I celebrated ten years of marriage this year by spelunking caves in southern Minnesota, which feels both romantic and very on-brand for us. We followed that up with the best beer cheese soup I’ve ever had at Estelle’s Eatery & Bar, because love languages evolve.
My daughter, my mom, and I also traveled to Traverse City, Michigan to visit my 95-year-old grandmother. She’s a writer too. (Another fun family fact: Jerry Dennis, author of The Living Great Lakes, is my uncle.) Sitting as four generations of women who have a lot to say was grounding in a way I didn’t know I needed.
So personally? A pretty great year.
2025, Professionally
Professionally… well. That depends how you look at it.
On paper, it was my busiest year yet. As a communications contractor, that’s supposed to be a good thing. And in some ways, it was. I worked on ambitious projects, collaborated with brilliant people, and even received a national innovation award. I helped bring to life a new podcast that takes a deep dive into Iowa’s food system. It’s called At the Iowa Farm Table from the Iowa Food System Coalition. I hope you’ll give a listen. We’re working on Season 2 right now, but all of our episodes are timeless.
I’m deeply proud of the projects completed this year. But a lot of my time this year was spent advocating. Fighting. Defending programs that worked. Explaining, over and over again, why access to real food, fair markets, and basic dignity shouldn’t be controversial.
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being told “great job” while watching the ground shift under the very work being recognized. From being asked to do more with less. Again.
Still, I showed up. I kept telling the story. I kept choosing clarity over comfort. And if nothing else, 2025 confirmed this: the work matters, even when it’s hard. Especially then.
In Closing
If you found your way here because one of my posts made you curious, welcome. Truly. I’m grateful to the folks who showed up in good faith, asked real questions, and stayed curious. And to the ones who showed up angry and accidentally boosted my work into new corners of the internet: thank you for your service.
I’ll keep writing.
About food. About power. About disability. About rural places that refuse to disappear quietly. I’ll keep telling the truth as I see it, even when it’s inconvenient.
See you in 2026.
Same voice. Same values.
Probably (hopefully) more snacks.
Happy Holidays! Rest up; we’ve got work to do.
One Last Thing
This writing will always be free and publicly available. That part isn’t changing.
But a few of you asked if there was a way to support this work and instead of overthinking it and doubting myself, I turned payments on.
If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you’ll get the occasional bonus essay and early access / discounts on my first book (a girl can dream).
No pressure. No guilt. No paywalls. Read for free. Share freely. Stick around as long as you like. But if you’ve been nodding along, forwarding posts, or defending me in the comments and you want to help keep this work going, paid subscriptions are one way to do that.
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
And I promise to keep telling the truth.
Cheers, love your work✍️