The neighbour's sheep know all the good poses

20 years ago next month marks the day I packed up 2 suitcases and moved to the UK to be with the love of my life. Leaving the rolling hills of Iowa behind in 2001, I couldn't have predicted we'd end up milking goats on a hill in Scotland, but the first time I saw the Ochil hills towering over Stirling station, I knew I'd come home.

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With today being the first time I can vote in Scotland, I have been thinking about this a lot. For those last 20 years, I have worked, raised babies, grown food in the soil, built a community and family here, paid my taxes, employed people and fallen in love over and over again with this place. I catch myself saying things like "when I was an American," as I am so fully immersed in my life here its hard to imagine it was any other way. And I am not an American with any real Scottish ties - not much of a Scottish background in my family and certainly no claim to any ancient castles or clans in my very mixed heritage.

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It used to be that I would be a bit embarrassed about not being "from here" and I would hide my still very Mid-western accent. Who was I to talk about the history of a place and the people who lived here? These days I care less. Despite the unshifting accent, I am from Scotland, even if I wasn't born here.

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One of the things we tell students on our sourdough courses is that a sourdough starter's microbial make up changes when it moves house. The strains of lactic acid bacteria and wild yeast are different in every home and place in the world. The particular make up of your starter is unique. You may start with a Mildred from Gartur, but after a time it becomes uniquely your own - shifting with your own environmental factors, your water and the food you feed it. Each starter is specific to its place and no longer the same as where it came from. I always tell students to expect the change, that the starter they come away with from a sourdough course will be different in a few weeks.
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It occurs to me, that we are probably more like a starter than not. Born in one place, but shaped and transformed by the unique conditions to be of somewhere else, microbes and all.

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My accent won't shift though...and be glad for it. My attempts at a Scottish accent can best be described in the words of a teenager as "cringe".

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Happy Voting (from this 42 year old first time voter!) and speak soon,

Kat