Written by Anna Claussen, Voices for Rural Resilience & Beyond the Clock Co-Host

When I walked into the Offal Fashion Show at the Denver stockyards I was caught off guard, not by the smell of sweet cattle manure, but by the wave of full body emotion that followed the scent in through my nostrils and into every cell of my being. As I entered the arena it was quiet — a transition time — the junior livestock judging and final bison sales were winding down and I was early to the evening’s event: The 2025 Offal Party. I was here to promote Growing GRASS, an effort forging resilient supply chains that elevates the byproducts (or offal) of regenerative cattle and bison that benefit all of us.

It was a rare moment to pause. After a dizzying week of a flurry of Executive Orders that have a direct impact on my work, this was much needed time to just sit with my senses and my sensations. It was a moment to make a confession, if only to myself. I love the smell of manure. In my current life as a big city dweller I don’t get to smell it every day like I used to. Not even close! And being drawn towards something that society says should repel us makes us conceal many-a-penchants, sometimes subconsciously.

You see, every farm has its own distinct smell of manure, varying from farm to farm, from species to species, from season to season. And, yes, it made me nostalgic for my childhood home, for the smell of my family farm, for the act of rearing livestock and raising havoc with my brothers. But here, in the stockyards at the National Western Stock Show at the tail-end of the Nation’s premier livestock, rodeo, and horse show, it is an aggregated smell that compels me. It’s the collective smell of hundreds of farms — a kaleidoscope of manure stomped into freshly spread wood chips by thousands of boots and tens of thousands of hooves — that makes me emotional.

This is the smell of life as a livestock showman. The smell of hard work in the back forty, endlessly rotating pastures or working cattle in the barn lean-to every summer morning. It’s the pride of breeding resilient genetics or mixing supplemental rations like a professional athletic trainer. It’s the confidence of the showman, an outward surety inextricably linked with insurmountable nerves and insecurities. It’s the energy of competition, judgment and comparison alongside the endless support of friends and family. It’s the smell of the most collective and collaborative feelings of my lifetime, those found when farm families gathered with shared understanding of strength and service.

Fast forward nearly three decades from my own days showing in those arenas, and I’m here with artists and designers alongside farmers and ranchers, alongside urban-dwelling distributors and rural-based land stewards. A place where my worlds come together. Where disparate parts of myself feel whole. Where I can feel utter contentment. Not isolated. Not compartmentalized. But whole.

This is a coveted feeling for me, as a traverser of worlds. One of the other places I feel this is as a co-host of Beyond the Clock, a space where our goal is to uplift and give sustenance to a community of rural creative practitioners supporting them in their role as bridge sitters, by both embracing the culture of their place while intentionally choosing to not belong, stretching their community to respectfully embrace different cultures, values, and attitudes. Which is why it was extra special that my Beyond the Clock collaborators, Ash Hanson & Eliza Blue, arrived for the main event and bore witness to this feeling of wholeness.

We gathered with hundreds of others to eat beef liver, watch the latest genuine leather fashion designs strut through the auction ring, learn new line dancing steps alongside strangers, and hear pitches from startup businesses that are trying to provide cattle producers with an additional market for offal in the U.S. For Ash, this spectacle was a sparkly, new, exciting world—a much different version of rural than the fishing, hunting, Northwood of Minnesota she knows best. For Eliza, this was her everyday reality as a rancher and artist living in Bison, South Dakota. But she, too, was moved by seeing the rituals of her daily life amplified in such an intentional way. These were our neighbors. Rural. Urban. Rancher. Artist. Politics aside, we were all here to bridge our worlds and reconnect a broken supply chain in a regenerative way that makes an offal lot of sense for producers, processors, designers, consumers, and the planet.

Despite our perceived or real or politicized differences, that night, we united in wholeness at the Offal Party and it was beautiful. Beautiful in the “sitting in the dirty barnyard sweaty, tired and stinky” kind-of-way. It reminded me of the wisdom of the writer and mythographer, Martin Shaw: “Beauty is created not just by desire, but by diligence—circling back again and again to what makes you dizzy with admiration but also utterly focused in service.”

The task of deconstructing the social and cultural narratives that tell us we can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t get along is the priority of our times. In the midst of the current national political noise, it took an offal event to remind me: we need each other to heal and partake in the act of reconstructing our future narratives. This act is the type of beauty that requires us to wade through the manure together.

But, it won’t happen on its own. It will require intention and diligence, but also the desire to do so. The desire to embrace the collective sensory landscape of our individual lived experiences. We need to seek out this kind of anchoring and wholeness—that which unites us in our kaleidoscope of manure, our desire to be good stewards of our places—with intention and fervor. We need to pause, look around, and appreciate the ways we find things to work toward together. We need to celebrate our creativity, eat good food, and dance with strangers. We need to desire this kind of connection and move toward it. Even in, or especially in, the dizzying darkness. And, when we do, I know we will find plenty of beauty there, too.

An Offal Revelation