A Family Name

PearlJack Farm is named after my great-grandma Pearl and my great-uncle Jack. I come from a family of cattle ranchers. My grandpa grew up on the Kannolt Ranch in South Dakota with his parents, Pearl and Carl, his big brother, Jack, and his younger sister, Maxine. My great-grandma Pearl was a strong ranch woman who was remembered as a “happy, pretty lady with many hats.” My great-uncle Jack was known for his “kind heart, his love of hunting and love for animals.” Growing up on the ranch together, Jack and my grandpa were inseparable.

Jack was drafted when he was 23 years old, and came back to the ranch suffering from severe PTSD. Not long after he returned, he died by suicide upstairs in the family home. My great-grandma Pearl was the one who found him. The grief and trauma of his death remains close to the surface in our family. My grandpa, who was a stoic rancher who rarely showed emotion, would tear up just at the mention of his brother’s name, even sixty-five years later.

My great-grandma Pearl and my great-uncle Jack are intimately and enduringly bonded by their tragic story. I wanted to both honor that bond and reframe it as one of hope and renewal, by using their names to start the next generation of farming in our family. Thus the name, PearlJack Farm.