Blame it on having just given birth to her second child, or a day spent drinking and eating in Napa Valley, or on joyous Kelly Maher being, well, Kelly Maher.

However the planets aligned, six months ago the Republican political pundit found herself embarking on a journey that’s equal parts “Little House on the Prairie,” “Under the Tuscan Sun” and Deepak Chopra.

Maher decided to live for a year by eating almost entirely off the little farm in Adams County she shares with her husband, Mark, and their two young sons.

“Why, after generations of innovation in the pursuit of the caloric plenty we currently enjoy, would I willingly throw myself backward into a world where my food intake is reliant upon the whims of the clouds as they break over the Rockies, the sun as it penetrates the soil in my garden, and those animals in our care?” she wrote in her blog when she introduced what she calls her “Homegrown Year.”

“Also, how am I going to manage an entire year without a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?”

So far, Maher’s managed just fine, even though she’s conducting her experiment in the middle of a pandemic. 

“There is something, especially right now, where everyone feels unmoored, where more and more people are making sourdough bread, for example, really feeling that pull toward getting back to creation and finding value in that,” she said.

The food has nourished her body but in such a way that she’s lost 55 pounds. But more importantly it is feeding her soul at a time when, as she put it, “politics is such a soul-sucking place to be.”

And how. 

I believe the recent seeds of division in this country were fueled by Rush Limbaugh, exacerbated by bungles on both sides (remember President Obama’s Fast and Furious gun program?) and anonymous social media posts. They then were blown up by former President Donald Trump. Former. Was there ever a more satisfying adjective for Trump?

Maher, 37, has been on Colorado’s political scene for years. She currently provides political commentary on 9News and is vice president of marketing for CaucusRoom, a social-media site for conservatives. Maher is what I would call a normal conservative. She realizes government isn’t something that needs to be drowned in a bathtub but kept afloat and massaged and managed to make it workable.

We’ve talked plenty over the years at political and personal events. I attended Maher’s wedding in 2016 – catered by food trucks! – the same year she was named one of the nation’s “40 Under 40” by the American Association of Political Consultants.

And I was at her father’s funeral in 2018. Maher found her dad dead in his Capitol Hill apartment the day before she and her husband were to close on their Adams County property. Friends helped an overwhelmed and grief-stricken Maher pack.

The couple had hunted and gardened when they lived in Denver but their four-acre farm gave them a chance to raise goats, chickens and quail, and expand their garden. Maher turned to YouTube and books to learn how to make cheeses – parmesan, goat, ricotta and more. 

Fast forward to 2019.

Maher had just given birth to their second son via a C-section, but she was determined to make it to a friend’s wedding in Napa Valley. She hadn’t had a drink in more than a year and she admits she got more and more obnoxious at every winery she and her friend Emily visited. 

The owners served small plates of food with the wine, and the more wine she consumed the more Maher bragged about how her cheese tasted so much better, her tomatoes were so much plumper. You get the idea.

And so her friend challenged her. The idea of the Homegrown Year took root. And although Maher planned to slowly wean herself into her new life, that didn’t happen. On Aug. 1, 2020, she went cold turkey.

“So, I abruptly went from a coffee-guzzling, preservative mainlining, wine-sipping, emotional overeater – to an exclusively fresh-veggie-straight-from-the-garden eater,” she wrote in a post. 

She began her journey in the middle of the pandemic, which provided its own challenges. Many Americans who stayed home wanted to return to their roots, too. So the place where Maher buys her baby chicks kept running out. There was a run on the Ball jars she uses for canning.

Under the Homegrown Year rules – seriously, there are rules, such as four cheat days a year – Maher is allowed to barter. She usually trades cheese. That’s how she got watermelon from former state Sen. Greg Brophy of Wray and wheat from former Sen. Mark Hillman of Burlington.

A friend whose family owns a winery in California bartered with Maher. So did a stranger from Hawaii who listened to her podcast and offered coffee. 

Oh, about that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Maher could have one, but she’d have to find someone who grows peanuts and someone who grows carobs and, well, you get the idea. 

“That said, this isn’t constrained by geography,  so if you grow or produce something – especially wine, avocados, wheat or sugar beets or cane – email me at hungrykelly@realbestlife.com if you’re interested in a barter,” Maher wrote in one blog post.

The other morning her breakfast consisted of three duck eggs, half a bowl of ricotta cheese and some pomegranate seeds she got from her mother in Arizona through a barter.

Lunch was going to be “zoodles,” veggie noodles made from zucchini, meat from a deer her husband shot with his bow-and-arrow, and a tomato sauce she made from items grown in her garden. 

A neighbor two doors down trades honey with her. She cooks with goat butter and bacon fat.

“It is so, so good,” Maher said, describing frittatas, lettuce salads from her greenhouse and sauerkraut she ferments. “It feels so nourishing.” 

On her first cheat day, on Christmas Day, Maher ate shrimp, oysters, Serrano ham, tiramisu and more. At first it was all so glorious but by the end of the day, she was more than ready to return to her Homegrown Year and her new life. 

“I have friends who feel fulfilled when they have a group of interesting and engaged people around their kitchen island sipping champagne and nibbling off a perfectly assembled cheeseboard,” Maher wrote in her blog. 

Others run marathons, hike 14ers, deep-sea dive or travel the world, she said.

“Whatever it is that reminds you why life is such an amazing gift, my hope for you is that you can reach out and grab and hold it in your hand for a few minutes, in the place your – and my – phone usually occupies. Examine it with all the love and wonder you remember from the day you found it.”

Her 3-year-old is learning to milk goats and collect eggs. Eventually the 18-month-old will assist. Her husband helps out plenty, including making celery salt and other spices.

Maher can’t remember being healthier – or happier.