Blind Butcher Brewing Company
The pandemic of 2020 changed how we thought about our family farm here on 30 acres in Lyon County. We began to give greater consideration to sustainability and stewardship of our resources in land and buildings.
We ventured beyond crops and vegetable gardens and into livestock for the first time with a small cow/calf operation and the occasional hog. Like many farmers, we soon discovered that our local meat lockers were filling up quickly and that there would be no place to process our livestock. That being the case we invested in equipment and education, and learned how to process our own – like our grandparents did.
One thing led to another (as it often does here) and soon we also learned how to brew craft beer. The notion of ever getting a license to market our craft was remote -the paperwork and investment was daunting. We laughed about what we might name that new venture.
But then something happened in December 2020 when we surprisingly learned that Rob’s doctor Ed Stone and his team at the University of Iowa had miraculously put together the pathway to a preventive treatment and a cure for many causes of blindness, including his.
Today in Iowa City, their new lab and production facility is built, staffed, and actively working to fine tune their research and the delivery system of the coming treatments. To keep costs affordable to all afflicted, they have remarkably done all of this under the umbrella of an open source, non-profit organization.
Rob’s nurse Jan, who we have also known since he was diagnosed in 2009, serendipitously shared our contact info with the director of the foundation. After hearing our story, it was unanimously agreed that the University of Iowa Institute for Vision Research (IVR) would partner with the Blind Butcher Brewing Company to help raise awareness and funds for this mission.
Author: Dirk Jahn
