Where did I go?

For months I've been saying that I'd get back to this blog and tell you what's been happening on the farm ... but obviously that has not happened.

So, I'm admitting defeat. I simply don't have time to continue posting here. But I wanted to let you know that I'm alive and well and still on the Internet.

I'm posting every Monday and Thursday on Thrifty Homesteader, which is the blog I started when my first book was published. It's a DIY blog with lots of posts on how to do a variety of homesteading things. There are especially a lot of posts on goats. And I host a couple of giveaways each month for books. I've also had giveaways for lots of seeds, as well as chicks.

I also have a very active Facebook page for Thrifty Homesteader, and I post quite a few live videos. Most of my public talks are now broadcast live, such as a cheesemaking class I did last Saturday.

We also have an Antiquity Oaks page on Facebook where we post pictures and videos of new babies and the garden. Our garden partner Sarah (who was an apprentice here four years ago) also posts about the garden on that page.

My biggest project as of late has been creating an online homesteading school. It's been in beta testing for a month now, and I'll be launching soon to the public through my Thrifty Homesteader blog. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter so that you don't miss anything there!

We had a 5-week camp for kids last summer, and we'll be doing it again this year. Each 5-day session goes from Monday through Friday, and kids sleep on the farm in big tents. They do chores like feeding chickens, gathering eggs, giving bottles to baby goats or lambs, and working in the garden. They also do all of the cooking, under the supervision of cooking instructors. For more info on that, check out Nature's Farm Camp website.

Speaking of the camp, we'll be hosting an open farm day on Saturday, May 6, which will include an open house for the farm camp. So, you can come and chat about homesteading and play with baby goats and lambs. Or, if you have some young ones that might be interested in the camp, you can meet the director and some of the counselors and get a first hand view of what you'll be doing this summer.

My fourth book, the second edition of Homegrown and Handmade, will be coming out in June. (Can you believe it's been SIX years?) It's 20,000 words longer (over 300 pages now!) and includes entirely new sections on homegrown pork, homegrown sweeteners (maple syrup and honey), and homegrown businesses. I've also updated info in other chapters and added gluten-free alternatives to all recipes where that was possible. If you're interested, head over to Thrifty Homesteader because I'm about to have a big promotion for pre-orders.

As far as the farm goes ... this spring we've had 32 kids so far, as well as six lambs and about 60 chicks hatched in our incubators. Yes, I do sometimes think about what fun it would be to write about those things on here, but then I never get around to it. Maybe someday I will get back to this blog, but for now, I'm committed to helping people through the Thrifty Homesteader blog and my new online school.

Henmobile launched

When we first moved out here in 2002, I truly thought that I only needed to look to memories of my grandparent's farm to know what to do. And my grandparents had a chicken house. When I discovered that chicken houses in Illinois had dual-pitched roofs and were faced towards the south to keep naturally warmer in winter, I decided to design just such a chicken house for our homestead.

In no time, the beautiful grass carpet in front of the chicken house was gone. It was replaced by a mud slick most of the year and an ice slick the rest of the time. What would you expect with 50 or 60 chickens running in and out all day long? Of course, grass can't grow there.

The other thing I didn't like was that the chicken house was so close to the barn that many of the chickens decided that they would just as soon find a cozy spot in the barn to lay their eggs. So, we were going on egg hunts daily.

But every summer there would be at least a couple of hens that would do such a good job of hiding their eggs that we didn't find them ... until they got rotten and exploded at some point during the summer heat.

What's a homesteader to do? Build a portable hen house, of course!

After a bit of searching on Craigslist, we found an old construction site trailer that we purchased. It was basically a wooden box built on a flatbed trailer. We had to replace one and a half walls that were rotten, which was fine because we added roll-out nest boxes to the new wall.

The back wall, where the door was located, also needed to be replaced, and that's where we put a new drop down door, which doubles as a ramp.

On the evening of July 6, we moved all of the chickens into the henmobile after the sun went down and they were all roosting. (It's easier to catch chickens in the dark because they're mostly blind in the darkness.) The next morning, we moved the henmobile out to the former hayfield.

We set up poultry netting around the mobile henhouse and opened the door.

The idea is to move the henmobile regularly so that we don't wind up with areas where all of the grass is killed. The chickens follow the sheep in a rotational grazing pattern. The sheep eat down the grass, then the chickens come in and eat fly larvae and other insects while continuing to fertilize the pasture.

Meet Chuck!

When we went to do evening chores on May 31, we were greeted by this lovely little fellow. Beauty, our Jersey milk cow, gave birth sometime in the afternoon.

I immediately started to worry about the little guy because he didn't seem to know much about nursing. Beauty's udder was really full, and his tummy was really sunken. When I squeezed each of her teats, milk easily squirted out of three of them, meaning that he had at least nursed enough to get the milk plug out. The fourth one, however, still had the plug in it.

Since the pasture is huge, and the grass was so tall, we were worried he might get separated from Beauty and not be able to nurse enough. Plus, there was rain in the forecast, and we were worried about him not following her to the shelter -- if she even decided to go into the shelter when it started to rain -- so we took them into the barn for a few days of bonding. We also kept trying to show him the teat and get him to nurse. Gardener Sarah and I quickly agreed this was a big advantage of goats -- they are much easier to handle when you want to get them nursing.

I kept reminding myself that most calves get this thing figured out easily on their own, but still I was worried. Thankfully we did see him nurse a few times before we went to bed that night. And the next morning, we noticed he had a full tummy!

He is doing great, and we castrated him a week ago. Since Beauty's last calf Beau got so obnoxious when the testosterone kicked in, we decided that we should castrate this one so that he won't be so scary when he gets bigger. Yes, his ultimate destiny is the freezer, so I named him Chuck Roast, and we're just calling him Chuck for short.

Since Beauty is making way more milk than Chuck and us humans need, we are hoping to get a bottle calf to also raise for meat. Plus Chuck will have a playmate.

Healing Hashimoto's

Falling TPO antibodies show my Hashimoto's is in remission

More than two years ago I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease, and since then I've done what most doctors would call impossible -- I've put it into remission. When I've talked about it on Facebook or on this blog, a lot of people have told me I should write a book about it. However, a lot of other people have already written books, and in fact, I read those books to figure out how to heal myself. I started a health blog a few months ago so that I could share information about books and authors who've helped me along my journey, although I've not been very good about posting.

I was really excited to learn that there will be a Healing Hashimoto's online summit from June 13 to 20. Like most online summits, you can listen to the talks online FREE during the event. Each one will be available for 24 hours, and if you'd like to be able to listen to them again and again, you can purchase lifetime online access or a flash drive with the talks on them.

Some of my favorite authors will be presenting the following sessions ...

• Importance of Lifestyle Change While Healing Your Hashimoto’s by Sarah Ballantyne, Ph.D. (author of The Paleo Approach: Reverse Autoimmune Disease and Heal Your Body) 
• Diagnosed With Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: What’s Next? by Izabella Wentz, Pharm. D. (author of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause) 
• Conventional vs. Functional Medicine Approach by Amy Myers, M.D. (author of The Autoimmune Solution: Prevent and Reverse the Full Spectrum of Inflammatory Symptoms and Diseases) 
• Why Gluten-Free Products Aren’t an Easy Ticket to Good Health by Jennifer Fugo 
• Microbiome’s Connection to Hashimoto’s by David Perlmutter, M.D., F.A.C.M, A.B.I.H.M. (author of Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain–for Life)

It's tough for me to tell people what I did to put my Hashimoto's into remission because there isn't a magic bullet, and triggers can vary from person to person. For me, it was a combination of things like discovering food sensitivities, changing my diet, starting to take a few specific supplements (such as selenium), eating more fermented foods, meditating daily, and going to bed earlier. But it's been totally worth it because I'm now healthier than ever -- and thinner too!

The summit provides a great opportunity for people to get enough information to get started on the path to healing. Click here to register now so you can attend online for FREE starting Monday.

Rats and raccoons and chickens

This is what 70 chicks looks like. What? You are only counting seven chicks? Well, yes, this is what 70 chicks looks like after 47 get eaten by rats and 16 get eaten by raccoons. It's been years since we had predator problems this bad, and we have actually never had any problems losing chickens prior to last fall.

Last fall, raccoons got almost all of our laying hens. Earlier this spring, rats got into the stall that we use as a brooder, and before we realized what was happening, they had eaten all but three. Not to be dissuaded, we got more chicks. We put them in a large water trough with an old window screen over the top, and one day, we discovered a hole in the screen, and some of the chicks were missing.

Ultimately only three of the original chicks went out to the front yard into a chicken tractor. They were doing great until one morning when we walked out there to find feathers everywhere. The raccoon had been able to pull two of the chickens through the 2" by 4" welded wire, but the third one was laying in the chicken tractor decapitated. Chickens have terrible night vision, which is why a raccoon was able to grab them and kill them through the wire.

The second group of chicks went out a few weeks ago, and yesterday we realized that of the 13 Silkies (the white ones with blue beaks and faces) that went into the chicken tractor, only 9 were left. We set up two live traps for raccoons and baited them with cat food. Around 10:00 last night as I was brushing my teeth, we heard what sounded like a chorus of Alvin and the chipmunks on high speed. Mike grabbed a gun and ran outside but before he got there, the raccoon had escaped from the trap and was nowhere to be seen. Our English shepherd Porter went running around the pond in the dark, but he didn't find the raccoon either. We hoped that the coon had been so scared by being trapped that maybe he wouldn't come back. Then again, I silently thought that maybe he had simply learned to not go into a trap again.

This morning, my fear was realized as we found four more Silkies missing, as well as a white rock. We had put a board and a cinderblock in front of the hole that we found yesterday, and it had been moved. Raccoons are stronger and smarter than we thought. To add insult to injury, a chicken was in the trap. Apparently she was trying to escape and ran into the trap that was just outside the chicken tractor. Yes, that means the raccoon totally ignored the cat food in the trap and instead went for the live chickens.

Five chickens of this size is a lot of chicken meat for a raccoon, so we are wondering if there is a whole family that's feeding off of our young chickens. So far we have only ever seen one raccoon. Mike saw one walking out of the barn one night as he was finishing up chores, and our new intern saw one walk out of the chicken house at dusk one night. Oddly, he didn't have a chicken. Perhaps he was just in the mood for some chicken grain or eggs at the moment and figured he'd come back for a chicken entree later? But the chicken house is locked up tight every night, so we haven't lost any from there.

We have another batch of 33 chicks in the barn, and so far we've managed to keep them safe. They are in a water trough that is standing on top of another upside-down water trough, and it's surrounded by rat traps, which catch rats regularly. When we first realized we had a problem with rats in April, we caught 13 rats in the first two days! We do have a cat out there who is also a great mouser, and he has caught several rats, as well. I don't understand why we never had a problem with rats in all these years until now. My only thought is that the huge fox snake that lived in the barn for years probably died. He was at least six feet long, and the ones we've seen so far this year have only been about three feet long, which is perhaps not big enough to eat rats yet. Or maybe Patches the 12-year-old cat that is now retired in the house was a better mouser than we realized.

As for the raccoons, I'm not sure what we'll do, but we have to have a plan for tonight, or we probably won't have any chicks left by tomorrow morning. We will definitely put Lucy the Great Pyrenees in the front yard, but I feel like we also need to do something else to keep the chicks safe. Perhaps we can put a rabbit cage inside the chicken tractor just for tonight, so that there will be two barriers between the chicks and the coons, and maybe as the coons are trying to figure out how to get the chicks, Lucy will take care of them.

Goat retirement plan

Now that we've been on the homestead for 14 years, every now and then someone will ask what we do with does that are too old to give birth. Some assume they're butchered, which is what eventually happens to all dairy animals in large commercial operations. But with only a couple dozen does, all of our goats have names rather than ID numbers, and we know the individual personality of each one.

In general, the last time that a goat gives birth on our farm is when she's ten years old. After her final kidding, we continue to milk her as long as she'll produce, which has been somewhere between a year and eighteen months for various goats. Then they are simply left to enjoy their remaining years in the pasture. My first goat died at the age of 14. The retired does now consist of Sherri at age 13, Carmen at age 12, Lizzie at age 11 (Carmen's daughter), and Giselle at age 9. And then there's Lil, who is 7 years old and never been bred because she never grew up. She's the size of a 6-month-old, and I never sold her because I was worried that someone would get the hair-brained idea to try to develop teacup goats. So Lil lives here. I should do a blog post about her someday, as she does have a special place.

Giselle was retired after her c-section at age seven. Although goats can give birth again after having a c-section, it was the fourth time that Giselle had had kidding problems. Normally I have a two strikes rule, meaning that the second time a doe needs help during kidding, she's retired. I made excuse after excuse for Giselle through the years because she has long teats and was wonderfully easy to milk. But I'd be a fool to get her pregnant again.

The photo above was taken a few days ago when we moved them to new pasture across the farm where they can enjoy plenty of green grass this summer.

Alex's final kidding

Before I tell you this story, I have to tell you that we've had twelve does give birth so far this year, and ten of them were textbook perfect. Now I'm really wishing I had been able to find the time to write about those joyful, beautiful births.

On April 18, I happened to look out the window by my desk, and I saw Alex laying on the ground in an unmistakable position. Her legs were outstretched, her neck was craned, and her ears were pointed back. She was in labor and pushing. I jumped up, grabbed a stack of goat towels that just happened to be next to the front door and ran to the pasture. It seemed like a beautiful spring day to have a goat give birth in the pasture.

As soon as I opened the gate, Lucy the Great Pyrenees ran towards me, and as I approached Alex, the dog's exuberance caused the goat to stand up and start walking away. I put Lucy into another pasture and went back to Alex. Of course, I was wearing a pair of my town jeans, which means that they didn't have any farm stains on them, such as manure, dirt, or blood.

Beauty the Jersey cow also happened to be in the pasture, and she decided to come say hi. She has recently decided that I'm her new scratching post, and she started to rub her head against me. I called Sarah who was in the barn working on a building project, and she came out and moved Beauty to the next pasture. Then she brought a flake of straw so that I could scatter it on the ground because Alex had chosen to lie down in a spot with more dirt than grass.

The first kid was very slow to come out, partly because Alex wasn't pushing very hard, and partly because he was quite large. I'd later discover that he was 4 pounds, 7 ounces, which is big for a Nigerian, where 3 pounds is more average. Because her contractions seemed to be really wimpy and the kid was making little to no progress from one contraction to the next, I pulled on his legs to help bring him into the world.

I could see that the second kid was even bigger when the first hoof emerged. I kept comparing it to the hoof of the kid that had already been born and was worried. As the nose and white head began to come out, it was easy to see that there was an unusual amount of blood. (I took the picture at right after I'd toweled him off and removed as much blood as I could.) Turns out he weighed 5 pounds, 2 ounces, setting a new record for largest Nigerian kid born on the farm. Because he was also progressing excruciatingly slowly, I wound up pulling him also, and it was such a tight squeeze that Alex was even pulled across the grass a little.

After the kids were born, I started to worry even more, as Alex completely ignored them. She's an experienced mom and has always been wonderful with her kids. We took her and the bucklings into the barn, and not only would she not let them nurse, but she wouldn't let me milk her. This is a doe who just finished a three-year lactation two months ago, so she's also a very experienced milker! She just wanted to lay in the stall with her ears back, looking angry.

I was supposed to pick up two bee nucs (starter hives of live bees) right about the time that Alex went into labor, but I messaged the bee person and told him why I was running late. I felt very conflicted, as I really needed to pick up the bees and bring them home, but I was also worried about Alex. I checked her temperature, and it was only 101.5, which is a little on the low side, but probably not low enough to assume she had milk fever. She wasn't eating until we gave her Power Punch, which is an electrolyte and molasses concoction. I couldn't check her for ketones because that would require catching her urine, and she wasn't standing up, so I'd have no idea when or if she peed.

She hadn't passed her placenta, and there was not much hanging out in terms of membranes, so I was not completely convinced that she didn't have another kid inside because she was still pushing ever few minutes. I've never seen a doe really "push" if the only thing left was the placenta. I decided to do an internal exam to check for a retained kid, but there wasn't one.

Because she wouldn't stand up and let the kids nurse, I eventually was able to milk out her colostrum and give it to the bucklings in a bottle. At least they were doing well.

I called the U of I vet hospital and spoke to a vet who said that it sounded like Alex might just be in pain because the kids were so unusually large. So, I jumped in my car and went to pick up the bees and bring them home. There was a farm supply store on my route, so I stopped and picked up some CMPK to treat for possible milk fever, which is caused by a calcium deficiency.

The next morning I knew something was wrong. Her temperature was down to 99, which either meant that it was definitely milk fever or her body was shutting down and she was dying. I put her in the car and headed for the university vet hospital.

Within a couple of hours, an ultrasound and blood tests, we learned that she had metritis and was acidotic. Thankfully she didn't have ketosis or hypocalcemia (milk fever). They thought that they might see a very small mummified fetus in her uterus, but they weren't sure because you can only make educated guesses on an ultrasound. They said she probably had the metritis before she even went into labor, which would explain why she had such wimpy contractions and why I had to pull the kids and why she still hadn't passed her placenta 24 hours later. They still didn't have all the answers though, and Alex was in terrible condition, so I left her a the vet hospital and headed home.

After I left they had a couple of reproductive specialists do another ultrasound, and they don't think there was a retained mummified kid. They thought it looked more like a uterine tear. But they are all in agreement that she had an infection before she even went into labor. The vet said she's gotten worse since I left, so they're actually giving her morphine on top of the banamine. They also started her on an oxytocin drip, hoping that would help her expel the placenta.

I think the reason her temp was so low that morning is because she was shutting down. She really looked like she was just ready to die, so it was hard for me to imagine that she looked worse after I left. They said that if she had a uterine tear, the day after the birth was always the worst, and that if she was going to make it, she should improve a lot by the following day.

The next day they had a reproductive specialist do an ultrasound and a vaginal exam, and he said that she has an interior vaginal tear, which went all the way through into her abdomen, and that could ultimately cause more problems than a uterine tear. The vet said "Goat uteruses love to tear. It's just what they do. But they're also really good at healing themselves." Vaginal tears can wind up with a lot of scar tissue that would cause kidding problems in the future. If we wanted to breed her again, they suggested bringing her back in 30 days for another exam to see if scar tissue is building up and looks problematic. That was another first for me! I'd never heard of an interior vaginal tear, but that's probably why the 5-pound, 2-ounce kid had so much blood on his head when he was being born.

Alex continued to improve, and I was able to bring her home after five days in the vet hospital. On the phone, the vet told me how much better she looked, but when I arrived, I thought she looked dreadful. After I brought her home and put her in the barn with her kids, she just laid there all the time with her ears back, and she'd still push every few minutes. They said that was because of the internal tear. Every time I looked at her, I kept thinking that she might still die. I'd never seen a goat look so miserable, and I just kept reminding myself that we'd done everything possible.

I put her in the kidding stall with her bucklings, which we'd been bottle-feeding. I simply hoped she'd tolerate them, but it seemed that she remembered them as she would lick them when they came near her. Three days after she came home, she finally started standing up to eat. As I was giving one of her boys a bottle one evening, the other one was bopping my leg, hoping to find a new spigot for milk. Since Alex had been tolerating them quite well, I decided to give it a try and see if she'd let the kid nurse.

I sat down in the straw and put the kid under her. I put the teat in his mouth while squeezing out a bit of milk onto his tongue. He immediately began to suckle! I supported his head for a minute or so, then I let go, and he continued to nurse, and Alex just stood there like a perfect mama! The other kid, who had already had a bottle, wasn't interested, so I decided to let him try nursing in the morning before giving him a bottle.

The next morning I was so excited about the possibility of the second kid starting to nurse but reminded myself that it might not work. Don't get your hopes up too much, I told myself. When I walked into the kidding pen, I checked the tummy on the kid who had nursed the night before, and it was quite full. I felt Alex's udder, and it was loose. We had been milking her, so I knew it would have been much more full if the kid had not been nursing.

I sat down and put the other buckling in front of Alex's udder and opened his mouth, just as I'd done for his brother. He also began suckling immediately! I was over the moon excited, and the song "Miracle's Happen" from Princess Diaries immediately began playing in my head. Indeed, if anyone had asked me if this was possible, I would have said that I never say never, but I wouldn't get my hopes up about kids starting to nurse at eight or nine days of age.

Alex has continued to improve, and we recently moved her and her bucklings into a nursery pen with two other does and their kids, and Alex immediately decided she should be the queen of this little herd. She took on the other two does in quite the head butting match and won.

We have no  plans to ever breed her again, as I'm not going to trust a visual exam to determine whether or not she'd be able to give birth vaginally in the future. Her last lactation lasted three years, and she is six years old now, so we will just continue to milk her and see how long she can go.

Farewell, Sadie

Sadie in 2013 with her triplet does

The vet called today shortly before noon to say that she had consulted with a couple of reproductive specialists, and they said that if Sadie has not responded to the first two shots of prostaglandin, there is really no point in making her miserable with a third. If her cervix is not dilating, it's because of scar tissue or adhesions, and it's not going to dilate.

Sadie and her sister as kids in 2012

They did not recommend draining the uterus surgically because if it was full of pus, they would not be able to keep it from the abdominal cavity, so it would cause more problems. They did not recommend draining it through the cervix with a trochar because it would leave her with less than a five percent chance of ever carrying a pregnancy to term, and the odds are high that the uterus would simply fill with fluid again.

Sadie in 2013

They said that if her uterus continued to fill with fluid, it would eventually cause her to be unable to poop, and she was already straining to have a bowel movement. The uterus could eventually rupture, if she lived long enough. She's had a catheter in her for as long as she's been there, so that her bladder won't overfill again, but they couldn't send her home with a catheter.

In the end, our options came down to euthanasia or a hysterectomy, which would cost $1000, assuming nothing went wrong, which could drive up the price even more. Apparently doing a hysterectomy on a goat is more complicated than on dogs and cats. When I left her there on Thursday, the estimate was $700-800, and the bill is already $1100.

Sadie's udder as a 2 year old

It's been a horrible few hours, thinking about what to do. Hearing the estimate for a hysterectomy came as quite a shock. Last week, they had said it probably would be a few hundred dollars. A thousand dollars is about three times as much as what I'd been preparing myself for. I just can't justify spending $1000 to keep her alive, knowing that she would "only" be a pet afterwards. I already have four retired does, as well as an 8-year-old that has never been bred because she never grew big enough. Still, I hate the idea of essentially putting a price tag on her life. If I had all the money in the world, I would have easily said to do the hysterectomy. But I can't live my life as if I have money I don't have. And what would I do if next week another animal were to get injured or become ill? I have to try to maintain some sort of fiscal responsibility. Still, I hate it.

It makes it even worse for me that she's spent the last six days of her life alone in a strange place with strangers who've been poking her with needles and a catheter. I justified leaving her there because I thought they could make her well, and she'd be able to come home and be with her babies again. Sadie was such a shy kid, but after she freshened, she warmed up to me and the rest of the humans. I always told her that she could trust us, and as I was leaving her at the vet hospital last week, I couldn't help but think that she felt betrayed. If only I could have explained to her what was happening ...

Sadie in labor last month

So, I called the vet a little while ago and told her to euthanize Sadie. It was one of those horrible moments in life. I hated it. But I also hated that she had endured six more days of suffering because we were hoping to save her. They said the prostaglandin injections might not work, but in my head, I was thinking that they had to work. She would go into heat. Her cervix would open, and her uterus would drain. It sounded so simple. Surely, Sadie would be coming home again.

But then I think that I understand why farmers tend to be such spiritual people. Maybe it's to protect our sanity, but we have to believe that everything works out for the best. Perhaps Sadie was only with us for four years because that's what was meant to be. She's given me all that I was meant to have from her. I just realized that I have her son from last year. It sounds silly, but I kept forgetting to advertise him. Maybe there was a reason for that. This year, the person who had wanted two of Sadie's doelings wound up having to cancel after I had already marked them as sold on the website, and Sadie got sick before I had a chance to update the website stating that they were available.

One of Sadie's daughters born last month that we'll be keeping

Still, it's always hard to lose a good goat, and Sadie was great. She was very generous about giving me plenty of doe kids, starting with triplet does when she was only a year old. In four years, she gave us 14 kids, which included a remarkable 11 does! She also had outstanding parasite resistance, having never had a dewormer in her life. And until this year, she never had any birthing problems, even spitting out a couple of breech kids without help as a first freshening yearling. I'm so grateful to have three of her kids here, especially since I never had the foresight to consciously keep any of them, thinking that I had plenty of time since she was only four years old. Although we won't see her sweet face again, she left behind a great legacy in her kids. Perhaps that's the best thing that any of us -- human or goat -- can ever hope for, regardless of how many years we live.

Some decisions just suck

As much as I love my homesteading lifestyle, there are times when it just sucks. Now is one of those times.

Last week, our intern told me that Sadie was crying out when she was peeing. I went to the barn and watched her, and within a couple of minutes, she was squatting and screaming, and only a few drops of pee came out. I was puzzled as I have never heard of a doe having a urinary stone. Then life interrupted, and I forgot about her until the next day.

I called the University of Illinois veterinary clinic, and of course they suggested I bring her in, which I did. They ran a lot of urine and blood tests, which all came back normal, which meant she did not have an infection. She also did not have a fever. The interesting thing is that whenever anyone put pressure on her bladder -- whether under her belly or on her sides -- pee would squirt out of her like a water hose on high! They did an ultrasound, which showed an abnormal uterus, and Sadie had given birth five weeks earlier. They hypothesized about the contents of the uterus, and I learned a lot listening to their brainstorming. But they said we could learn more about the contents of the uterus by doing a CT scan. It would be about $450, and our bill was already up to a couple hundred. Even though the solution might lie in a hysterectomy, which would mean she could never have kids again, I agreed to do the test.

It showed that Sadie's uterus was filled with fluid. They're fairly sure that it's not pus because of the color, so it's probably blood or some other type of fluid. There are only two ways to get the fluid out. One is to give her a shot of prostaglandin, which should hopefully cause her to go into heat, which would open her cervix so it could drain. The other way to drain her uterus is surgically -- make a small incision and suction it out. However, will it fill up again?

I opted for the prostaglandin, and they gave her an injection on Saturday. As of Monday, she had not come into heat, so they gave her another injection at a higher dose. As of Tuesday afternoon, she had not come into heat, so they're planning to give her another injection today on Wednesday. But they said we should probably start thinking about surgical options. Other than draining her uterus, which may not work long term, a complete hysterectomy is the best way to eliminate the problem.

But then I'll have a dairy goat who can never get pregnant again. So, we could milk her until she dried up from this lactation, and then she would be worthless as a dairy goat. The bill is already up to $1100. Surgery would be another few hundred.

This is when you realize that being a grown up is not as awesome as you thought it was going to be when you were 12. This is when you wish that you had enough money that a couple thousand dollars didn't mean anything to you. This is when life sucks.

I want Sadie to be able to pee on her own, and to come home, and to continue nursing her three beautiful doelings that have already grown so big and strong during their first five weeks on their mama's milk. We've been trying to feed them milk from the other does with a bottle, and some feedings go better than others. Sometimes they seem to get it, and sometimes they have no clue. They're only getting about 50 percent as much as they should every day. Even though they're eating hay and grain, their immune systems are still very immature, and with the stress of losing their mama, I'm very concerned that I'll soon be seeing poopy butts caused by coccidiosis.

What if we pay for the surgery, but when Sadie comes home, she no longer remembers her kids and won't let them nurse? What if the stress of all this causes her milk to dry up? Or, what if she dies in spite of the surgery -- or because of it?

I suck as a business person. A good business person would have said to euthanize last week as soon as this became complicated. A good business person doesn't lose site of the bottom line. But I am clearly not a good business person. The bill is sitting at $1100 now, and I still can't give up on her, at least not today. She is still at the vet hospital, and I'm still hopeful that another shot of prostaglandin will do the trick. But what will I do if the prostaglandin doesn't work? I know what a good business person would do. I know what my heart wants me to do. But I honestly don't know what I will do.

Our new greenhouse!

A greenhouse or potting shed has been on my to do list for at least a decade. And this year, it finally got done! However, Mike and I didn't do this ourselves.

Sarah, our new garden partner, and her brother Pat, did the framing, then they had some help from our current intern Stefanie with putting it all together.

Finally, Mike did help with putting on the front and back, as well as the door and windows, which were some of the more challenging aspects. Cutting corrugated plastic at an angle is tricky business.

We still need to put shelving inside, but otherwise it's done.

Sarah will be starting seedlings next week, so the greenhouse will be put to work very soon!

If you'd like to build your own greenhouse like this, here is the plan we used, although we put plywood and siding on the bottom, rather than metal. We had some left-over siding from when we built our house, so we wanted to use that. We were also happy to be able to repurpose the door.