Hello, 2015! Best year ever!

When I wrote my new year post a year ago, I thought that 2013 had been the worst year ever because both of my in-laws died, as well as several animals that were very special to me. Little did I know that I had one heck of a roller coaster ride ahead of me in 2014!

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease in January, but the good news was, I didn't have thyroid cancer. In February, I was diagnosed with reflux, and in March, asthma. I had my first cold in five years and my first flu in about ten. Towards the end of March I also hurt my knee and learned that I already had grade four arthritis. The good news was that I didn't have bone cancer, which they thought they saw when they did the original x-ray. I spent April on crutches and in a wheelchair, and then I fell again in June. Ultimately my knee was swollen for about six months. But I'm getting ahead of things chronologically as I wound up being diagnosed with celiac in April and having my gall bladder removed in May. The good news was that I didn't have reflux! All of those digestive issues had just been caused by my misbehaving gall bladder. More good news was that after six weeks of thinking I had celiac, I learned that I didn't. However, I am gluten intolerant. Heading into fall, I started having problems with sciatica, which means there are some days when I can hardly walk because of nerve pain in my lower back that makes it impossible for me to put weight on my right leg without excruciating pain.

I spent a lot of time laying around feeling sorry for myself and feeling worthless. When my knee was so swollen that I couldn't bend it, I couldn't even work at my desk. Plus it was a major production to get myself down the stairs in the morning and up the stairs in the evening. I've had knee problems my whole life, so I knew my knees wouldn't last forever, but I was hoping they'd last longer than this. And the thyroid stuff hit me out of left field.

After I got through my little pity party, however, I did a bunch of reading on my various problems challenges, and I am working really hard to overcome them. I eliminated wheat, potatoes, and soy from my diet, and I'll be starting an elimination diet once all of my holiday house guests leave so that I can figure out what else is bothering me because my digestive system is still not firing on all cylinders. I've also started taking a rather long list of supplements ... glucosamine and chondroitin for my arthritis; fish oil and systemic enzymes for my sciatica; and selenium, plus vitamin E, D, B12, and zinc for the thyroid. And just for good measure, I've even thrown in a multi-vitamin and a calcium-magnesium supplement.

The really great news is that I've cut my TPO antibodies in half! (Those are the antibodies that my body is producing to attack my thyroid.) My TPO antibody level is now down to 75, which is still high but amazing because I actually have not met anyone with Hashimoto's who has a level that low. Research shows that when your level is below 100, your thyroid will probably continue to work for another ten years, so that is very, very good news. The goal is to get the antibodies down to less than 30, although closer to zero would be even better, so I still have more work to be done, but things are definitely looking up!

On another positive note, I've more than doubled my vitamin D level and by doing regular blood work and playing around with supplement dosages, I'm learning exactly how much I need to take to keep the level steady and to increase it even more, which is actually what I need to do.

In family news, the nest is now officially empty. Our son went away to college to finish his theater degree, and our youngest daughter graduated from the University of Illinois with honors and is now at Colorado State University working on her Ph.D. in chemical biology. Even though she lived in Urbana while attending U of I, we knew we could call her when we needed her to come home and help with something on the weekend. My oldest is loving her electrical engineering job in Ft. Worth, TX, but we have been able to see her several times this year, so I can't complain too much.

As for the farm, we are downsizing with some of the animals. I sold seven milk goats, bringing the number of milkers down from 21 to only 14. But then when I made up my breeding list this fall, I realized I was going to have five first fresheners, so that's going to bring us back to 19 milkers! Argh! I have decided to limit the number of milkers to 12, so that means more hard choices after goats freshen in the spring. I just couldn't bring myself to sell any more this past fall.

I will also be selling the Shetland sheep except maybe Winnie and Kewanee, a set of two-year-old twins that were bottlefed. I know I've said this before, but we really will do it this time. For the first time in my life, I'm actually thinking about taking animals to an auction. I haven't kept up with registrations on them since my daughters left home, so most of them are not registered, which might be making them harder to sell. I've posted a few ads on Facebook, but so far, no takers.

I am most excited about our plans to start incubator farms and form partnerships in 2015. I've come to realize that I can't count on my body to always be capable of doing farm chores, so in order to keep Antiquity Oaks running as a farm, we need to start reaching out to others. Regardless of how bad my knees or back get, I will still be able to help with the mental tasks involved in running a farm. And as I said to a friend recently, it just seems selfish to turn this 32 acres into our own little private park when it could be put to good use growing organic food for people.

Even though I felt like I was being punched it the gut over and over again in 2014, I think that most of it is turning out okay. On the bright side, I've gained a lot of empathy for people who need to change their diet, as I am now one of them. Although it has been hard at times, I've also discovered some amazing foods! Brownies made with flour are not even close to being the best brownies out there. When they are made with almond butter or black beans as the main ingredient, they are totally amazing! And I don't know if I ever would have tried them if I could still eat wheat.

So, I am really looking forward to 2015 and honestly think it will be the best year ever. But this blog post is already long enough, so I won't bore you with all of the things on my to-do list for the next 12 months. I will, however, make this resolution -- to blog at least twice every week this year, so you'll get to hear about all of those thing as they happen (or don't happen).

Happy New Year!

A couple of farmers went to a party ...

Beauty and Beau (one month old) on November 5

Why has it taken me so long to tell you about our new milk cow Beauty and her calf Beau? Maybe because I still have a hard time believing that the first Saturday in October we went to a party at another farm, and before the night was over, I had my heart set on this beautiful Jersey cow and her one-week-old bull calf. I've spent a lot of time thinking, I can't believe I bought a cow on impulse! and wondering if I'd made a huge mistake. So, here is the story ...

PrairiErth Farm in Atlanta, IL, was having a harvest festival on October 4, and Mike and I decided to go. We had to do chores before heading up there, so we arrived when the party was already in full swing. We parked our car and were walking past the barn on our way to the hoop house where all the food was set out on tables, and I heard a voice yell, "They're going to milk the cow. If anybody wants to see them milk the cow, come on over to the barn!"

I knew Dave the farmer had a couple of Jerseys, but you would have thought that I had never seen a cow in my life. I got so excited and told Mike that we had to go see the cow! We walked into the barn, and a few minutes later, Dave came into the barn with a bucket, and his 12-year-old son started to milk Beauty the Jersey while her sweet little calf walked around visiting with everyone. Then Dave asked if any of the children wanted to milk the cow, and I stood there watching in amazement as children walked up to the cow and were yanking on her teats while she just stood there quietly chewing her cud. I looked at Mike and squealed like a 5-year-old, "I want that cow!" Mike just smiled at me. "Really!" I said, "I want that cow! Can you believe that? She's letting those children try to milk her!" I went on and on as Mike simply smiled. Then I said, "Honey, you have to milk her!" And he just kept smiling, but he did eventually walk over there and squeeze her teats a few times while I said, "Isn't she easy to milk?" Mike just kept smiling and said, "Yes, she is."

Dave said that Beauty had been sold, but she calved about three weeks early, and the buyer backed out of the deal. The calf was perfectly healthy, but it was a bull calf, and Dave figures that the buyer had been hoping for a heifer calf. Anyway, Beauty and the calf were for sale. I was thrilled that the calf was a bull because we sold our cattle more than a year ago, and there is very little beef left in our freezer, and I've been wondering what I'd do when we ran out completely. I haven't purchased or eaten commercial beef since 1989, and I'm not going to start now.

October 11, the day after we brought them home

I talked to Dave about buying the cow and her calf, but I don't think he completely believed I was interested. But, seriously, how many people come to a party and decide to buy a cow? Mike was probably hoping I was just joking. But I had a terrible time falling asleep that night because I kept thinking about Beauty. I woke up early and went downstairs and made a list of pros and cons for buying Beauty. The "pro" list outnumbered the "con" list by a lot. One of the advantages of buying her would be that she would obviously be great for teaching people to milk. Another thing is that we could make cheese with cow milk. If she produced more milk than we needed, we could get a calf from a dairy and raise it for beef. We could also feed extra milk to the pigs. The only down side is that we'd have to milk her, but on the pro side, it would take less time to milk one cow than several goats. Of course, the goats are going nowhere because I do still love my goat cheese, but I have always loved Jersey cream and butter. I love goat milk, but it doesn't have that "buttery" flavor that Jersey milk does.

So, after a couple of days of deliberation and discussions with Mike, I called Dave and told him that we wanted to buy Beauty. He sounded surprised and happy. He said he had hoped she would become a family milk cow rather than going to a dairy.

It's been two and a half months now, and we are enjoying her and her calf. She has learned to go into the barn every night. In fact, she gets downright loud when the sun is going down and we are not there to let her in. She heads straight to her stall, as soon as we open the door for her. And then I give her a hug every night as she starts to munch on her hay. We are enjoying her milk, which are using for yogurt and cheddar.

Beau is growing up so fast, and he is starting to get darker like his mama. Here's a picture of him on Dec. 10. We separate him from Beauty every night and milk her in the morning. The two of them are together in the pasture during the day, so he can nurse as much as he wants during that time. He will probably become beef in late summer as the grass starts to slow down. And at some point, we'll have Beauty artificially inseminated so she'll have another calf.

We're looking for a few good farmers

A few days ago I noticed that a farm house three miles from us had become a pile of rubble, and last night, it was a fire. A very old farming couple lived there. I met the woman once when I knocked on her door to tell her that one of her pigs had escaped and was in the field across the road. She moved slowly and looked like she was at least in her seventies. I felt terrible not being able to offer to help her get the pig back to his pen, but we were on our way to an appointment. I don't know what happened to the couple, but their house is now ashes.

According to the government, the average age of farmers in this country is almost 60. That's absurd for an average working age! That is the average age of retirement for many professions. Yet I know plenty of farmers in their 70s. Since we moved out here in 2002, we have seen many farm houses torn down -- at least one every year or two -- along the roads that we travel most commonly between our house and the Interstate, which is only 12 miles away. That's actually a very high percentage of the houses being torn down because there wasn't more than one house every half a mile or so. Now there are even less. Because most of Illinois has been turned into corn and soybean country, a single farmer can farm a couple thousand acres, so the number of farmers keeps shrinking.

But the problem is that we don't eat corn and soybeans. Although some of the corn and soybeans are used for livestock feed, a lot of it is sent to a lab and turned into non-edible things, such as ethanol and styrofoam packing peanuts (corn) and biodiesel (soybeans), as well as non-nutritive food additives, such as corn syrup, corn starch, soy lecithin, and things you can't pronounce like sodium carboxymethylcellulose. Back in the 1950s, Illinois was the fifth largest vegetable producing state in the nation. Today we import 95% of our food from other states and other countries. We have some of the best, most fertile land in the country, yet if something happened to our transportation system tomorrow, most of the state would be starving within days. Even if that never happens, the cost of transportation is going to keep climbing, and someday it will be considered absurd to eat lettuce from California or asparagus from South America. This food system is not sustainable.

Illinois needs people to grow food for people living in Illinois. The problem is that getting started in farming traditionally has not been like getting started in any other profession. You had to inherit a farm. And with today's land prices, that isn't going to change any time soon. But there is an alternative. Incubator farms are starting to pop up for those who want to farm but don't have the cash to buy their own land. I've actually been thinking about this for a few years. Why don't we form a partnership with people who want to farm? We'll provide the land, equipment, tools, etc, and they provide the labor, and we split the profits. I didn't actually do anything to find potential incubator farmers, though, because I didn't have any faith in my idea. I thought, who'd want to do that? Well, as it turns out, lots of people want to do that!

In his book, Fields of Farmers, Joel Salatin said he is doing exactly that. The reason that his farm has grown so large in recent years is because he has former interns staying on at Polyface as partners. Joel now rents several farms within a 30 minute radius of his farm so that new farmers can work them. When I attended the Acres USA conference last December in Springfield, IL, there was another farmer there who was also doing the same thing. He did a session on the nuts and bolts of having new farmer-partners working on his farm.

With our children grown and no longer living at home, we have 32 acres here (and another 67 acres that I need to tell you about soon) that is too much for us to utilize to its fullest potential. It seems wasteful and somewhat stingy to simply use this as my oversized park when it could be used to grow organic food for people while giving new farmers the experience they need to be able to eventually go to a bank to get a business loan to buy their own farm.

So, that's the plan for 2015 and moving forward. Earlier this year, we created Antiquity Oaks LLC, and our main goal moving forward is to be a farm that educates new and aspiring farmers, whether they want to have a market garden, grow mushrooms, produce honey or maple syrup, or raise animals for meat, milk, or fiber. In addition to having classes and internship programs, we will have partnership opportunities for those with education and experience who want to start their own farming business.

If you know anyone who is looking for that type of opportunity, feel free to give them our contact information!

Trimming the boar's tusks

(or Vet Visit, Part 2)

A couple of days before the vet was supposed to come over to do the goat ultrasounds, someone on one of the pig Facebook groups posted a picture of a large gash in her leg. It was caused by her boar turning his head at the wrong moment, and his tusk sliced through her boot, her thick sock, and into her leg! Then several other people talked about similar experiences. All of them had sweet, docile American Guinea Hogs who just happened to turn their head at the wrong moment!

Although Henry's tusks looked scary, I never thought he would ever hurt one of us with them. He is so incredibly docile! But after seeing those pictures and hearing several other people say the same thing had happened to them, I decided that I was incredibly lucky to already have an appointment with the vet who was coming to the farm in a couple of days! So, I emailed and asked if she could trim Henry's tusks when she was here.

The vet said we needed to put him in a small space where he couldn't get away, and she could more easily work with him. Confine? Everyone around here is free range! After wringing our hands and saying to each other that we didn't have such a place on our farm, it finally clicked! We put him in the horse trailer! Then, while we were waiting for the vet to arrive, I tried to get a good picture of his big scary tusks.

I was disappointed that these pictures did not do justice to the tusks!

But here is a picture of the vet sawing away at one of his tusks ... look at the size of that bad boy! It's even longer than I'd realized!

Yep, that could have done some damage if he'd turned his head at the wrong moment. I was surprised at the dust that was created as she was sawing on it.

Once the tusk was cut off, she used a dremel to smooth off the sharp edges. And in case you are wondering, Henry was sedated for this. He may be sweet and docile, but I didn't expect him to lay there and let someone cut off his tusks. It's hard enough for me to sit in a dentist's chair and let them work on my teeth, and I know they're doing something that's ultimately good for me.

The vet said Henry's tusks shouldn't need to be trimmed again for a couple of years. While she was here, I also mentioned to her that several people online suggested simply giving a boar a few beers (one beer per 100 pounds, to be exact) and then using bolt cutters to snip off the tusks. She said the problem with bolt cutters is that the tooth will sometimes wind up cracking all of the way down to the root, so it's really better to use the obstetrical wire to cut the tusk. Although she didn't comment on the use of beer as a pig sedative, I don't really want to risk my hands on it, so we will be calling her back next time Henry needs a trim.

Vet visit

We don't have a full-time large animal vet anywhere near us, which is why I always wind up driving the two hours to the University of Illinois vet clinic in emergencies. However, there is a traveling vet that comes through here, and although it would be $140 to have her drive here just for us, if I can coordinate her visit with another nearby farm (or two or three), we can reduce that cost considerably. And that's what happened a couple of weeks ago. A farmer friend of mine was having the vet come to her place to trim her boar's tusks, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to get an ultrasound on a goat that was being sold to Texas to make sure she was pregnant.

So, here's Marie on the milk stand, enjoying some grain, with no idea that the vet is about to put that cold ultrasound probe on her belly. It went totally fine though -- after Marie's initial shock -- and we learned that she was pregnant with at least two bouncy kids! So, Marie is now in her new home down in Texas.

Since the vet was going to be here, I also decided to get an ultrasound on Vera. She was two months pregnant and already huge. I have only ever had three goats look pregnant at two months -- Vera when she had quintuplets last year, and her mother Coco, the two times she had quints!

If memory serves, this is just a picture of amniotic fluid, but that means the goat is pregnant! Unfortunately, with Vera being two months into her pregnancy already, the vet couldn't get a good view of all the kids at once. She could see three at one time, but she was hesitant to say that there were more than that because it's tough to know when you're seeing the same kid or a different one each time you move the probe a little. So, I guess we'll just have to be surprised at the end of January when Vera kids. If she does have five in there again, I just hope that they come shooting out as easily as they did this last kidding season. Mike was home alone and said he could hardly get them dried off fast enough.

Tagging pigs

Although we've been raising American Guinea Hogs for four years, and we had Tamworths for about six years before that, we've almost always sold them for meat. However, the past couple of months, I've had several people contact me about buying breeding stock. In fact, all of our September piglets have been sold as live piglets to people who want to raise them either for meat or as the beginning of their breeding program. In order to provide positive identification for them, the pigs need to have ear tags, tattoos, or ear notches. I hate ear notches; tattoos can be hard to read; so that leaves us with ear tags. It's the lesser of three evils.

Three piglets were picked up on Saturday, and we needed to put ear tags in them. I really expected it to be about as much fun as a root canal without novocaine. Mike and I discussed whether he or I should hold a pig or be the tagger. I personally didn't think that I was necessarily strong enough to do either. Although most people think of pigs as "fat," the fact is that they are the most concentrated bundle of muscle of any of the animals on the farm. Ultimately we decided that he should hold the pig while I put the tag in the ear.

And I am happy to say that it went much better than anticipated. In fact, it was easier than tattooing goats or tagging sheep. The pigs made a short squeak when the tag went into their ear, but that was it! No thrashing, no non-stop squealing, no drama. It wasn't much harder than using a hole punch in a piece of paper.

And the three little pigs were on their way to their new home!

Livestock Conservancy Conference

Last weekend I attended the Livestock Conservancy's national conference in Austin, TX. Like all of their conferences, the food was amazing! Members donated a variety of delicious pastured meats from heritage animals. Then the lucky chef gets to use that meat in all sorts of creative ways for a breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The meats included Gulf Coast sheep, Red Poll beef, and Large Black pork.

Although food plays a starring role in the conference, the real reason that everyone attends is to learn and network. I presented a half-day workshop on Friday morning about creating value-added products with heritage livestock, and it was a lot of fun. The point of the session was not to tell people how to do things (like spin yarn) but simply to give them an idea of things that could be done and what type of investment would have to be made in terms of learning and and financing. I met some very interesting people at all stages of the farming journey, from those still in the planning stages to those who've been raising livestock for many years. Saturday, I presented a one-hour talk on goats as the centerpiece of a diversified homestead, which includes information on how to actually make things like soap and cheese.

When I wasn't speaking, I attended sessions. During most hours, I was wishing I could be in two places at once! My favorite was a session on silvopasturing pigs -- or, raising pigs in the woods. The speakers were Marc and Lydia Mousseau of Atlanta. If I had met them anywhere else, and they had asked me to guess whether they were pig farmers or the owners of a design firm, I would have totally chosen the latter. However, the correct answer is "both!" I could totally relate to them because they were city slickers like I was 12 years ago!

It was two years ago that Marc became enamored by Ossabaw Island hogs and started talking about raising them on their land outside of Atlanta. Of course, his family thought he was nuts. (Sound familiar?) But as he continued talking about them and even came up with a business plan, they began to realize that he was serious.

Marc talked about the job of building a barn and erecting fencing for the pigs, as well as his agreement with an Atlanta chef who buys all of the pork that is currently being produced. I laughed more than once at his stories, and I filed away a couple of interesting tidbits of information. (1) He buried his fencing eight inches deep to keep the pigs from escaping, (2) If you say "Ossabaw" to Siri, she thinks you're saying "Awesome Bob," so of course, Marc had to name one of his boars "Awesome Bob!" and (3) Ossabaw Island hogs kill and eat coyotes! But they don't eat the tail.

Although Austin was unseasonably cold with temperatures in the 50s, Illinois was much worse! I arrived home to temperatures in the teens, and we had a dusting of snow on Monday evening. Winter seems to be arriving much earlier than normal, and I am definitely not looking forward to it.

Culling pigs

Tomorrow is the day that our last group of yearling pigs will go to the locker for processing, so I have to make my final decision on which gilts to keep for breeding. Yesterday morning I went outside for another one of my visits with the pigs. Although they were not at all friendly a few weeks ago, my little visits have turned most of them around. There is still one pig with a pink nose and two white legs that has made it quite clear that she doesn't want to be friends, so her destiny is sealed. The other four that are still here, however, have grown accustomed to my little visits and enjoy being petted.

This one was the first to roll over for a belly rub, and now I can walk up to her and start petting her, and she just drops herself to the ground and rolls over like this! In addition to winning me over with her sweet personality, she also allowed me to count her teats. She has 13, which means she'll be able to feed a lot of little porkers! One of the other pigs has 14. Two of the others only have 11, which is not good if they have more than 9 piglets. Two teats at the end often don't develop enough for the babies to actually be able to use them effectively, so more teats is better. Julia had 13 babies last year, so these pigs can have a lot! Because the sow lays down, and all of the piglets nurse at the same time, she needs to have enough teats for all of the babies.

In addition to personality and number of teats, I'm also looking at body conformation. The pig in the picture is one of the medium-sized pigs. Unfortunately the one with 14 teats is huge. She has a lot of fat, especially around her jowls, and it makes me wonder if she'll have fertility issues. Overweight animals often do. She has been getting all of the same food as the others, and somehow she wound up weighing a lot more. Since she is bigger, will she have bigger piglets? It might be interesting to keep these two and see if they are different in terms of fertility and how many piglets they are able to raise.

So much to consider, and my deadline is only a few hours away.

A new goal

As we are making the transition from homestead to full-fledged working farm with a strong emphasis on education, I am attending a variety of business seminars, and a couple of days ago, I attended one on managing multiple priorities -- and boy, do I have multiple priorities! It seems like I go through every day doing whatever is urgently demanding my attention, whether it is a goat in heat that needs to be bred or milk that needs to be turned into cheese, which leaves little time for things that need to be done but are not urgent, such as finishing the staircase or putting tile around our bathtub. (Yeah, we moved in 10 years ago.)

"Goals" was one of the many topics covered in the six hour seminar, and although I am no stranger to goals, sometimes we need to be reminded to actually apply what we know! Even though something may be important, it may not get done because you don't have a goal. So, I've decided to set a goal of posting on here at least once a week. I'd spent so many years just posting as soon as something happened that I never thought I needed to set a goal to post on here. But as other things have taken over my life, I find that blogging on here gets pushed to the back burner.

I have a goal of posting on my Thrifty Homesteader blog three times a week, and I usually meet it. Because that is a "how to" kind of blog, I feel a commitment to produce information to help people learn to homestead or live a greener life. But, I've always looked at this blog as my homesteading journal, and feeling that no one really "needs" to read this stuff, it gets put off day after day. I suppose I think of this as my fun blog and Thrifty Homesteader as my work blog. Even if that is the case, I should still make a habit of blogging here regularly because we all need to remember to incorporate fun into our lives, right?

So, rather than thinking that I'm going to write lots of individual blog posts on all of the little things happening around the homestead, here are a few highlights. You see that rose up there? That was really taken on our farm two weeks ago! And the same bush is still blooming, even though we've had two nights with below freezing temperatures. There are currently three blooms on that bush!

I planted lettuce in August, so we now have lots of big, beautiful heads of lettuce!

And that means we can have lots of salad! I especially love an entirely homegrown and homemade Cobb salad made with our chicken, bacon, jack cheese, boiled eggs, and lettuce!

Here is a picture of the butter I made with the milk from our new Jersey cow, which we got in early October. I am still hoping to tell you how we got her because it's a funny story, but for now, you get to see the butter. We've also made yogurt and gouda with her milk so far. No verdict on the gouda yet because it has to age, but the yogurt was a lot thinner than my goat milk yogurt, which would be fine for smoothies, but when it comes to fresh eating, I prefer the goat milk yogurt.

We currently have the goats grazing around our house, so here's Lizzie! We do rotational grazing, and now is the end of the grazing season, so we're letting the goats have every last bit of greenery, including everything in our yard.

Next weekend I'm heading down to Texas for the Livestock Conservancy conference. If any of you are there, say hi!

So, there you have it ... what I've been up to the last few weeks and where I'm heading. And I now have a goal to post on here at least once a week. It may not be perfect, but it'll be something.

Pigs and cows and sciatica, oh my!

There are 365 days in a year and 24 hours in every day, so why did a 150-pound pig decide that NOW was the time to get itself completely tangled up in Electronet? After yesterday's 7-hour barn cleaning marathon, I can now say I truly feel your pain if you've ever suffered from sciatica. The last time I was walking, holding my back, moaning, groaning, and breathing like this was 21 years ago when I was giving birth to my last child! I was simultaneously crying in pain and laughing at the complete absurdity of the situation! Getting a pig out of Electronet in my condition was quite a challenge, but it is free -- and I bet it will never go near Electronet again.

my Facebook status yesterday

I have no doubt this would all be quite hilarious if I were watching it in a movie. But I'm not. I'm living it. But let's start at the beginning ... (It's okay if you laugh. I promise I won't get mad.)

I've had sciatic pain off and on for the past year. When I was mistakenly diagnosed with reflux earlier this year, I started sleeping on a wedge, which did nothing for my digestive problems but after the first night of sleeping on the wedge, I realized that my low back pain was gone! So, I thought I had learned how to deal with it. On Monday someone came out to help clean up the kidding barn and get it ready for kidding season, which will start in December. Because my back has been bothering me a little, I made a point of not doing any heavy lifting. I did all of the gross little things ... like cleaning off the shelves behind the kidding stalls, cleaning the store room, removing fly strips, and other tedious but important jobs. (Now I really wish I had taken a picture! It looks great!) Other than my knee feeling a little more swollen than normal, I was feeling fine. We worked from noon to seven, then I came inside and cooked dinner. By 9 p.m., I knew I had a problem, but I figured a good night's rest would take care of it.

Not even close! I woke up yesterday morning wincing in pain every time I moved. I was moving slowly and taking tiny steps. When I came downstairs, the first thing I did was an online search for sciatica. I didn't learn anything terribly helpful, although I found it curious that most of the articles said it is made worse by sitting. Hmm ... mine was always worse from laying down flat, either on my back or stomach. Sitting never seemed to bother it as much. So I figured I'd spend the day sitting in front of the computer, icing my back off and on all day. It was going pretty well until around 2:45 when I suddenly heard a pig squealing non-stop! I limped to the window as quickly as I could manage, as the squealing continued. The pigs are in the front yard cleaning up the acorns and hickory nuts. When I looked to where the squeal was coming from, I saw a pig tangled in the Electronet that was keeping the goats in their area.

"Oh! Good grief! Seriously? Seriously? Today?" I hobbled to the front door and headed outside without even changing my slippers to farm shoes. Having been shocked a couple of times by an electric fence, I knew the pig was truly in distress. And just in case I had any doubts, it was continuing to squeal non-stop. I made my way to the barn as quickly as I could and unplugged the fence charger. The squealing stopped immediately. As I then headed towards the pig, I saw absolutely zero movement. Oh no, it's dead. No, it wouldn't have died at exactly the same second you unplugged the charger. But it's not moving. Why isn't it moving? And so my thoughts spun out of control until I was close enough to see that the pig was blinking its eyes. The whole time I was moving from one end of the front yard to the other, I was also holding my back, taking deep breaths, blowing them out with a loud moan, and occasionally throwing out a swear word for pain control.

When I finally reached the pig, I realized that it had pulled up five of the stakes that held the fence in place. Although I was able to remove one strand of fencing from across the bridge of its snout, I couldn't figure out how exactly it had put itself at the center of this gordian knot. A strand of fencing ran so tightly across its back that I couldn't even slip a finger under it. In my pain-induced fuzzy brain, I had the brilliant idea to pull the pig backwards. Keep in mind that I can't squat because of the arthritis in my knees, and now I can hardly bend my back, so I am bending my knees as far as I can, and I'm trying to bend my body forward at my hips. I foolishly thought that I could simply use my arms to pull the pig backwards. Hey, at least I knew that I wouldn't be able to use my back to pull on it. Of course, the pig wanted nothing to do with me pulling on it -- as if I could actually have moved a 150-pound pig with only my arms!

First I hobbled to the house for a pair of scissors so that I could cut the strand of fencing. Even though we probably own seven pairs, there was not a single pair that I could easily find. Thanks to the fact that, more than once, I've caught my husband using goat hoof trimmers to cut and strip electrical wire, I realized that they were probably an even better idea than scissors, which probably would not have worked anyway. So, off I hobbled towards the barn, huffing and puffing, moaning and groaning, and holding my back the whole way. We always keep an old pair of hoof trimmers in the side of a hay stack to use for cutting baling twine, so they were easy to find. And then I made the same arduous journey back across the yard, looking like a woman in hard labor, minus the obligatory baby bump out front.

I finally reached the pig, who now had enough strength to squeal in anticipation of the fact that it knew I was going to touch it again. This was not one of the friendlier pigs who actually enjoys getting a scratch behind the ears and a back massage -- and even if it was, it probably would not have been after being tangled in an electric fence and being shocked for a couple of minutes. I slowly began my descent into the semi-squat, hinged bending at the hips until I could reach the wire across the pig's back. Because I couldn't even get my finger under it, I pushed the tip of hoof trimmers under it as gently and slowly as I could so as not to accidentally stab the pig. The moment I heard the snap of the hoof trimmers cutting through the fence strand, the pig bolted, running as fast a pig could possible run, across the yard, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder without slowing down.

When I finally went back inside, I complained on Facebook. I knew I would still need to do evening chores a couple hours later, but that seemed like nothing after dealing with the pig fiasco. Mike had done double-duty on a lot of things that morning because he knew I was having trouble, so I only needed to provide hay for a few animals and bring the goats and cows into the barn. Simple enough, right?

I'd love to say that I had nothing but positive thoughts throughout evening chores, but that wouldn't be true. I had all sorts of visions of goats running amok, dancing on hay stacks, and gorging themselves on the pig grain. You see, I had to move them from their pasture, across the front yard, and through the whole barn to get to their stalls. I also had to move the milk cow and her calf into the barn. Milk cow? What milk cow? Oh, right, I haven't told you about Beauty and her calf Beau yet. They've been here for almost two weeks now. I promise I'll tell you about them in the next couple of days!

When I went outside to do chores, Beauty mooed at me from the back door of the barn, so I thought I should take advantage of the fact that she was already at the door and let her in as soon as I had hay and water in all of the stalls. It took me awhile because I couldn't lift the five-gallon buckets, so had to use the two-gallon. She was standing a little too close to the door for me to open it enough for her to walk right in, so I took a couple of steps out of the door and pulled on her halter to get her to walk around the door and come inside. It was the first time I'd ever tried that. We've always hooked a lead rope to her halter before, but I'd forgotten to grab one and was budgeting my steps. She actually cooperated quite nicely and was heading into the barn. I had not thought to close the door to the goat stall, so of course, that's where she went. Part of me wanted to just leave her in there, but the thought of a goat laying in a cow pie changed my mind. Once again, I pulled on her halter and she followed me into the aisle and then into her stall. I closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief.

Beau, however, was a different story. He was running back and forth through the barn. At only four weeks, he is a sweet little thing, but he is rapidly approaching the size of a Great Dane. We've started putting him in a separate stall overnight so that we can milk Beauty in the morning. Porter the English shepherd helps me move the goats into and out of the barn, and he knew I was trying to get Beau to go towards his stall. He was trying to help me by nipping at (but never actually biting) Beau's hind legs. Beau seemed to know that Porter wasn't going to actually bite him, and was completely ignoring him! It was actually rather humorous seeing Porter's reaction. He would nip at Beau's heels, and then he would look at me with what I swear was a confused look on his face! Porter seemed to be saying to me, I'm telling him to move, but he won't move! Why won't he move? Beau's back reaches to the middle of my thighs, so I got behind him and started to push my thighs against his back end. If he went to turn one way or the other, I'd just push on his ribs with my hand (doing the odd semi-squatting, hinged hip bending) to make him go straight. Finally we made our way to his stall, and after staring at it for a few seconds -- just long enough to make me worry -- he ran inside.

And then there were the goats, which actually went extremely well, thanks to Porter's help. Even though he and I have taken only one herding class -- not a series of classes, but one, three-hour intro class -- we've learned to muddle through and work together on moving the goats from the barn to the pasture in the morning and back into the barn at night. Since we use rotational grazing, the pasture does not always abut the barn, so there is an almost infinite number of challenges that could occur daily. However, I also think that the goats have been trained as much as the dog.

If a movie were ever made about Porter, he would be voiced by Eddie Murphy. His personality is so much like a lot of the Eddie Murphy characters who think that all of the women love them and that they are oh-so-tough with their adversaries. And he's a little too quick to declare success and start to celebrate. Moving the goats into the barn was flawless, but then Porter came running back out, jumping jubilantly into the air, as I slowly hobbled towards the barn so that I could close the stall door. I could see that some of the goats were coming back out of their stall and into the main part of the barn. I yelled, "No! Porter, go get the goats!" As soon as I screamed the words, the goats all turned on their heels and headed back into their stall. Then Porter turned away from me and ran to the door of their stall, tail wagging wildly, looking up at me and saying in that Eddie Murphy voice, "Hey! What you worried about? I got it under control! See!"

I closed the stall door as Porter again began jumping into the air declaring success at once again putting the goats in their place. As I continued my labored breathing and walking slowly towards the house, he would run ahead, then turn and run back to ask me what's taking so long. But we eventually made it back to the house, and I was very happy to call it a day.

Many thanks to PR intern Brooke Poling who took the pig pictures when she was here on Sunday.