This Summer I deleted all social media off my phone. It was a bold move, especially considering I’m a small business owner who knows just how important marketing is to making a living. But, I’m also a mom who, in just a few short days, will be sending her last baby to Kindergarten. For the sake of my soul and my sanity, I needed to commit to a Summer that minimized multitasking and maximized being present in our children’s lives—lives which, up to this point, had been punctuated by the blood, sweat, and tears (so many tears) of running this dairy. I owed it to them, and myself, to reduce the amount of pressured and frantic work that is inevitable when you try to do all.the.things on a computer that fits in your pocket.

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Living with invisible, chronic pain is emotionally isolating and physically debilitating and oh man does it do a number on your sense of self-worth. But, every time I sit down to make something I know I am filling a need in my village—a leather hatchet sheath, a quiver for arrows, a case for our big two-man saw...having these things makes us more nimble and more prepared in the backcountry, which, let’s face it, is my favorite place in the whole world, and a place I will always head to even if I’m in pain.

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To be clear, I’m not complaining about using a mostly free service to communicate with my audience, I’m complaining, or rather, lamenting, that the rules of engagement keep changing. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, MailChimp, Squarespace, Square, Podcasts…

So many platforms to manage. And that’s not even scratching the surface of “what I should be doing.”

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And so, this Holiday Season, even though things are different and hard (oh goodness they’re so much harder) I’m making a commitment to myself to really stop what I’m doing and tune in to my humans. I feel fairly confident in saying, at the end of the year, they won’t remember all the things they missed out on.

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The next time you feel slighted or wronged, maybe, just maybe, that’s not the intention of the person you’re interacting with.

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Each and every time I survive less than optimum circumstances I am reminded just how strong the human spirit is.

One of the best parts of being human is our ability to truly relish and enjoy delicious and beautiful things. Ridiculously fabulous goat cheese from the milk of our own goats is one of them (hey Lost Peacock), horses in the mountains is another, camping with your family and best friends is kind of the best, and snuggling with my husband and kids with the rain fly off under the stars ranks pretty dang high up there, too.

And of course, of course, of course, who could forget:

Champagne in the woods.

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It feels good to ask our bodies to do hard things and then actually do it. It feels good to be strong and capable, that’s why young children thrive in the woods…their bodies want to move and they want to move in really cool, interesting ways. The woods provide spaces where they can stretch their muscles (physical, creative, and intellectual) and it provides a very reward based system. There is no better treasure then getting to roast your own marshmallow on a stick you spent half an hour hunting for.

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The long and short of it is. I needed a mental break from the current state of our world. What started as trying to keep my wits about me while constantly pivoting to run a profitable micro goat dairy in the midst of a pandemic morphed into something entirely different.

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Dairying at its core is not an evil thing. Dairying is one of the oldest relationships man shares with animals, and, when managed with the animal in mind, it can be a beautiful thing. Our goal, as dairy farmers, is to always put our animals at the center of every decision we make. I know we’re not doing everything perfectly, but we are operating in a way that is constantly asking questions, constantly seeking to improve, and constantly strives for Eden.

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you choose to eat any animal products there was a big huge mess involved in its production. And while you can choose not to think about it, once you start distancing yourself from the realities of birth you’ll find it’s just as easy to distance yourself from the reality of that animal’s entire life. It suddenly seems okay that an animal is confined, with no access to open sky or pasture, because you’ve stopped thinking of these creatures as living, breathing entities.

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