week 11: three buggo years
this week on the little dream farm
I’ve got three (good) little bits for you today!
Three Years with the Buggos!
It’s a special day! Somehow…we blinked and today marks three whole years since our precious donkeys, Molly-Max and Dominic, graced our lives.
For those of you who’ve been around since then, you know they walked up our driveway and onto our farm and then we navigated a very long and challenging season of trying to rehabilitate Maxy from really poor health and bad hooves. Thankfully, we did this all with so much help and love and support and cheering on and donations of snacks and the things we needed to take care of them from so many of you (we can never say thank you enough…thank you!), and with the wonderful care team we assembled with our Vet and our Farrier.
Normally, I’d re-share with you photos and videos from back in those early days, but I personally don’t have any desire to go back to that time this year. Those days were so hard, both for Molly-Max and for us, and we have come so very far. Instead, I want to stay focused on today and what’s good.
Christmas Day 2024 The buggos had their hooves trimmed just last week and our farrier Shawn said they both looked great. Thankfully, their corral recently dried up pretty good and we don’t have to worry about too much mud for them so far this season—that’s always a worry for us as it can cause thrush in their hooves, especially after a fresh trimming. So! All good there. Then Chris got to work a few days ago doing a full cleaning of their run-in shed. He scooped up and composted all the old wood chips and laid down a fresh new bedding and peppered that with agricultural lime, which helps keep down bacteria. While the weather has been warming up, they’ve been spending tons of time out in their pasture soaking up the sun. Dominic has been hard at work running out all his winter zoomies and keeping Molly-Max fully pestered like any good little brother will do.
If you’d like to go back and reminisce, be my guest! Here are three videos that’ll get you all in your feels: This One | This One | This One
Fresh Air and Flowing Water
After he felt comfortable enough that I could handle it, Chris got me out of the house yesterday for a half-day adventure and a nice long hike in the woods to a beautiful waterfall.
First hike of 2025 and hopefully the first of many more! All in a single morning we started in New York, drove through the mountains in Vermont, beelined through New Hampshire and then arrived in Massachusetts for our hike of the Tully Trail and Royalston Falls. The snow has all mostly melted here on the farm, but it was piled high up in the mountains in Vermont and the trails we hiked were mostly still snow and ice covered. It made for a challenging hike but it was so beautiful, so quiet, so serene, and so worth the tricky footing for a view of the waterfalls, still mostly covered in ice while the water loudly rushed beneath it.
Love that we got to see the semi-frozen falls and would love to come back again in the fall to see all the colors on the trees! Thankfully, I tolerated the hike just fine with my back and I think it did even more good for my mental wellbeing—it felt so good to get outside, to get our heart rates going, to get our legs pumping on the hills, and to be in nature on a crisp morning with virtually no one around (we saw two people and one doggo the entire time we were there).
Following our hike we stopped in Keene, NH at Terra Nova Cafe for an amazing breakfast—they have the best food and they roast the most perfect coffee which you can order online here. Chris and I like the Dark French Roast, the Half-Caf, and the Decaf since they use Swiss water process to make their decaf rather than extracting the caffeine with harsh chemicals like most big coffee makers do.
Next we hopped over to Farmhouse Market in Wilmington, VT and picked up a bunch of goodies to make ourselves a nice dinner today. Finally, we popped into Starfire Bakery, also in Wilmington, so Chris could get a slice of their heavenly pizza just as it was coming out of the oven.
Big thanks to Chris who planned out a wonderful adventure for the two of us so we could have a really great day!More Like Myself
Every day I’m feeling more and more like myself again. Someone said to me, “I hope you just wake up one day and feel a whole lot better.” I laughed…because it doesn’t work quite like that.
One of the Colonels I worked with last year always used to say, “Hope is not a COA.” COA is course of action, and I love that saying and find myself thinking about it often.
I’m not just hoping I heal. I’ve been hard at work to give my body the very best chance to fully heal. Here are five non-negotiable things I’ve been doing religiously to go from basically being bedridden in January to hiking in the snowy woods in mid-March following four bulging thoracic discs:
A visual representation of how I know I'm feeling better. January versus March.
Sleep:Chris and I take sleep seriously all the time, but this required a bit of a different focus. Rather than my usual 7-8 hours of sleep, I’ve been getting a solid 10 hours every night, without the cats. I’ve been sleeping in the guest room with the door closed so that I can sleep flat on my back as my docs recommended, without the weight of three cats on me at any given time, and I’m resting far more than normal in order to allow my body to heal while I sleep.
Hydration:I can’t stand drinking cold water in the winter so each day I fill a huge ball jar with water and allow that to sit out on the counter to get to room temp for the next day. Keeping the discs hydrated is important all the time for every human, but especially when trying to reduce the inflammation so they can heal and go back into their proper place, I’ve been drinking tons of water daily to help that along.
Nourishment:We eat well all the time but I’ve had to make a lot of dietary changes for my Hashimoto’s symptoms, too. For the last two months I’ve removed all gluten, grains, dairy, eggs, legumes, and added sugar from what I eat daily, and in a few months I’ll reintroduce likely everything but gluten…I’m still getting further testing and bloodwork on this and will shift things as I have those results. I’ve been eating lots of grass-fed and pastured meats, I’ve been making and sipping on tons of bone broth with all the bones of the things I make. I’ve been sautéing tons of different colored veggies and eating a variety of fruit. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of food to heal our bodies. I’m looking to teach more on this in the coming months.
Movement
I went from barely being able to get out of bed to hardly being able to tolerate standing to having lots of pain while cooking or doing simple household chores to being able to tolerate a little more walking to being able to stand most of the day while I work to being able to get outside every day this week for a long walk. The physical therapy I’m doing is really helping…my two PTs do Graston Technique scraping on my ribs and back as well as spinal decompression, muscle stimulation with the electric stimulation machine, massage, and then they have me doing a whole host of exercises with bands, bodyweight, and machines in order to strengthen all the muscles around the upper part of my spine into my neck. I’ve got ten weeks left of PT and I’m working my behind off to keep up with it!
MindsetMy mindset was completely in the trash at the start of this year. Couple the severe pain with Hashi’s symptoms with the news of losing my job just before Christmas with it being the dead of winter with a few other crappy life things coming to a head all at the same time and I really lost my way there for a few weeks. All of my tools…everything I practice and teach…felt like I’d had total amnesia and forgotten everything I know to grasp onto. But the fog has mostly lifted and the pain letting up a few weeks ago allowed me to see a small crack where the light was wanting so badly to get in…and I so badly was wanting to let it. Through all of this I’ve been reminded of something I’ve been teaching for years—that the work we do on ourselves throughout our life is not to “fix” ourselves so that we always think, act, respond, and behave perfectly. Instead, it’s so that we can navigate both the good times and the bad knowing that no matter what comes, we’re built to handle it. In January my goal was “just find some relief.” Now, my sights are set not just on healing, but on coming back stronger than ever before.
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Hi Sarah. So happy to read your note and see that you're really coming back into yourself now. I feel like it is showing through in your words as well. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us, especially when its garnered from enduring tough times. Its so valuable! I loved going back to watch the videos of Molly-Max, my heart swelled up to see how far you have all come together. I remember you sharing video of the buggos when you first went to visit them before they came home to the Little Dream Farm. As the song in one of the videos says, "don't worry, good things will come". So true xxx
It’s great to hear you are starting to feel like your old self, Sarah! With the switch to Daylight Savings Time a lot of people start to feel better mentally too. Seasonal affective disorder is a real thing. Good old sunshine will help.
Those buggos sure did hit the lottery when they were adopted by you and Chris. They and BK and of course Mister B are my favorite rescue stories.
Here’s to feeling better! Cheers!