Butters

This is Butters.

Butters is a wonderful little one year old red Min-Pin. He is neutered and up to date on all his shots and worming. He crates, rides and leads easily, plus he is housbroken. As with any small dog, you must pay attention to his potty signals. He is good with kids and plays well with other dogs and cats.

Butters needs to find a new home because he likes chickens way too much, and we cannot have a dog here that kills our egg layers.

We need to get a small adoption fee for him, since we've done all his neutering, etc. and he can come back here always, in case he does not work out. Please write to me if you would like to apply as his forever home.

Thank you-

The Secret

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The Four Seasons

Grease, Sugar, Salt and Starch-

In the south, we are brought up with the use of lard or Crisco and white flour. The old Crisco commercial showed it all coming back after frying except for one tablespoon, which is deceptive because chicken also adds its' own fats to the blend, so you are not getting the real picture. These days, milk fat, or butter fat, is what we watch and consume. Lot's of calcium that way.

What I really focus on is salt and sugar. Not so much starch beacuse we just don't use it around the house- bread is a hearty blend of whole grains and sprouted things, so you have a good nutritious loaf, but we just don't eat a lot of it, prefering to get fiber elsewhere.

OTOH, sugar is a demon. Being a 50's baby, the baby formulas of the day contained an ingredient called 'dextri-maltos'. Today that is 'malto-dextrin.' Both are fancy name for SUGAR! This is nothing our parents had any knowledge of- in reality, it was all to sell products and increase big corporate powers. What we see now is the result, and it does seem the pendulum is swinging back the other way- many fast food places are seeing the light for healthier foods.

Since the boomers of the 50's are aging, we are seeing massive diabetes in our US population- as working mothers went back to work there in the 50's and 60's, babies were put on packaged foods with added salt and sugar. This has become a recipie for disaster in the new millenium.

It takes about 2-3 weeks to clear ones pallet of salt so the taste of food changes and actually becomes more sensitive. It takes far longer to clear ones pallet of sugar, if it ever really becomes clear- a candida (yeast) infection tends to accompany a sugar addiction, and many sources of dis-ease go along with that- Epstein Barr, fibromyalgia, etc.

It gets to the point that a person must be ever vigilant of what they buy in the store- or grow their own garden. IMHO, store food is dead food, so growing a garden or buying locally grown vegetables are the only way to nourish your body.

If you look at the labels on packaged foods, you will see very high sodium in soups- 38% or more! To me, 1% is high. Soft drinks are another bugaboo- even though they have between 1%-3% sodium, the phosphoric acid in them can melt meat if left there- and we puit this in our bodies! Phosphoric acid causes arthritis-like symptoms as well as gout-like symptoms in the ankles so badly that walking is impossible. I won't even go there with aspartame- which is linked to MS symptoms and brain damage.

Living with Spina Bifida

When I was little, mom tells me that she would see me limping and call my attention to it- of course, I would tell her I wasn't limping, I was doing my kid thing and had no point of reference. Later on at 16, I had what the diet Dr. termed 'bursitis' in my left hip while I was made to take those infernal amphetamines for weight loss (another story for another time- not a good one) and also placed me on Bute, a very powerful anti-inflamatory.

It wasn't until I was working for the City of Kingsport and injured my back that we x-rayed the lower spine and found Spina Bifida Occulta- a non-fused vertabrae- that actually posed no problem at the time, but as I have aged I now have some serious problems with it.

Well, actually, in looking back, the SBO did cause problems as a child- constipation, urinary tract infections, legs falling asleep, one leg shorter than the other, etc. All the usual symptoms one finds in researching SBO. I guess no one put two and two together, even with pediatric x-rays not catching it .

Right now, at age 50, with a weight problem, menopause, heart issues due to the amphetamines, spinal degeneration in the lumbar and cervical areas, and the actual vertabrae itself, each day presents a new challenge. The Dr. put me on neutrontin, which is a good nerve med, but it makes me 'stoopid'. I tend to only take it as I really need it, which is less than 2x a week.

I also learned to put my hips back in line with my spine several years ago by self manipulation- laying on my back, flexing my ankles and feet to place pressure on my spine similar to a sort of soft traction and leaning into it so the pelvis and spine would 'pop!' and the pain would go away for a day. My husband helps me get my upper back in line and I generally stay in less pain than I would have otherwise.

The big issue is that I farm like this. And I have learned my limitations. When we had a small house fire here in 2000, I was coming out of a big healing crisis and the smoke caused me to have pleurisy, so my health was set back a few years. This last summer of 2006 was the first summer that I can remember for a long time that I was not knocked down in the middle of the day so I had to sleep for several hours when the ozone and heat index go up.

The key for me has been to focus on what I can do, rather than what I cannot do.

When I was no longer able to carry a 50 lb. bag of feed over my shoulder, we had several options: my daughter helps me as she also has goats, we also purchased a cart to move bags around and even though I can still 'buck' hay into the truck and unload it from the truck, it has become very difficult for me to carry it place to place, hence the flow and construction of the new shed for hay storage. We set up 'self waterers' in all the goat areas and use big round bales of hay 75% of the time, rather than square bales. The tractor has been a God-send so that we can get a lot of tasks done quickly on our own. All in all, working smarter, not harder.

Still, there are big challenges- keeping goat numbers down is the biggest one. We have a farm worker that comes in a couple of times a week to help with up keep and such, plus construction and removal. When the new shed is up and running fully, the water line piped in so the sink works, I'll be able to milk by machine rather than bending over to milk by hand in a very tiring position.

Coming through some recent family drama has also put me ahead of my physical challenges by helping me to see who is real- and who is not. And having the understanding that it was never mine to begin with, even though as a child I had no control over it. There is one major relationship that I want to have healed more than anything else though....

Life is good. Working through my sore back and left side several times a day helps me be thankful for all that I have because so many have so much less than I do- and I am not speaking of money or wealth. One can be wealthy and have lots of friends and still have no life. I have a life that means something, not just to me, but also I've recently found out a lot of other folks think so too.

I guess I am doing something right.