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I often discount stressful experiences in my life. Like getting rid of our goats. I knew it was stressful, but I didn’t realize how fatigued I would feel afterwards. I am also having trouble sleeping, and have had insomnia three nights in a row. It was so bad on Monday night that I ended up calling in sick to work on Tuesday. This morning I felt depressed and the last thing I wanted to do was go in to work but my boss depends on me quite heavily, so I made myself get up and get dressed, even though I had only four hours sleep.

We had goats for eight years. I wrote at the main ranch blog how we got into goats rather impulsively in February 2003. We didn’t know anything about raw milk, but I soon learned the value of the white gold on a goat list I had joined. From there I first learned about and feared Nourishing Traditions (no, no, I can NEVER restrict my diet). I learned how difficult raw milk was to come by, and how some people were paying $20 a gallon for the nutrient rich liquid. I learned how raw milk is illegal in some states, and I felt very, very fortunate and thankful that we had our very own supply.

My husband loved the milk. He drank at least a quart every day. I happily made yogurt and kefir, mozzarella cheese, and vinegar cheese. I bought cultures for sour cream and aged cheeses. My sister discovered her young children were allergic to cow’s milk, but flourished on our goat’s milk. We sang the praises of our lovely raw goat’s milk. For a short period of time my asthma symptoms disappeared and I was able to stop using my asthma medication. I happily told my asthma/allergy specialist of the good news, and he was intrigued stating that he had grown up in India and they always drank the milk raw.

Unfortunately that only lasted about four months. I began to have trouble breathing again and had to start taking my medication again. I wasn’t about to give up any single food in my diet.

Then my husband was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in January 2009. He had been bleeding for over a year at that point and he finally grew concerned enough to see a doctor, something he hadn’t done in decades. He wanted to rule out cancer. The doctor told him it was U.C. and there was nothing that could be done, aside from using a steroid foam medication, and eating less red meat.

In November of 2009, my husband told me he was beginning to grow weary of the bleeding and he started to look into a vegetarian based diet. I knew this was not the right direction and had heard of this “GAPS Diet” on a traditional foods list I had been on for years. I decided to buy the books and you know what happened after that.

Well, in case you don’t  remember, I’ll refresh your memory. Not only could my husband’s condition be completely reversed and healed, I learned that GAPS could maybe help my depression and fatigue. And oh yeah, maybe I could avoid schizophrenia, a disease my father had recently been diagnosed with. My maternal grandmother had Alzheimer’s the last ten years of her life; maybe I could forego that fate as well?

In the beginning my husband joined me on GAPS, just long enough to learn that our beloved raw goat’s milk was causing most of his digestive distress. With great sadness he gave up the white gold that he loved.

I also learned that our wonderful raw milk exacerbated my asthma symptoms, so I stopped drinking our milk, too.

Then my mom could no longer buy the milk for my sister. Even though I told my mom I’d be willing to give it to them free, my sister stopped asking to have milk delivered (she doesn’t drive and lives more than 60 miles away).

For awhile I gave most of the milk to the chickens. I figured… that much less commercial feed. That much less “vegetable based protein” (read: soy). They loved it.

Then my husband brought home two puppies that had been dumped in the area. Young animals thrive on goat’s milk. We’d actually managed to keep cottontail bunnies alive and that’s supposed to be almost impossible to do. Instead of letting the milk clabber and giving it to the chickens, now it went to the dogs. Hey, at least we didn’t have a big hole on the back of our property where we dumped gallons of milk every day (yes, I knew of someone who did that and threw gallons of milk in that hole very day).

Then we got a horrible squeeze load of hay. The last squeeze load as a matter of fact. It was so stemmy that all the goats were picking through it daintily. Their yard piled up with eighteen inches of stems that they refused to eat. We were having to feed an entire bale of hay daily. One bale should have lasted four days.

All my milkers dropped in their milk production.

I had been getting almost one gallon a day, soon I was getting less than six cups. I was spending time every day milking, and no one was drinking the milk. Yes, the dogs were drinking the milk. But no humans were benefiting. I grew weary. My husband and son had grown weary many years ago. I grew more weary. I started to wear down.

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I want to reintroduce fermented dairy in September.

Now I will have to find a source for raw goat’s milk. Now instead of being a “farmer” I will need to be dependent on a farmer.

That really makes me sad.

I knew about our milk. I knew how it was processed. I knew that my girls did not have subclinical mastitis. I did not feed soy or corn, although they did get oats and barley at milking. I knew how quickly the milk was chilled.

Now I don’t have that option.

Yesterday I watered the chickens and it is difficult to see the empty pens. The goats watched me a lot and talked to me. They greeted me as soon as I walked out the back door onto the porch. They called to me when it was time to be milked.

This morning my goat mentor emailed a response and put into words what I had been unable to, “There is a hole in your life where the goats used to be.”

That brought fresh tears to my eyes.

Today as I arrived at home, it was so quiet. It is still hard to look at the empty pens. It’s hard to explain. It’s like my mind can’t accept that they are gone. There used to be animals there. My milkers. But now they are gone.

I pray I can sleep tonight. I need to make dinner and clean the kitchen. Put my time to good use.

As each day goes by I feel better. And more confident that we made the correct decision. It is just hard right now. And stressful.

Baden, the author of GAPS Guide wrote recently on her blog that she is planning to do another round of intro starting April 11th. She told about how she’s strayed a bit from strict full GAPS and happily was able to do so without much effect until recently when she had a return to some of her old symptoms, one being foot pain, and cravings for non-GAPS foods. So that is some great news in itself, that she has done healing to the point where she could actually eat some “conventional” non-GAPS foods without too much effect, at least for awhile. It was a bit of a wake up call for her, and I have written of doing the same thing with eating fruit and honey [affiliate link]. We forget, or maybe we’re just testing the waters to see if these foods will resume bothering us.

Baden invited her blog followers to join her, and I thought, “Why the heck not? I could use another round of intro myself.” So, I’m going to do intro in April, too. I’m going to start on Friday the 8th.

Baden has outlined her self care plan of what she will do to get ready to do GAPS.

I also found a podcast where Baden discusses GAPS Step-By-Step Guidebook with Lisa Davis from It’s Your Health.

Here’s what I will do to get ready.

• Keep making soup. I’m trying to stay in the habit of making a pot of soup each weekend, and then having enough left over to have at least one cup a day on the days I work.
• Decide if I’m going to order probiotics.
• Make a batch of sauerkraut.
• I would like to read Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride’s revised book. I have not been able to read through the newly revised version yet, and really want to do so. I wish it was available on Kindle!

I am not sure how long I will go through this round of intro. I know not as long as the first time, which was March 2010 and for the entire month. Intro can take as little as seven days to go through the stages, but I ended up taking a month just because I would get stuck on a stage for the days I worked. It was easier to just stay at the stage I was on, than try to figure out what to add next. Also, I never really did intro “perfectly” I skipped ahead on some stages. I will continue to avoid dairy products until September as I planned originally.

What I would like to see from this round of intro:

• I want to see if I feel happier while on intro. I am still having trouble staying off fruit and honey and I feel certain it adds to my not feeling so happy. I want to feel happy!
• I want more energy. I definitely have more energy than I did before I started GAPS, but I would like to see this level rise.

So what about you? Are you on GAPS? Have you done intro? Would you care to join us in April for another round (or maybe finally take the plunge and do intro for the first time).

If you plan to do intro in April and are going to blog about it, I would love to list you here and link to your blog. Just leave me a comment with your URL.

I work from home on Mondays, and I had the foresight to call my boss last night and ask for the day off. I’m very lucky in that I can call at the last minute like that and take a vacation day. Of course I just get farther behind, but my boss told me, “It’ll wait. It’ll be here Tuesday.” She is a good boss.

So we ran out of hay about two weeks ago, and we’ve been buying one bale at a time. I realized when we bought the bale by the squeeze load it removes you from the cost of feeding. Also, buying a squeeze load is typically less expensive. Because the price of gas is rising, everything else that has to be shipped is rising in cost and that includes bales of hay. Our last squeeze load we paid $8.59 a bale. The last bale we bought a few days ago cost $15.00. Since my husband’s business is not making much money right now we were to the point where we would have to use our credit card to buy hay. We do not want to go into debt further.

Buying one bale of hay for $15.00 hurts the pocketbook. My husband kept promising to call the guy who would take our goats off our hands. But then we’d buy another bale of hay. Finally, on Sunday when I was lying down trying to take a nap in preparation for the upcoming week, my phone rang.

It was the guy. He said he thought he had the right number, but did we call him about our goats two weeks ago? He wanted to make sure we hadn’t misplaced his number. I told him we were still planning to call him, but we hadn’t been able to make the call yet. We talked for a minute or two, and I went out to talk to my husband.

We decided to bite the bullet, call the guy back and make the arrangements. So I did.

And they came this morning, and they took our little herd away.

Three milkers, two bucks and four dry does.

They loaded into his livestock hauler well. They didn’t seem afraid. They were all together. They will have a better life. Like I told my husband they were being Hollywood bimbos living here. Goats are livestock. They are meant to breed and have kids, and give milk and some of them are meat on someone’s table eventually. Here the majority of them were lying around sunbathing day after day and picking daintily through the hay to get the best bits. The boys will be put to work, instead of being constantly teased by the smell of sexy goat women just on the other side of the fence.

And of course I had to have insomnia last night. My husband was home for once and we went to bed fairly early. I was probably asleep by 9pm. Our dog wanted out at 11:30pm and that was it. I laid there awake until 12:30am when I finally got up, thinking maybe I was hungry. I had some vegetable soup and spent two hours on the computer. I went back to bed by 2:30 because my alarm was set to go off. I am attempting to track my cycle again, and 2:30 is the magic hour for me. More on that later. I turned off the alarm, and didn’t take my temperature (no point), but went back to bed and laid there until my husband’s alarm went off at 4am. Finally I fell to sleep again, and got up at 8:30am. The man was due to come by at 10am and I wrote up some brief details on all the goats. Their names and dates of birth. Who was the mother. Who was the daughter. Who was the sister. I cried. And I cried some more.

They cooperated with being loaded, and they didn’t seem scared. That means a lot to me. The man said they would take good care of them as I shook his hand. At that the tears started again so I turned and walked away.

I’m not horribly sad, it’s not like I was closely attached to any of the goats. I managed to keep my distance emotionally from them, and they do require time and effort and energy of which I have little. I need to conserve as much as possible in healing. I definitely was not looking forward to summer morning milking at 3:30am.

I’m going to lie down and take a nap now. Thanks for reading.