Back To The Future

On February 6th, life changed. One second, one mistake, and everything is topsy-turvy yet again. Our chickens are gone, our land is for sale, and we're learning to navigate the medical and disability system. But, far more challenging, Mutt is learning to live and farm as an amputee. On February 6th, an accidental gunshot took his left arm, all the way to his shoulder.

A slow and frightening winter rescue proved a few things to us. Our lack of winter road access is not ok. The level of snow we deal with here is not ok. And the yearly taxes are really not ok. Our plan was, and is, for our land and livestock to pay their own bills, so we only need a bit of income from odd jobs to support our modest lifestyle. At $200/month in property taxes alone, that isn't going to happen where we are, in the most expensive state in the nation. So our land has been listed, the clean-up and staging process has begun, and we're shopping for land down south, in a beautiful and inexpensive area. We'll be living rougher than we are now, starting over from the ground up, but with more time and money to work with. After hitting the bottom of hope when the accident happened, we are now climbing back up.

In the meantime, our life is dominated by phone calls to government agencies, disability forms, OT appointments, and fighting to get Mutt's new arm covered by our insurance. That is my full time job, while Mutt's work is to recover and learn to live again as a three-legged dog. He cooks, he cleans, he does everything he needs to do for himself. Learning to handle Junebug, on the other hand, is a work in progress. He's taking a crash course in what my days are like as a stay-at-home dad.

Tomorrow Mutt will step into our house for the first time since the accident happened. In fact, we'll probably be spending the night there. Hopefully it will be a healing experience for both of us, and will start us towards letting go of what happened, and letting go of one set of roots in favor of a new one.