Healing

I have been healing well.  I am feeling more and more like myself.  A few days ago, I found myself able to read again.  I don't know why I couldn't before.  I couldn't focus my eyes right or something.  Now I am feeling bored and restless when everyone leaves to go to the farm, so I know I am getting much better!

Yesterday I went to the farm with Ethan.  I milked the goats (I think they missed me.   April even let me scratch her back).  I drank several cups of fresh-from-the-goat milk.  It is supposed to have healing properties.  Old folk tradition says you have to drink it within 15 minutes of it leaving the udder - there is an "essence of the goat" that leaves it after that.  The milk does change when it cools down.  It felt like drinking a powerfully good medicine.


It wasn't a really lovely day to be out there - misty and drizzling - but it was nice to be there.  I watched the cows for awhile, and they watched me.  Chestnut is still pregnant, but her udder is filling up. Explorer looked so masculine and powerful standing watching over his cows as they were eating hay.  Every line of him was "dominant bull."  I think he has to be on top of things with all his male progeny always hanging around him and pissing him off.  I tried to refill their kelp and minerals, but Ethan didn't tell me he had left the fences on, so I got an awful electric shock stumbling over the fence. It's not a very friendly place to be sick.

We have so much yuca and sweet potatoes, but I am doing a strict, no-yeast diet after all the antibiotics I had, so I can't eat them yet.  I've been eating a lot of yogurt and pumpkin and lacto-fermented roselle soda.  When I first got home from the hospital and thought about doing the GAPS diet, I looked at the whole bin of pumpkins I have - pumpkins I didn't even plant - they all came up in the pig pen, I felt so grateful.  Like the earth knew, I was going to need all these pumpkins, even if the ones I planted didn't survive.  It was such a gift.

I should mention that this year, desperate for something different, I tried eating the yuca greens.  I had heard you can eat them, so I looked it up.  They have lots of cyanide, so you really have to cook them for a long time (like 45 minutes to an hour!).  But they turned out delicious.  They hold up well to the cooking.  I also tried sweet potato greens for the first time, and they were also really good.  They cook down like spinach, but they are much more substantial when you eat them.  I can see these two vegetables becoming late-summer favorites.  That's always when I crave anything green and leafy.

Today is our 9th anniversary.  I wish I felt better, but I am so glad I am still here to celebrate it!