There’s a condition that inflicts some of us and I can only describe as Barnheart. Barnheart is a sharp, targeted, depression that inflicts certain people (myself being one of them) as harsh and ugly as a steak knife being shoved into an uncooked turkey. It’s not recognized by professionals or psychoanalysts (yet), but it’s only a matter of time before it’s a household diagnose. Hear me out. It goes like this:

Barnheart is that sudden overcast feeling that hits you while at work or in the middle of the grocery store checkout line. It’s unequivocally knowing you want to be a farmer — and for whatever personal circumstances — cannot be one just yet. So there you are, heartsick and confused in the passing lane, wondering why you cannot stop thinking about heritage livestock and electric fences. Do not be afraid. You have what I have. You are not alone.

You are suffering from Barnheart.

It’s a dreamer’s disease: a mix of hope, determination, and grit. Specifically targeted at those of us who wish to god we were outside with our flocks, feed bags, or harnesses and instead are sitting in front of a computer screens. When a severe attack hits, it’s all you can do to sit still. The room gets smaller, your mind wanders, and you are overcome with the desire to be tagging cattle ears or feeding pigs instead of taking conference calls. People at the water cooler will stare if you say these things aloud. If this happens, just segue into sports and you’ll be fine.

The symptoms are mild at first. You start glancing around the internet at homesteading forums and cheese making supply shops on your lunch break. You go home after work and instead of turning on the television — you bake a pie and read about chicken coop plans. Then some how, somewhere, along the way — you realize you are happiest when in your garden or collecting eggs. When this happens, man oh man, it’s all down hill from there. When you accept the only way to a fulfilling life requires tractor attachments and a septic system, it’s too late. You’ve already been infected. If you even suspect this, you may have early-onset Barnheart.

But do not panic, my dear friends. Our rural ennui has a cure! It’s a self-medication that that can only be administered by direct, tangible, and intentional actions. If you find yourself overcome with the longings of Barnheart, simply step outside; get some fresh air, and breathe. Go back to your desk and finish your tasks knowing that tonight you’ll take notes on spring garden plans and start perusing those seed catalogs. Usually, simple, small actions in direction of your own farm can be the remedy. In worst-case scenarios you might find yourself resorting to extreme measures. These situations call for things like a day called in sick to do nothing but garden, muck out chicken coops, collect fresh eggs and bake fresh bread. While that may seem drastic, understand this is a disease of inaction, darling. It hits us the hardest when we are farthest from our dreams. So to fight it we must simply have faith that some day 3:47 p.m. will mean grabbing a saddle instead of a spreadsheet. Believing this is even possible is halfway to healthy. I am a high-functioning sufferer of Barnheart. I can keep a day job, long as I know my night job involves livestock.

Barnheart is a condition that needs smells and touch and crisp air to heal. If you find yourself suffering from such things, make plans to visit an orchard, dairy farm, or pick up that beat guitar. Busy hands will get you on the mend. Small measures, strong convictions, good coffee, and kind dogs will see you through. I am certain of these things.

So when you find yourself sitting in your office, school, or café chair and your mind wanders to a life of personal freedom, know that feeling is our collective disease. If you can almost taste the bitter smells of manure and hay in the air and feel the sun on your bare arms, even on the subway, you are one of us and have hope for recovery. Like us, you try and straighten up in your ergonomic desk chair but really you want to be reclining in the bed of a pickup truck. We get that.

And hey, do not lose the faith or fret about the current circumstances. Everything changes. And if you need to stand in the light of an old barn to lift your spirits, perhaps some day you will. Every day. For some, surely this is the only cure.

We’ll get there. In the meantime, let us just take comfort in knowing we’re not alone. And maybe take turns standing up and admitting we have a problem.

Hello. My name is Jenna. And I have Barnheart.

OK. It’s the holiday season — with all that entails, which is almost every minute of your waking life. But if you're feeling like time stands still and is just one big red bow, you might want to take some time out and peruse all of the Modern Homesteading articles on the MOTHER EARTH NEWS website.

There are hundreds of articles — in chronological order — on all things related to homesteading: personal blogs, all about chickens, fencing, Country Lore tips, tools, machines and so much more. Make note of the ones you find the most compelling. Then, when you need a few minutes to be transported into the future, just read a few. You might discover a new winter game to play with your family, the perfect design for a garden tool shed or better ways to tend the woodstove. It would take you months to read them all. Enjoy!

We're not from around here. I know you see us all the time, but trust me, we're from someplace else. We may have lived our whole lives right next door to you, but we left quite some time ago. We found another place and it suits us just fine.

It's not far or hard to get to. Chances are you pass it all the time when you're driving too fast to work or throwing another frozen dinner in the shopping cart. You can't get to us that way. We aren't there.

We're the ones in the next aisle buying yeast, flour, sugar and coffee. We buy provisions, not groceries. We learned that food tastes better when you grow it yourself. We started with just a few recipes then learned to chew at a trot, and now the idea of Lunchables and drive-through hamburgers makes us tilt our heads a little. We're not above them, not by a long shot, we just don't have those where we're from. Or maybe we did and forgot about them? I can't remember. It's easy to forget about such things when you hop the fence to go where we went. There just isn't a lot of shrink-wrapped circular ham there.

We're from another place. It's just like yours but the naps are better. We came for a bunch of different reasons but we sort of set up shop in the same community. It's not a physical location, of course. (It's much better than that.) It's a place in our actions, our decisions, our conversations, our hope. It's a place in our hobbies, our skills, our secret desire to know what a warm egg feels like in lanolin-wet palms. It doesn't matter where we came from or who we were before, this new place kind of took us all in and showed us how to calm the hell down. What? You're confused? Oh, well, you probably saw us there and just didn't realize it. Remember when we didn't pick up the phone (even after twenty rings) because we were in the garden? Or that time we gave up a weekend to make a chicken coop? Or last Saturday when we spent the whole day at that indoor farmer's market talking to the people at the wool booth we'd never met before, but felt like we knew while you kept telling us the movie was starting in thirty minutes. ... That's where we left to go. Sorry we missed the previews, we were talking to our neighbors.

You can spot us pretty easily. Our men aren't afraid of facial hair and our women have been known to grab goats by the horns. Our children go barefoot, so do we. We're the quieter ones, in the corner, feet propped up on a second-hand coffee table in a fourth-hand wool sweater. That's one of us, right over there. See him? The one with the guitar slung over his back, and the black dog following his bike? See him now? He's the one with the saddle bags on the back wheel overflowing with a half bushel of tomatoes. No, he's not a tomatoes fetishist, he's canning today. He'll be eating fresh organic marinara in January pulled off the larder shelf. He'll let the black dog lick his plate when he's done. Yes, I'm sure. He's from where I'm from. We know our own.

See, where we come from people aren't scared of dirt — not even mildly abashed by it. My people will spend an entire August morning with a potato patch. We'll also spend an entire October night in front of a bonfire with some home brew and guitars. My people know how to darn a sock and bake a loaf of bread. They know how to cast on and be cast away. Sure, we'll join you for dinner in a restaurant, but we'll probably opt for pasta. Where we come from food animals know what sunlight feels like and have felt grass under their hooves. We don't eat the animals from your place. We saw what they saw before they died.

We're not from around here, but you'll see us everywhere. We're walking down the streets of Montreal, Chicago, Seattle and L.A. We're waiting for a taxi on the Lower East Side. We're mucking out the chicken coop, chatting at the farm stand, jumping on the back of our horses and riding the L. We're everywhere and right next to you all the time, but we left that place and now we're gone. None of us are going back. We thought about it. It passed.

HOOOO! You should see this place. Man, it's so beautiful. I mean a Wednesday afternoon at 3:47 is fall-down-the-stairs stunning. We learned to see this. We watched the fireflies come out on the porch and missed the new CSI. Truthfully, we barely look at the television anymore. It's a side effect of the new place — there's just so much to do and we're scared if we let ourselves get distracted we'll miss the fireflies. We can only take so much tragedy, you see.

And hey, this place we went to — it's yours too. To be perfectly honest we're getting a little tired waiting for you to show up. Yeah, what you heard is true. The work is hard and the hours long, but I promise it's the best quiche you'll ever taste and the coffee is wicked good. When you're ready we'll show you how to hop the fence like we did. It starts with a mason jar or a day-old chick in your palm and the roadmap kind of unfolds from there. Somewhere past the cloth diapers and the raw milk we're hanging out, yes there, over past the used trucks and beat tractors. See the bikes and carts along the barn? Keep going and you'll find us.

We know when you start coming to our place you'll get it. You won't want to go either. And hey, we'll wait, because we've got another saddle in the barn. We planted an extra row of beans. We put aside a few spare jars of tomato sauce and let the hens know there's more breakfasts on the way. We'll make room. There's always a place for you at the table.

(And just between you and me, if you want to get on the black dog's good side, let him lick your plate.)

When I graduated from Kutztown in 2005, my first post-college job was in Knoxville, Tenn. I moved there by myself to work for a television network's website. I rented the bottom floor of an old boarding house in a historic district called Fourth & Gill. This was my old bedroom in said apartment. I laughed when I came across this photo because I'm pretty sure that old place could fit two of my present cabins inside it. Maybe three. It feels like ages ago. A past life.

This picture was taken the day I brought Jazz home, which was in July of that same summer. I was alone two weeks in the world before I adopted him. They were an awful two weeks. Women of a certain disposition should not be alone in a new city without a good dog. They feel awkward and pointless without a leash in their hands in public — but give them a large, kind dog and they are sirens. They can get by without a good man just fine, but never without a good dog.

I am of that disposition.

I look at this picture and can't help but smile, tilt my head, and raise an eyebrow. Back then all I wanted was to be a designer. I wanted a board position in my AIGA chapter. I wanted to be out in Market Square with my dog. Jazz, by the way, was never intended to be on snow. He was a southern city pet. Sure, he might pack in the Cumberlands with me, but he wasn't going to be a sled dog ...

Little did I know 18 months later I'd be in a farmhouse in Northern Idaho with him, another Siberian, and a sled parked in the garage. That all happened because of a cove in the Smoky Mountains, a night with fireflies at an abandoned camp, and a jump from a waterfall where a young man died the following day. Those are all separate and complicated stories, but they are why I'm writing you from a small cabin in a New England hollow. They are the alchemy that created the hope you know as Cold Antler Farm. (Which, if you're new to this blog, hasn't actually happened yet. Welcome to the ride.)

Life can change fast. It doesn't really change any other way.

Anyway, I thought this snapshot from a past life might give some comfort to those of you who dream of goats and chickens and a cabin in the woods but are presently sifting through take-out menus in your current metropolis. Please remember, It was just a few years ago I had one dog in a city apartment. Now I'm in this beautiful mess.

Tomorrow I'll visit a brewery and probably come home wanting to make my own beer. Sunday, Steve and I are going to slaughter an angry rooster I raised out of the palm of my hand. Right now I'm going to go outside and close the coop door before the rain comes. If you wish you too were closing a coop door you can take a deep breath and rest easy tonight. I promise if it's something you really want — it'll happen. You'll find a way because you must. And when it does happen, be ready — because it'll come fast. Life doesn't happen any other way. At least not the parts worth living.

Read more from Jenna at Cold Antler Farm

Photo by Jenna Woginrich

I've been hurt by this farm. Really hurt. I've been bitten, butted, cut, scarred, and brought to tears from pain, stress and exhaustion. This happens over and over and I'm always alone. There are things I won't blog about because I don't want my mother to worry. There are things that happen that terrify me.

This year was the hardest yet. I planted my largest garden ever, raised the most animals, and took on more work and personal projects than any sane human being should. Now that the year is almost over, and the south side of October is days away, I can let out a long sigh and tell you it was all worth it. I found a balance in it all, kept my blinders on, and everything got done. The garden was tilled, weeded, and harvested. The two-week-old goat kid grew up into a spit-fire. The young birds are almost full-sized chickens now and the rabbit doe is due to bear kits any night. Yes, the hive was lost. And yes, I failed the sheepdog I once called my own, but you'll have this from time to time. And you and I don't have enough nights to list my faults. There are many, some are awful. Trust me.

If you read this blog and find it overly positive, dramatic, or analytical: that's because writing about my choices is my daily therapy. I don't see a shrink—I write to 40,000. Sharing my stories and photos on this blog is like a long exhalation. I depend on the people who read this because in the shower I lose count of the cuts and bruises and I want to know they belong to something bigger than my body. All things considered, I am quite small.

Some nights I barely fall asleep, isomniatic from worrying about the delicate balance that is my work life, family life and farm life. I am so grateful for Jazz, my old dog, who looks at me every day like the wise bodhisattva that he is and I will never be. A good dog can walk up to you, slowly, one paw in front of the other, and sit down next to you with great stillness. I feel him lean into me and I realize I'm not the only animal on this farm. I am never alone and it is bigger than us both. He rests and lets me scratch behind his ears and only when he knows I understand the world again, pads off. Jazz isn't my child and he isn't my pet either. He's a good dog. Nothing more.

For quite some time now, people without dogs seem broken to me.

I am a farmer without a farm, a shepherd without a sheepdog, and in love with this big, stupid world without a lover. That's fine. Sometimes I foolishly think everything would be better if I had a mortgage, a collie, and a man. But I know myself well enough to see the idiocy in such black-and-white thinking. I know better. We all know better. Maybe these things will come or maybe I'll be hit by space trash tomorrow. It really doesn't matter. It's the wanting that fuels us. It's the hope. That desire to attain the life you want, whatever it is, and to fold your ears back and run into the wind like you're in harness—is life. Cold Antler farm isn't a place—it is an idea. Knowing I want it means I am already home. Actually getting there, is moot.

Read more from Jenna at Cold Antler Farm 

Photo by JOANNA CHATTMAN

There has been much press regarding the bee colony collapse disorder and its effects on agriculture. As a gardener, I also have been concerned about whether the loss of honeybees would have a direct effect on my garden production. A recent article, Successful Beekeeping with Your Own Honeybees, suggests that backyard gardeners might consider keeping a hive of bees to improve the pollination rates in their own yard and in neighboring gardens.

So, I was pleasantly surprised last week to discover a couple dozen bees noisily collecting on the flowering wild arugula that I let go to seed. I actually went to the garden to cut some zinnias for a new kitchen bouquet and had to lean over the arugula flowers to get to the zinnias. I was suddenly aware that my middle was hovering quite close to the buzzers, who seemed not at all concerned by my proximity.

As I stepped back to better view the whole scene, I discovered there were many honeybees and bumblebees on the zinnias as well as the arugula, plus a number of different kinds of butterflies. How exciting! The existence of these pollinators must be partially responsible for the abundance of cucumbers, tomatoes and green beans in my new garden this summer. I plan to start a flower garden in the backyard next spring and that surely will attract more bees, butterflies and other pollinators. 

Have you had an abundance or a dearth of pollinators in your gardens this season? You can share your experiences in the comments section below.

*It has been suggested the phrase, “it’s the bees’ knees,” popular in the 1920s, referred to the pollen collected on the midsection of bees legs, and pollen is a good thing for bees to collect.

Photo by Heidi Hunt

A few weekends ago, I found myself at the equivalent of a livestock tailgate party. I was in the thick of the Schaghticoke Poultry Swap — a shindig that happens every spring. It's quite an event. What started as a small gathering to trade and sell chickens has evolved over the years into a parking lot festival of sales and bartering. Since the swap’s inception, the stock has expanded well beyond chickens. This year, there were ducks, geese, quails, rabbits, lambs, kids and more (I swear I walked past a box of puppies). And while it wasn't on the roster — had someone walked through the fairgrounds parking lot with a horse — I wouldn't have blinked an eye.

I was there with a short list. I needed some new laying hens to replace birds that passed away over the winter, nothing drastic. But I was also there hoping to find a very specific animal. I wanted to drive home with a young goat kid, hopefully a spunky buckling. I had been researching pack goats (goats trained to help carry gear on hiking trips via panniers or saddlebags), and if the stars aligned I planned to take home my own backcountry prodigy that same day.

The circumstances had to be perfect though. I wanted an Alpine, a breed known for its trail-hardiness and loyalty. I also wanted an animal that could be bottle-fed and hand-raised, learning from its earliest stages to follow and depend on me. (A job I thought would be endearing and simple ... not a strict regime of mixing milk replacer at 4:45 a.m. But you pay as you go in this world. And I had plenty of time to learn how much would be involved in my first goat.) Consequences were not on my mind. I was about to buy a goat.  

When I arrived at the goat pen, I melted. I watched the dozen kids and lambs romp in the back of the truck and then leap out into their grass-lined pen. You haven't seen adorable ’til you've seen a pile of two-week-old goats trying to decide who gets to drive the truck home. They butted and leaped, ran circles and bleated up at the sky. They pretty much terrorized the tepid lambs and loved every second of it. I was one of dozens of people hanging around the pen, laughing and smiling, but unlike most gawking at the show, I was shopping.

"Do you have any bucks?" I shouted across the pen to someone with a clipboard, trying to sound like I knew what the hell I was talking about, "I'm looking for a buckling I can raise for draft work?" They didn't point and laugh at me. My confidence grew.

"Just that one!" The man in charge pointed to a small brown pile of hell leaping out of the truck bed, crashing into a random siblings, and then getting up to do it again. Uh oh. Maybe this goat business was a little more than I could handle? After all, my sheep don't mosh for kicks. But it was too late. He noticed a sucker in the crowd, shook his big floppy ears, and looked up at me with his childish brown eyes. This guy was going home. Might as well clear off the front seat of the car.  

I paid the enabler and quickly found out my new adoptee was half Alpine and half Toggenburg. Two breeds known for their mountain savvy. He was mostly brown with white stripes across his face and along his underbelly. I carried him over my shoulder like a toddler. As we made our way back to the car, I heard more than one person say, "Well isn't he cute? Better her than me!" My confidence waned.

I drove back to Cold Antler with new laying hens in the back of the station wagon and a new kid curled up in the front passenger seat. I could not get over how calm and small he was in the car. He slept like a lamb on valium the entire ride. Goats, huh? What could be easier? I named him Finn.

As it turned out, many things are easier. Most things are easier, actually. Since Finn's came to my farm, he's been a delight, but he's also been a nonstop source of trouble and trickiness. There have been the highs of feeding a suckling darling in my lap on the cabin porch during a soft morning rain — and the lows of screaming at him to get out of the lettuce patch when he broke into the garden (several times). Guess what? Goats can learn to climb chain-link fencing. Over the past few weeks, this kid has gnawed on my last nerve, and yet still managed to brighten my worst days. It's hard not to laugh when you watch a young buck jump and twist in the air or headbutt a rooster. The highs are high.

I'm lucky to have a job that lets its employees bring pets to the office. So, while Finn was being bottle-fed we'd show up at the grind together. He'd wait in the car in a big dog crate until lunch and then run around the company lawn, picking play fights with Labradors or doing some landscaping around the building while we ate out on the picnic tables. Welcome to Vermont, where everyday is bring-your-kid-to-work day.

My hope is that Finn's pack training will be the ambassador I need to discover the great outdoors again. Before I had a farm, you couldn't keep me out of hiking trails and National parks. Now, if enough free time from the homestead reveals itself, I'm too whipped to hike. Free time is currently spent in hammocks or playing the banjo on the porch — never on the trail. But that's all going to change, and soon. As summer rolls in, the garden is planted, and all the young animals are maturing, you'll find me out in those Green Mountains from time to time. A girl and her goat, paying as they go.

P.S. If you want to keep track of Finn, stop in anytime at http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com

Photo by Tim Bronson