Notes from the pasture: goat escapes, small harvests, and the ordinary days that make up life at The Missing Triplet.
The Spring I Brought Home a Snake
July 12, 2026
This past spring, I went on what can only be described as an animal adoption spree. Apparently, once you begin making room for one more creature, your definition of “one more” becomes dangerously flexible.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I decided it was a good idea to confront both my fear and my utter disgust of snakes by bringing home a ball python. Her name became Juneau, and she was beautifully unique — patterned in warm browns, cream, and bright white like someone had painted her by hand.
I wish I could say two months with Juneau transformed me into a devoted snake person. It did not. But fostering her taught me that fear can soften when curiosity gets a little room, and that caring well for an animal does not require pretending she belongs with you forever.
We fostered Juneau for two months before I found her a home with people who genuinely adored her. That was the right ending: Juneau found her people, and I proved to myself that I could move past the first shudder long enough to help her get there.
Where the Leash Meets the Pasture
May 28, 2026
People ask me how service dog training and farm life fit together, and the honest answer is: they don't just fit together — they're the same skill set wearing different boots.
Both require you to show up at the same time every day whether you feel like it or not. Both reward consistency over intensity. You don't train a dog in one dramatic session, and you don't build a farm in one heroic weekend. You feed at six. You check the fence at seven. You practice the down-stay while the goats are yelling about nothing, and eventually the dog learns that the yelling is just weather.
On the farm, Eliza's training isn't separate from the chores — it's woven into them. The morning check becomes a loose-leash walk. The evening feeding becomes a proofing exercise for stay and settle. The guinea fowl that lose their minds at sundown become her desensitization training, whether I planned it that way or not.
And the farm teaches her things I never could. A goat doesn't care about her credentials. A rooster doesn't wait for her to be ready. She has to read the room — the pasture, the coop, the barn aisle — and decide what's a threat and what's just Tuesday.
That's the real overlap. Farming and service dog work both come down to the same thing: paying attention. To the animals. To the weather. To the small shifts in behavior that tell you something is wrong before anything goes wrong. You learn to watch, and you learn to trust what you see.
Eliza is teaching me that. The farm is teaching me that. And most days, I'm just trying to keep up with both of them.
Eliza, Reporting for Duty
March 19, 2026
Eliza is still in training — training for life, really — as my personal medical alert dog. She started as a puppy who fit in two hands, and she's growing into a steady partner who goes everywhere I go.
I've studied dogs my entire childhood, and I've trained and rehabilitated every dog I've owned since 2011. So when it came time to raise a service dog, I knew what I was signing up for: the long, unglamorous, treats-in-every-pocket kind of work.
Having a service dog on a farm is its own thing. Eliza is learning to read me, but she's also learning to read a coop full of chickens and a pasture full of opinions. By default, she's become my personal bodyguard — positioned between me and the baby chicks, unfazed by the barking guinea fowl, calm when something small and feathered launches itself at my boots.
She's not finished yet. But then again, neither am I.
Why I Became an Ex-YouTuber Turned FarmHer
February 5, 2026
For years, I built a life in front of a camera. Lighting, retakes, captions, comment sections — the whole choreography.
Then one morning a rooster crowed louder than my notifications, and I realized I hadn't recorded anything in three years(!). I'd been outside. Hands in dirt. Buckets in both arms. Faith in my pocket.
This is the part of the story where I stop performing and start showing up — for my family, for the animals, for the version of me that used to over-explain everything on camera.
If you've been waiting for a sign to slow down, consider this it. The light is worse out here. The story is better.
How Racism Bought Our Dream Home
January 2, 2026
This year felt like walking a tightrope held up by a clothespin—and most days I'm not sure how I kept getting back up again.
Joy and grief showed up together and refused to take turns. I cried so much my eyes literally burned.
We were in three major car accidents back to back. Our only vehicle was totalled.
What we thought was a routine sick visit turned into rushing Noah to the children's hospital. He had double pneumonia for three weeks. Watching your child struggle to breathe every day changes you in ways you'll never comprehend.
I flushed my ring after paperwork revealed a truth I never went looking for. It broke me inside out. I didn't recognise the man I married…so, we separated.
I've never felt so removed from my own life.
We stopped going to church. I screamed at God over and over again on the kitchen floor.
I gave up on my appearance. I was drowning above ground. After months of hurting myself in ways I didn't understand, I was diagnosed with major depression disorder.
I became an advocate for Suicide Prevention Month—an understanding I didn't want, but now carry with intention.
Endless love to my lifelong friend @btarazona_ for the long talks, prayers, and checking on me when I couldn't check on myself.
Somehow, I'm still here for another birthday.
No big lesson, no clear finish line. Just one foot in front of the other—choosing to keep going.
