Finding Out if She Needs A Liver Biopsy

That right there is 2 gallons from Aunt Flossie. That's what happens when you put the calf up and let Mama store her milk overnight. And that is Phyllis, guys. 4 jars, almost 2 2 gallons from Phyllis, 2 gallons from Flossie, 8 jars. Oh my word, it's a 4-gallon milk day! Oh my gosh, that, that's probably too much even for us. So what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do with this great problem? Well, we're gonna give the calves more. We've been milking the hind milk from Aunt Phyllis. That means we milk Phyllis out to induce more milk, we let the calf on, pull her off, get more milk. That's hind milk. Yes, it's more creamy, but I think we're gonna get all the cream we want from these, which means all the butter we want, guys, for the first time.

Yes!

We've also been putting the calves up earlier at 3 instead of 4. I think we'll move it back to 4, so basically give the calves more. We need more ice packs. Well, looks like they do fit. Well, I don't know if they'll fit and put ice in there. These are not frozen. It has to be these thin ice packs. I don't know what we're gonna do. We're gonna have to get a bigger cooler. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get that in there. All right, let's see if that's Good enough. Yep, that worked somehow. Look at these romances. Valentine's Day. Is that for your Valentine? That's to Mama. That's your Valentine, bro. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Treating your mama extra special today, right? Hey, that does. It says I love cats. Come here. Hey, you be my Valentine. You be my Valentine, huh? Will you be my Valentine? Oh good. Doc time, Rebecca. It's been weeks. It's been 4, 5, 6 weeks. And we made changes to improve your liver enzymes. You had some high liver enzymes. Ultimately they said, hey, we got to get you off all supplement— all, and all, like, how would you say it, supplements, meds that you don't absolutely need. Yeah, like your thyroid medicine.

Well, my thyroid is the one that I absolutely need.

Yeah, you can't function without it.

Milk thistle to help with any liver damage.

That's all you've been on? Food has been your medicine. We've been on the GAPS diet. Did we— do we expect the GAPS diet to actually heal liver enzymes, or—

I don't know if it— I do expect the GAPS diet to help my gut.

Yeah, it can't hurt.

Yeah, it's definitely— I feel like it's definitely helping. Um, if— I don't think it's gonna hurt my liver.

Yeah.

I think it's probably gonna help it. Will it heal it? I don't know.

So today we're gonna find out if you're making improvement doing those steps. Do you feel in your heart you've made improvement?

Yes.

Aww.

But I'm scared that I haven't.

Okay. You're afraid to say yes too, because you don't want to disappoint yourself.

I'm afraid to say yes, but I do feel like things are different. I feel like I've had less pain and it's been a lesser pain overall too, so.

Yeah.

But at the same time— I am also realistic about that— this could be longer than—

Yeah.

At all, but—

And if there's no improvement, it could mean more drastic—

I know, I don't know what that's gonna be.

Procedures like biopsies and stuff like that.

I don't want to have a liver biopsy. No.

I really don't. No, so we're gonna hope for the best today. It is what it is. We're just getting information. You feel better. We're just gonna get information.

Yeah, and, um, a viewer reached out to me and she said she had high liver enzymes for like 2 years.

Who?

A viewer.

Okay.

Reached out to me.

Okay.

And talked to me, and I asked— I was able to ask her some questions. And, and so, um, I mean, I don't know how high her levels are. I actually don't even know how high my levels were. I don't want to know because weren't there a couple It was, yeah, it was higher. It was a lot higher than it was in the original, but I was also taking some supplements that could have been aggravating it too, so I'm not taking those supplements anymore. Um, so hopefully, you know, and I've been taking the milk thistle faithfully every day, and so I know that it, um, our dentist also goes to our doctor's office and is into, you know, functional medicine and stuff, and he would just encourage me and said, you know, the liver can heal, don't worry. And, and he said, you know, it could take a while, but it can heal. So I'm hopeful that— hopeful, you know, I feel like I have a lot. My— a big part of that also could be my thyroid being put under control. Like, yeah, you could be feeling better because your thyroid's doing better. Changed my thyroid medicine in November, and it wasn't I couldn't take the dose that I needed to take because it made me jittery feeling. So, um, so the doctor then put me on half of the natural medicine and half of the synthetic medicine, and that's what we're gonna do. And I know that thyroid conversion does happen in the liver, and that was one thing the hepatologist said. He was like, this could be from your thyroid being so off. So Maybe just getting my thyroid under control is going to help my liver enzymes tremendously. I, I, I'm not a doctor, I don't know, and I have not researched anything about it. I'm just trusting my doctor. I, I trust her 100%. She has my best interests at heart, I feel, and, um, and she's figuring this out. So I'm not researching anything, um, just so everybody knows. You don't need to send me any, anything because I don't want to know. I don't— I, um, the, the stress of knowing the, the, you know, rare complications and stuff like that, I don't want to know any of that.

So, and you're under the best team you could possibly ever imagine.

I feel like I have a lot of hope in the people that are helping me. I've been working a lot on my trauma and the PTSD that I have, um, and I've been working a lot on and I've really been working hard at the emotional healing part, and I have felt a difference in that. And so, you know, I— between the GAPS diet and the emotional healing and the team of doctors that I'm under and therapists, I feel hopeful, Justin.

Good. We will find out in 29 9 minutes at 11 AM. We are on a bunch of errands today. I've got everything. I've got the captions, I've got the movie. By the way, this is for publishing The Great American Farm Tour, our epic adventure of all 50 states searching America for its greatest farms. We're gonna put it on Amazon. It's gonna be free on Amazon Prime. Of course, if you don't have Prime, it's gonna be available for a low rent or you or even to purchase. So we're so excited about this and hoping to get it out there as soon as possible. All I gotta do is hit this publish. So I think I want to get it up there, just make sure it's all going to be all right before we go promoting it. All right, ready to hit publish, Rebecca? We've done similar things, it's always nerve-wracking. Okay, let's see what happens. Publish. Your title is being published. If there are no errors, it will go live in 2 to 4 business days or on the scheduled date, whatever is later. Well, I'm glad we— I'm glad we didn't start promoting this before we hit publish because now there could be problems.

Well, and they could take 2 to 4 days.

Yeah, 2 to 4 days without problems, and that's probably weekdays. So it's not going to happen this weekend. I don't think I'm going to call it this weekend. I wanted to do the anniversary Um, I wanted to do the anniversary of us leaving 2 years ago.

It's close enough.

It's going to be close enough. Hopefully it's going to be— it should be in February. So check out the link in the description, sign up. My folks on my email list are going to be the first to know when it's up, and you can watch 3 free chapters for free right now. So go be inspired to grow more. Grow where you're planted. Go check that out. All right, we're there early. All right, let's get it over with. Just got out now. We went in there and of course she's not going to tell you right away. She was late, and then so the suspicion builds. Yeah, she's not going to tell you the results right away. She asked you how you're doing. I know, which you're doing great, but Not today, because you're about to go and find out if something's wrong.

Yeah, I was really nervous.

I think you're giving it away in your smile. Can't you look a little more serious? Look a little more solemn. No, all right, let go. Never seen you so excited.

I was so happy. So she said, I told her that I was really anxious about my, about, you know, the test results, and so she said, oh, it's getting better. And I just cried, like, I just, I was just so excited. I felt like I won Miss America. I felt like I won this one. I was like that.

Oh, she's not even checking again for 3 months.

No, so I get up, I get a break this time.

Something to improve our chicken operation: 2 minerals should always be out for chickens, and that's aragonite— that's for calcium supply, all-you-can-eat buffet— and kelp. Not too many people do it, but it's a big game changer. It helps with egg production, helps with overall health. Health, but it's a pain in the butt to change that out on the way it is on the Chickshaw right now. But I think I have an idea. So here's a mineral feeder. Right now it mounts to the wall, the coop, and the chickens get in it and poop and whatnot. It's hard to clean out, so I'm gonna make it removable and we're gonna put a lid over it, a built-in lid. I need some sort of bracket to attach the back of this so I can hang it on a 2x4. I'm not seeing anything down here in hardware. Did get Jonah some screws. It is Valentine's Day. I feel like we're getting close. I need L brackets. It'd probably be where L brackets are. Framing hardware. Maybe I found my answer. Answer. Attach a bracket, right, that I can bolt in here, comes up over and hugs the 2x4. Maybe it's impossible. Maybe there's no such thing.

What about when we go to Tractor Supply today? Yeah, why don't we just get a new one of these that has a thing on it and we just And they have that? Yeah, remember all the things that we have?

That mounts to a 2x4? Made for mounting to a 2x4? Yeah, all the ones that we have for the thing. Oh yeah, I guess we have not enough to a 2x4. Okay, maybe we don't need to make anything. Maybe we just need to go to Tractor Supply. I got Jonas some screws.

Oh good, he'll be so happy for Valentine's Day.

Yeah. What are you doing with all those ice packs?

That's for the milk cooler.

Okay, good.

Because now we have so much milk, we have a second cooler now.

Yeah, I figured out We're trying to fatten up these pigs. If we don't want more than 2 gallons or 3 gallons a day, fatten up these pigs. Yeah, before the harvest, right?

Well, let's separate it out and cream it, make it cream, because I'm gonna make butter.

I know, right?

Butter.

Let's get some butter going. So, because skim milk's so good, like, make butter tomorrow. Give them the skim milk. I was thinking we would need to get a bigger cooler. Those coolers are expensive. We have coolers, so Becca had a great idea. Just use one of our old junky coolers, get some, uh, more ice packs. So that's what we'll do.

Next stop.

Yes, it wouldn't be a great farm errand day without a visit to Tractor Supply too. I ordered a filter here. We'll see if it's the right thing. I'm not thinking it is. We're also going to get the— we got Jonah's screws. Let's get get the kids. I got Lily some flowers, got everybody chocolate.

Yeah, let's get—

they're gonna get little figurines, little animals that they love. They have no idea this is coming. This is what you got? Oh yeah, they're bigger. Not a divider, but we could really fill it up.

We wouldn't have to fill it so often.

Yeah, don't promise. We have to here, look, like that mounts. We do need to build, and it takes up more room.

I know.

And then you have to build a— look, we're building a— maybe we're building a, um, a guard. So we'd have to build two guards. I didn't realize those were just one. I don't know what I was thinking.

I know, I wasn't thinking either.

I don't know. Okay, so look, Rebecca, I was afraid of this. This is what they had at Northern Tool. This is way too big, too big of a hole. I mean, I guess we could do an adapter. Wait, what about this? Okay, we're getting, we're getting close.

Oh yeah, but then there's, uh, the one that's the right size.

That's still not the right, and that's a little too— that might be a little too fine. Gardening section. Like, why would they have it though? What's the normal person going to use something like that for? They don't have it.

What we're gonna have to do is get get one of those bigger filters and then get an adapter down to it.

I guess so, but that's— that involves 2 or 3 trips to Lowe's.

No, it doesn't.

All right, we are back home. Got— I got my littlest Valentine some flowers. We got the toys, we got the chocolate. They're gonna have no idea this is coming. We got Anna our babysitter.

I did. Happy Valentine's Day. Oh my gosh, thank you.

I got you something for Valentine's Day. I got you some flowers. You like that? You like that? And we got you something else.

Yeah.

Where do you want to set this?

Uh, at the table. Okay, at the table.

Have a seat. Josiah, I like this, Lily. I like the spirit, just digging in, no worries. I like your attitude. Eat it for me, buddy. Eat it for me. Look, all right, we'll get yours when we go out to do the chores right now.

No, Mama's gonna go get it. Okay. 2 different—

3 inches and 1 5/8 inches. I'll use these. I know you will. See, we both knew you would like that.

Happy Valentine's Day, Jonah. Do you like that better than a horse?

I figured.