The Guitar I Never Intended to Buy

I need a name for my funny-looking little travel guitar. Any ideas? Here's how it ended up at my house...

I was absolutely certain I knew what I needed. Now, whenever I find myself absolutely certain about anything, I get a little nervous. Experience has taught me that life has an annoying habit of smiling politely while saying, Oh really? Just watch this.

Several years ago, I bought an Ibanez guitar with every intention of learning to play. It was a beautiful instrument. It also spent most of the next several years leaning quietly in the corner, silently judging me.

It wasn't the guitar's fault. I faithfully watched YouTube lessons, practiced until my fingertips felt like I'd been petting porcupines, and waited for those magical calluses every guitar player promises will eventually arrive. Mine must have been shipped UPS and ended up on the wrong porch.

On top of that, the guitar itself was simply too big for me. Reaching around the body wasn't comfortable, and after a while my shoulder started complaining louder than my fingertips. Eventually I admitted defeat. The Ibanez stayed in the corner while I avoided making eye contact every time I walked past it.

After careful research, I diagnosed the problem. I didn't need another guitar. I needed a baritone ukulele. Smaller instrument. Nylon strings. Problem solved.

Or so I thought.

Living in northern New Hampshire changes the way you think about shopping. Around here, a trip to just about any specialty store is about an hour and a half each way. By the time you get home, you've burned enough gasoline to make Amazon Prime look like one of the greatest inventions since indoor plumbing. That's why we rarely head south unless we can combine several errands into one trip.

The nearest music store was in Littleton, about an hour and a half away, so one morning Jim and I headed south. Fortunately, Jim likes driving. I like sleeping. We've each found our niche.

When we arrived, I walked up to the front door only to find a neatly printed sign announcing they would be closed for the entire week. I stood there staring at it for several seconds, hoping maybe it only applied to everyone else. It didn't.

Out came my phone. The next nearest music store was in Plymouth. Another hour and a half away.

I walked back to the truck. "I found another music store."

Jim looked over. "How far?"

"Another hour and a half. You up for that?"

"Fine with me."

That was all I needed to hear. By the time I woke up from my nap, we'd arrived in Plymouth. Jim stayed in the truck while I went inside.

It wasn't a very big store. There couldn't have been more than a dozen guitars hanging on the walls. They looked like a jury, silently watching to see if I'd choose the wrong one, again.

A very young salesman greeted me, and I explained the two problems I'd been having with my Ibanez. He laid the guitar case on the floor, opened it, looked it over, then popped back to his feet in one smooth motion. No groaning. No grabbing one knee. No putting both hands on the floor while deciding whether getting up was really worth the effort. And no crawling over to something else to climb up assisted by his arms. He simply stood up. I remember being able to do that. I don't remember exactly when. But I remember.

He handed the guitar to me and I held it in proper guitar position.

"Yeah," he said. "This guitar's too big for you."

Finally, somebody besides me thought so. I explained that I'd come looking for a baritone ukulele because it was smaller and had nylon strings. He smiled. Then he completely ruined my plan.

He explained that because I liked the lower bass notes of a guitar, I'd probably be disappointed with a baritone ukulele. Yes, it's tuned lower than a regular ukulele, but it still has only four strings—the same notes as the highest four strings on a guitar. The two deep bass strings that give a guitar its rich, full sound are missing.

Well, that was information I could have used before we spent three hours on the road.

Instead, he began handing me one smaller guitar after another. Every one felt a little better than my Ibanez, but none of them felt quite right.

Then he mentioned they even made guitars designed specifically for women. Well, now he had my attention. I immediately pictured a regular guitar with a molded indentation in the back where one of my boobs would fit. Sort of like the little pocket in some men's underwear designed to accommodate the male anatomy. I thought that was a remarkably thoughtful design.

It turns out a ladies' guitar is simply thinner and smaller. Frankly, I liked my idea better. If anyone ever invents one, I'm sure it'll be a best seller.

By about the sixth guitar my shoulder loudly informed me that our audition was over. I didn't even know I had elderly shoulders. Apparently they'd decided not to mention it until that very moment. By then my shoulder felt like I'd spent the afternoon wrestling goats.

The salesman stood there for a minute looking around the room. Then he pointed toward an odd-looking instrument hanging off to one side. "Let's try the funny-looking one."

Funny-looking was an understatement. That's a bit like calling an aardvark "slightly unusual." I'd never seen anything quite like it. It looked like somebody had crossed a guitar with a mandolin, then wandered off before finishing the project.

"It's a travel guitar," he said.

That was fine with me. The only traveling I had planned was from the corner of my bedroom to my recliner.

He handed it to me, and the moment I sat down everything changed. My shoulder relaxed. My arm wasn't stretched halfway to Canada. The neck fit comfortably in my hand. After trying guitar after guitar, I'd almost forgotten what comfortable was supposed to feel like. It just fit. The guitar happened to be there on consignment, so it cost less than buying a new one. Before I left, he replaced the steel strings with nylon strings while I waited.

I walked into that store intending to buy a baritone ukulele. I walked out carrying something I didn't even know existed when I woke up that morning.

Looking back, what impressed me most wasn't the funny-looking little guitar. It was the young salesman. He never tried to sell me what I'd come in to buy. Instead, he listened while I explained the problems I was having and then worked on solving those problems instead of simply handing me what I'd asked for.

Had the music store in Littleton been open, I'd probably own a perfectly nice baritone ukulele today. Instead, I came home with a funny-looking little travel guitar that fits me perfectly. Turns out the funny-looking one was exactly the right one. I suppose there's a lesson in that somewhere... hopefully it won't involve another day on the road to learn it. 

(P.S. I'm serious about the name. If I pick yours, you'll forever have bragging rights that you named the guitar in my next stories.)

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

Another Unapologetic Brag!

What do goats, sheep, livestock guardian dogs, and a naked neighbor all have in common?

Believe it or not, they all found their way into my recent author interview with OpenShelf.online, an online book discovery site that introduces readers to new authors through book reviews, interviews, and featured books.

We talked about the inspiration behind "Between the Fenceposts: Tales of Mud, Mayhem, and Manure," what people often get wrong about farm life, why I believe stories don't just preserve events—they preserve people—and, of course, a few of the unforgettable characters (both two-legged and four-legged) who have made life on the farm such an adventure.

If you've ever wondered how a simple life in rural New Hampshire can produce enough stories to fill a book—and still have plenty left over—I hope you'll enjoy the interview here.

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Unapologetic Brag!

Enjoyed this tale from the barnyard?

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

A Pasture of Memories

People occasionally ask me where I get my story ideas. This is usually asked with the expectation that there is some sort of method involved, perhaps a notebook, a filing system, or a secret room where story ideas are carefully organized and labeled.

I hate to disappoint them, but if such a room exists, nobody has given me the key.

My mind works less like a filing cabinet and more like the little brook that wanders through a pasture behind our house. The brook doesn't seem to have much sense of direction. Instead of flowing directly from Point A to Point B, it loops around rocks, wanders through clumps of grass, disappears into the trees, and occasionally appears to stop and admire a particularly interesting mud puddle. If you looked at it from above, you might conclude that the brook had forgotten where it was going. Yet somehow it always arrives where it's supposed to.

Apparently, so do I.

That realization came during a recent conversation that started with a news story and eventually wandered through personal safety, childhood memories, farm animals, dog training, Tony's pizza, my mother's philosophy on consequences, and somehow ended up with a story. If you're wondering what any of that had to do with the original topic, you're not alone. The funny thing is that none of it felt random while it was happening. The brook simply followed the landscape. Most people would probably call this getting sidetracked. A writer calls it research.

Somewhere along the way, I realized this may be why I've never suffered much from writer's block. Many writers sit down and imagine what the story will be about, how to develop the characters and the plot. That sounds exhausting.

People assume I sit down intending to write about something specific. I don't. The story appears somewhere along the way. I start with whatever happens to be rattling around in my head at the moment. One thought reminds me of another. That thought bumps into a memory. The memory opens a door to something that happened thirty years ago. Before long I'm wandering around inside my own brain looking at things I haven't thought about since I was a teenager. Eventually I stumble over a story.

Now, occasionally a story presents itself immediately. Walking outside and finding Gus standing over what appeared to be a dead rooster required very little excavation. The story practically introduced itself. The same thing happened with the chicks that spent several days touring New England through the postal system before finally arriving at my post office. Some stories show up on your doorstep carrying a suitcase and announcing they've come to stay.

Most stories aren't that cooperative.

Most arrive through the scenic route. A conversation reminds me of something. That memory reminds me of something else. Eventually a long-forgotten incident sticks its head out from behind a mental hay bale and says, "Remember me?" That's usually where the story is hiding.

Maybe that's one of the differences between writing fiction and writing memoir. A fiction writer often begins with a question: What if? What if a dragon lived in New Hampshire? What if a detective discovered a clue? What if a spaceship landed in a pasture?

I begin with something entirely different. Remember when? Remember when I met my neighbor drunk and naked in the road? (Him, not me!) Remember when Jack kept getting bonked in the head by the tennis ball launcher? Remember when Dad refused to eat coleslaw because he didn't like mayonnaise, but somehow considered potato salad perfectly acceptable?

The raw material is already there. I'm not making stories up. I'm digging them out. For years I was convinced this wandering train of thought was simply evidence that I was easily distracted. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the wandering wasn't the problem. Perhaps it was the process.

After all, a creek doesn't travel in a straight line, but nobody accuses it of being lost. It follows the shape of the land. Along the way it discovers things. A rock. A fallen branch. A frog. A mud puddle. Eventually it arrives somewhere interesting. My mind seems to do the same thing.

The truly surprising part is that people actually pay money to read the results. I'm as astonished as anyone.

So the next time someone asks where I get my ideas, I suppose I should tell them the truth. I don't really get ideas at all. I simply follow a wandering brook through a pasture of memories until it eventually leads me to a story. And if the brook happens to stop and have a conversation with a mud puddle along the way, who am I to argue?

After all, that's usually where the good stories are.

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

Mike Crowe Declares War

I have a question—if a rooster attacks a livestock guardian dog, who's at fault?

I wasn't entirely sure myself when I walked into the chicken yard yesterday morning and discovered what looked suspiciously like a crime scene. Standing in the middle of the yard was Gus Gus, my 130-pound livestock guardian dog. At his feet lay Mike Crowe, my Light Brahma rooster, looking like he'd just lost an argument with a freight train. Gus was standing over him while Mike remained perfectly motionless. Since Gus has lived peacefully with the flock for years, I couldn't imagine what had happened.

I immediately scolded Gus. He lowered his head and retreated toward the tent shelter with all the confidence of a teenager who has just been caught sneaking in after curfew. I picked up Mike and carried him to the coop, where he remained limp and unresponsive for several minutes. Then one eye opened. A few minutes later he staggered to his feet, rearranged his ruffled feathers with an indignant shake, and looked around to make sure none of the hens were watching. Then he disappeared into the chick pen to recover what little dignity remained. Meanwhile, Gus watched the entire performance from the shelter.

When I scolded him a second time, Gus apparently decided the shelter wasn't far enough away. He headed for the far side of the pasture and disappeared into the trees. That struck me as odd. A dog that intentionally decides to attack chickens usually doesn't look guilty afterward. Gus looked guilty enough to plead for a reduced sentence.

Mike Crowe

As he slunk away, I called after him.

"Gus! What did you do?"

He turned and gave me a look that said,

"But Mom, he started it!"

As I stood there trying to make sense of the situation, I noticed Gus's breakfast still lying untouched inside the shelter. Earlier that morning I had given him a large frozen meaty bone. Since he hadn't eaten it, I decided to pick it up and put it back in the freezer for another day. As I bent down to retrieve it, I discovered something I hadn't noticed before.

A dead hen lay beneath a nearby table.

That was when the mystery began to unravel.

My best guess is that Gus had been lying beside his prized bone trying to decide whether to eat it immediately or bury it for later. Dogs seem convinced that food improves with age. One of the hens apparently noticed the unattended treasure and decided to investigate. Chickens are not burdened by concepts such as ownership, personal space, or common sense. If a chicken sees food, she assumes it belongs to her. If another chicken sees it first, she assumes it belongs to her anyway.

I suspect the hen wandered over and pecked at the bone. Gus probably responded with the canine equivalent of, "Excuse me, but that's mine." Unfortunately, chickens are surprisingly fragile creatures. What would have been a harmless warning to another dog would have had much more serious consequences for a hen. I don't believe Gus intended to kill her. In all the years he has lived with the flock, he has never shown aggression toward any of the chickens. I suspect it was simply an unfortunate accident.

The hen almost certainly voiced her opinion about the situation at maximum volume. Anyone who keeps chickens knows there is a difference between ordinary chicken chatter and a full-scale emergency broadcast. A hen in distress can produce a sound capable of bringing every chicken within hearing distance running to see what's going on. More importantly, it can bring a rooster.

Somewhere in the yard, Mike Crowe undoubtedly heard the commotion and came charging toward the scene. Now, I've been on the receiving end of Mike's temper before. Mike does not believe in backing down. Nor does he believe in carefully evaluating the odds. Mike believes that if one of his hens is in trouble, it is his responsibility to charge directly into the situation and sort out the details later.

When he arrived and found a hen down with Gus standing nearby, Mike didn't bother collecting evidence or interviewing witnesses. He took one look at the scene, appointed himself judge and jury, and transformed into Inigo Montoya.

"You killed my hen. Prepare to die."

What followed was likely less of a fight and more of a sustained military campaign. Mike attacked. Gus backed away. Mike attacked again. Gus backed away farther. Mike attacked again because the previous attacks had not adequately expressed his opinion.

Roosters are not known for diplomacy. They tend to approach conflict with the subtlety of a chainsaw.

At some point Gus probably stopped viewing Mike as one of his chickens and started viewing him as a hostile feathered predator that refused to leave him alone. Livestock guardian instincts eventually took over, bringing us to the scene I discovered: one guilty dog, one battered rooster, and a mystery waiting to be solved.

What still makes me laugh is that when I found them, Mike wasn't fighting anymore. He was lying perfectly still beneath Gus. Apparently, after discovering that attacking a 130-pound livestock guardian dog was not producing the desired results, he had switched to Plan B and decided to play dead. To his credit, the strategy worked. By the time I arrived, Gus was simply standing over him looking confused while Mike was putting on an Academy Award-worthy performance.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to suspect that Gus's defense may have contained at least a grain of truth. From his perspective, he had been minding his own business, guarding his breakfast, when a hen interfered, a rooster declared war, and somehow he ended up being the one in trouble.

Of course, the dead hen under the table weakened his argument considerably.

In the end, the scorecard was mixed. The hen was beyond caring about the outcome. Mike lost several feathers and a considerable amount of dignity. Gus lost his good standing with management and received a stern lecture about proper workplace conduct. I, however, gained valuable information.

From now on, Gus gets to finish breakfast before the chickens are released from the coop.

The funny thing is that I doubt either of the boys learned anything. Gus will still guard his food. Mike will still defend his hens. The only creature involved with enough sense to change future behavior was me.

Still, you have to admire Mike. A ten-pound rooster willingly attacked a 130-pound livestock guardian dog in defense of one of his hens. That's either courage or insanity. With Mike, it's usually both.

So back to the original question—whose fault was it? Gus? Mike? Or the idiot who handed out the bone?  

Enjoyed this tale from the barnyard?
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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

Not Just Small Talk

The older I get, the more I realize there are two kinds of people in dentist waiting rooms. There are the people who sit quietly and read their books, and there are the people who want to tell you their entire life story before your name gets called.

I'm normally a very friendly and social person, but that particular morning, I was hoping very strongly for the first kind.

Back in December I had my lower teeth extracted. Years ago, pregnancy had already claimed most of the back ones. Apparently my children were not content with simply being born. No, they also helped themselves to calcium reserves like squatters stripping copper pipes out of a vacant building. One by one, my molars gave up over the years, sometimes dramatically. I’d be innocently eating toast or bread and butter when suddenly something crunchy appeared that definitely had not come from the bakery. Nothing gets your attention quite like realizing your sandwich has developed structural components.

Eventually the remaining lower front teeth decided to migrate backward like retirees heading south for the winter. The roots became exposed and sensitive. Brushing my teeth hurt. Rinsing my mouth hurt. Even breathing cold air started to feel like somebody applying jumper cables directly to my gums. Now, the brushing and rinsing part I probably could have tolerated, but when ice cream became painful, negotiations officially ended. Some sacrifices are noble. Giving up ice cream is not one of them. So out the teeth came.

Today was my second of four appointments for impressions for dentures, and I was not particularly looking forward to it taking the time away from the many projects on my to-do list. I wanted to get in, get out, and get home to finish painting a room. I had mentally scheduled the entire day already, and nowhere in that schedule had I allotted time for unexpected social interaction.

When I walked into the waiting room, I spotted a woman quietly reading a book. Perfect. I silently blessed her. Readers are usually safe. Readers understand boundaries. Readers understand the sacred social agreement of public silence. She looked up briefly and smiled.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” I answered politely.

Then she returned to her book.

Excellent. This was going exactly according to plan. For approximately thirty seconds.

“Beautiful day, huh?”

Well, technically, yes. It was a gorgeous day. After a solid week of rain, the sun had finally decided to make an appearance, and apparently I was foolish enough to answer honestly.

“Yes,” I said. “Nice to finally see the sun.”

That was all it took. Like accidentally pulling the pin from a conversational hand grenade, I had opened the door.

She began making small talk. Now, I’m not proud of this, but internally I had already placed her into a category. We all do it. In my mind she became One Of Those People. The people who can begin with the weather and somehow arrive forty-five minutes later at their cousin’s gallbladder surgery in 1987. Fortunately, my name got called pretty quickly, and I escaped into the dental chair before learning the full family history.

The appointment itself involved molds, measurements, adjustments, and several minutes of trying to answer questions while another human being had both hands inside my mouth. Dentists somehow expect coherent responses from people who currently resemble a trout pulled onto shore. I answered as best I could with a series of muffled sounds that could have meant anything from “yes” to “please alert my next of kin.”

When I finished, I walked back into the waiting room expecting blessed silence. Unfortunately, the woman was still there. Her son was still in with the dentist. Jim had dropped me off, gone to run an errand, and hadn’t returned yet. In other words, I was trapped.

There’s a particular kind of resignation that settles over a person when they realize their ride home has not yet returned and the conversationalist has made direct eye contact.

I sat down and she put her book down, which should have been my warning. She began telling me about her husband, who had been a pilot, and her daughter who flies helicopters. She talked about how, when they all get together, the conversations go on for hours because pilots apparently speak a language entirely made up of airplanes, weather patterns, and near-disasters that somehow become funnier with age. It turns out aviation families are a lot like farm families. Once they get started, there’s no such thing as a short story.

Trying to contribute something to the conversation, I mentioned that years ago I had actually taxied a 747 at Logan Airport in Boston. That little detail deserves a story of its own someday, but for now let’s just say it drove less like a giant aircraft and more like a very expensive luxury car that happened to weigh several hundred tons. She thought that was fascinating, which surprised me because I was fairly certain most people would respond to that story with concern and several follow-up questions about airport security.

Then she smiled and said, “I mostly just sit quietly and let them talk. Some people just talk and talk and talk.”

I nodded sympathetically, feeling completely validated in my earlier assessment of the situation. Well, they’re not the only ones, I thought.

Funny how quickly the Lord can humble a person.

Because somewhere between the pilot and helicopter stories, she stopped being “that talkative woman in the waiting room” and became genuinely fascinating. Her father had run a large department store in New York. She told stories about growing up there and about her older brother, who never wanted his pesky little sister tagging along. Apparently she solved that problem through strategic blackmail.

“If you don’t let me come,” she’d tell him, “I’ll tell Mom what you did.”

Honestly, that level of negotiation skill probably should have led to a career in government.

She talked about childhood adventures, family dynamics, and little fragments of life that would have disappeared forever if nobody took the time to listen. And suddenly I realized something uncomfortable. I had assumed she was merely filling silence, but she wasn’t. She was sharing herself. There’s a difference.

The truth is, older people carry entire worlds around inside them. Histories. Stories. Adventures. Regrets. Funny moments. Hard moments. Lives fully lived. Give them ten minutes and a willing listener, and suddenly you’re hearing about 1957, somebody’s cousin Earl, and a pie recipe nobody bothered to write down before Aunt Martha passed away. But most of the time nobody slows down long enough to hear any of it.

We glance at each other in waiting rooms and think we’ve seen the whole person in thirty seconds. Woman reading book. Talkative. Older. Friendly. Category assigned. Case closed.

Meanwhile she had lived a life involving pilots, helicopters, department stores, childhood schemes, and enough stories to fill several books.

By the time Jim arrived, I found myself genuinely disappointed to leave. What had started out as a dentist appointment I wanted to rush through turned into the most interesting part of my morning, which frankly is not a sentence anybody usually says about a denture fitting.

I went home and still finished painting the room that afternoon. The project got completed exactly as planned.

But somewhere between the dental impressions and a stranger’s stories about pilots, helicopters, department stores, and childhood blackmail schemes, my day had quietly become something more than productive. I got my room painted, and my life was enriched by the stories of a stranger I almost dismissed as just somebody who talked too much in a dentist’s waiting room.

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

Where’s a 6-Year-Old When You Need One?

I have reached the stage of life where I can remodel a room, install flooring, raise livestock, stitch up minor injuries, drive a tractor, cook from scratch, play the piano in church, and write a book. But apparently I now require the assistance of a first grader to operate modern technology.

I’m not against technology. I enjoy my Windows laptop and my Android phone. I even recently purchased a robo vacuum because, between my back and my ankle, pushing a regular vacuum around the house had become less “housekeeping” and more “where's my heating pad?” As I told a friend recently, yes, it’s difficult slowing down physically, but at least my floors are clean. She laughed after a slight delay. My best comments usually require a few seconds for processing.

What I don’t enjoy is technology that requires seventeen hidden steps, three passwords, an app, an update, and a blood sample just to perform a simple task. I remember our first home computer—a Texas Instruments TI-99/4. It was small, clunky, and had less computing power than today’s microwave ovens. I sat there carefully reading the instruction manual, terrified I would hit the wrong button and somehow blow up the machine. Meanwhile, my thirteen-year-old son wandered over, casually pushed a button, and instantly made the contraption do exactly what I’d been trying to accomplish for the last twenty minutes.

“Mom,” he said, with the confidence only teenage boys possess, “just start pushing buttons and something will work.”

This approach horrified me. I came from the generation that believed buttons should not be pushed casually. Buttons existed for a reason. Pushing the wrong one could launch missiles, erase bank accounts, or possibly summon government officials. At the very least, I was certain smoke would start pouring out of the back of the computer while expensive repair bills floated gently down from the ceiling. Apparently children are born without this fear.

Take Apple products, for example. My husband owns an iPad and spends a surprising amount of time saying things like, “Why can’t I do this?” while poking the screen with increasing irritation. Meanwhile I’m sitting beside him on my laptop casually dragging files around like a civilized human being. Apparently with Apple, there is always A Way. Unfortunately, that way is usually hidden behind a tiny symbol in the upper corner that only becomes visible during a full moon or after chanting softly near the charging cable.

Recently I was trying to set up my author profile on BookBub, an online site where readers discover and follow authors and books. This sounded simple enough. Upload a photo. Add a biography. Link the book. Done. Except then BookBub wanted links from places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play Books and Apple Books. Amazon and B&N worked perfectly, the others did not. 

Suddenly I found myself wandering through the dark underbelly of modern publishing distribution systems. Google Books informed me my book might exist but perhaps not in the correct dimension. Apple offered me a lovely preview page where apparently I could admire my own book but not actually purchase it unless I entered the Sacred Apple Ecosystem through an approved ceremonial pathway. At one point I found myself muttering, “WHY DOESN’T IT WORK?” loudly enough to alarm the dog.

This is exactly why I hired Palmetto Publishing to handle formatting and distribution. I’m a writer, not a publishing infrastructure technician. As Bones from Star Trek used to say, “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer.” In my case it becomes, “Damn it, Jim, I’m a storyteller, not an EPUB engineer.”

People assume older folks struggle with technology because we can’t understand it. That’s not necessarily true. Most of us could figure it out eventually if we absolutely had to. The real issue is that we come from an era where tools were expected to cooperate. You picked up a hammer and hammered something. You picked up a drill and drilled something. You sat down at a piano and pressed a key and music happened immediately. A violin may create beautiful music, but first you have to spend half your remaining lifespan fiddling with strings and tuning pegs before the thing stops sounding like a distressed goose. That's why I play piano and not violin.

Now every device requires an account, a verification code, synchronization, permissions, updates, and a tutorial narrated by a cheerful twenty-three-year-old who says things like, “It’s super easy!” No. No it is not.

This is why every family now needs at least one technologically gifted child under the age of seven. Somewhere there is a first grader who can solve in ten seconds the problem that has caused three adults to lose their tempers and consider throwing electronics out the window. The child walks over, sighs heavily, presses two invisible buttons, and says, “There.” Meanwhile, the adults stare in humbled silence, realizing that the future no longer belongs to us.

Still, I suppose every generation eventually reaches this point. Someday those same children will be old too, muttering at holograms and asking their grandchildren why the toaster now requires facial recognition. And somewhere, hopefully nearby, there will be another six-year-old ready to save the day.

Enjoyed this tale from the barnyard?
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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

Wow! Wow! Wow!

If I thought getting those 5-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads was exciting, I’ve now been wowed all over again. I submitted several articles to a few homesteading magazines, hoping maybe one might be a fit. As it turns out, two of them not only accepted them, they’re paying me for them—and have invited me to submit more stories.

Color me amazed, surprised, grateful, and more than a little pleased. Breaking into the magazine market is no small feat. Editors have limited space, high standards, and no shortage of people hoping to see their name in print. So when someone says, “Yes, we want your work,” it means something. When they say, “Send us more,” that means even more.

As a writer, every yes is encouragement to keep going, to keep trying, and to keep believing there may be room at the table after all. It’s easy to assume opportunities belong to other people, somewhere else, doing bigger things. Sometimes they’re waiting right where you are.

What’s next, you ask? Well, I’ll let you know when I find out. For now, I’m just standing here grinning like a hen that found the feed room open.

Enjoyed this tale from the barnyard?
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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

I’d Rather Fix a Fence Than Fight a Website

The other day I spent far too long trying to change a credit card on a website. Not fix a fence. Not stack hay. Not wrestle a goat. Just change a number. At one point, I seriously thought I’d rather have a goat buck pee on my leg than deal with this. At least with a goat, you know exactly what just happened and why. There’s no mystery, no hidden menu, no tiny link tucked in a corner pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s unpleasant, sure—but it’s honest.

Give me a problem I can see any day. A broken fence post doesn’t hide behind three screens and a
button labeled something vague like “manage subscription.” It just stands there, leaning, waiting for me to fix it. I grab the tools, set it straight, tamp it in, and I’m done. Problem solved. No passwords required.

Now, I’ll admit there are times I don’t know how to do something that I’m not above looking it up. I’ve gone online to figure out how to stop a rooster from attacking my shoe, and I built my porch steps with the help of a YouTube video. That’s the good side of all this technology—it can teach you things you didn’t know yesterday. Although, as a bit of a side note, while I was looking up porch steps, I also somehow learned how to artificially inseminate a pig. Being a farmer, every time I hear “AI,” that’s still the first thing that comes to mind. I’m pretty sure that’s not what the tech folks are talking about.

And that’s really the difference. Technology is a tool, and a useful one at times. It can help a business run smoother, keep track of invoices, schedule jobs, and organize records. It handles the behind-the-scenes work that used to eat up hours of a day. But the customer doesn’t care how neat your bookkeeping is or how efficient your software might be. What they care about is whether you can come when something breaks and fix it.

Let’s talk about farming, for instance. You can have all the technology in the world, but at some point someone still has to show up, feed the animals, fix the fence, deliver a calf, doctor a sick goat, and deal with whatever went wrong overnight. There’s no app for that. You don’t get to reschedule chores because the weather’s bad or you’re not in the mood. The work is there, every day, and it doesn’t wait.

There’s a fellow online, Iowa Dairy Farmer, who uses robotic milking systems and can track everything from a cow’s temperature to how efficiently she chews her cud. It’s pretty amazing what technology can do. But even with all of that, when it’s time for a cow to calve and something doesn’t go as planned, it still takes a person. No robot is stepping in to handle that.

We just hired a contractor to re-side our house, and he can’t even start for three or four months. Not because he doesn’t want the work, but because he’s already buried in it and can’t find enough reliable help. Try calling a plumber, an electrician, or someone to fix your furnace in the middle of winter on short notice. You’ll find out pretty quickly how irreplaceable those jobs really are.

Mike Rowe has been saying this for years. The trades aren’t going away. They’re starving for people willing to do the work. These are jobs that don’t happen on a screen. They happen in crawl spaces, on rooftops, in barns, in mud, and in weather that doesn’t care whether you’re comfortable or not.

I have a friend who works for Asplundh. Every time there’s a storm, I say a silent prayer of gratitude for people like him. While the rest of us are inside hoping the lights stay on, they’re out there in the wind and the cold, clearing trees off power lines so we can keep the heat running—and not be digging through drawers in the dark, hoping we can find a flashlight that still works. That’s not a job you do from behind a screen. That’s a job you show up for, no matter the weather.

The truth is, there are jobs you can do from anywhere, and then there are jobs you have to show up for. And when something breaks in the real world, nobody calls an app. They call a person.

So no, I’m not too worried about AI taking over everything. It might help run the office, keep the books straight, and maybe even show you how to build a set of porch steps. But when the pipes freeze, the power goes out, or the barn door comes off its hinges, we’re still going to need people who can look at a problem, roll up their sleeves, and fix it.

In the meantime, if anyone needs me, I’ll be outside, fixing something that doesn’t require a password.

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm

It’s All Natural… So It Must Be Safe

During my 35 years as a massage therapist, I heard a lot of things from clients lying face-down on the table. Some were heartfelt, some were questionable, and some made me pause just long enough to decide whether to laugh or educate. One of the most common went like this: “I started taking this herbal supplement. It’s all natural, so it can’t hurt me.”

Now, I understood what they meant. Natural sounds wholesome. Clean. Like something you’d find growing along a quiet country road—or even in your herb garden—instead of behind a pharmacy counter with a warning label that folds out like a road map. I’d usually answer the same way every time. “Well… poison ivy is all natural too. But I wouldn’t use it for anything.” That generally got their attention.

Out here in the country, “natural” doesn’t mean safe. It just means nobody put it in a bottle yet. We’ve got plants that heal, plants that irritate, and plants that will make you wish you’d never brushed up against them in shorts. Even the chickens don’t eat everything they see—and they’re not exactly known for thoughtful decision-making. If a chicken walks past something without pecking it, I figure that’s a pretty solid warning sign right there.

I think part of the problem is that if something doesn’t come with a printed list of side effects, people assume there aren’t any. No warning label, no problem. We all know not to roll around in poison ivy, but there are a whole lot of plants that fall into the category of “looks harmless” that probably ought to come with a sign that says: if you don’t know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Like coltsfoot. Those bright yellow flowers that show up first in the spring, before the dandelions are even thinking about opening their sleepy eyes. They look cheerful. Helpful, even. The kind of plant that seems like it would bring you a cup of tea and ask how you’re feeling. They’ve been used for generations for coughs and colds, and folks swore by them. But just because people have used something for 200 years doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Kind of like a few old-time farm tools—worked great in my grandmother's day, might also take a finger off if you aren’t paying attention. Turns out, coltsfoot comes with a few strings attached that nobody mentioned back in the day—including liver damage.

And it’s not the only one.

A lot of those old remedies worked. That’s why people kept using them. But they worked for the same reason a sharp blade works—use it right and it helps you, use it wrong and you’re headed for trouble.

Foxglove was used for heart conditions, but it contains digitalis, where the difference between helpful and deadly is dangerously small. Comfrey—sometimes called “knitbone”—was used to heal bones and bruises, but can cause serious liver damage if taken internally. Pennyroyal showed up in remedies for colds and digestion, but can be toxic even in small amounts and has caused fatal poisonings. Jimsonweed was used for asthma and pain relief, often smoked, but can cause severe hallucinations and delirium that nobody signs up for twice. Yarrow was used for wounds and fevers and is one of the milder ones, but can still trigger allergic reactions and interact with medications. Even elderberry, which people still use today, has to be prepared properly because the raw plant can make you sick. And belladonna… well, the name “deadly nightshade” really was all the warning label anyone should have needed.

Nature doesn’t hand out instruction manuals, and it definitely doesn’t label things “safe for beginners.” A lot of what we use in modern medicine started out in plants, and somewhere along the line somebody figured out the right dose, the right preparation, and what happens when you get it wrong. That’s the part people tend to skip when they say, “it’s natural,” as if that settles the matter.

I’m not against supplements, and I’m not against herbs. I’m just in favor of a little common sense before you start treating your body like a science experiment based on something you read on the internet at midnight. Because natural can help you, and natural can also knock you flat if you’re not paying attention, and sometimes the difference between the two is just a matter of how much you take—and whether you know what you're doing.

And if all else fails, just remember: poison ivy is natural too.

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©2026 Sandy Davis | American Way Farm