Welcome to my Dispatch! I’m new to the newsletter thing so I can’t say with any certainty how frequently or not I will be getting these things out but I can say that if you are interested in hearing about my ranchette in North Florida and the animals it contains with a heaping dose of non sequiturs about topics ranging from 90210 to whatever else I am watching and my highly specific taste in music and books (*see slightly paraphrased ABBA quote in my subtitle) than I welcome you to subscribe!
I was born and raised in Atlanta, leaving in the mid-90’s to go to Florida State and from FSU with a freshly minted BA in English and a starter marriage I moved to the Tampa Bay area where I attended law school. After law school in 2004 I moved to Fort Myers for work, got divorced, changed jobs a bunch, got married again, started riding again after a twenty year absence from the saddle, and in the fall of 2017 made the affirmative decision that I did not wish to live in Southwest Florida anymore for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, Hurricane Irma and climate change.
Thanks to various deus ex machina that basically boil down to straight up good luck and the grace of God, my husband and I relocated to five acres near the Georgia border in June of 2018 and here we are.
My day job is an assistant public defender and for my fourteen years as an attorney that has constituted the bulk of my professional life. I have left public service a couple of times and have always returned with the knowledge that my talents are best directed towards indigent criminal defense and I am foolish to think otherwise. That being said I don’t intend to talk much about my job because my clients deserve better than being fodder for a newsletter and the code of ethics is something I take pretty seriously. So no sexy courtroom tales from me, sorry not sorry.
I share my five acres of heaven with my wonderful husband of ten years: R., a retired cop with a prolific green thumb who tends to most of the plant life around the stead. In the house with us live Jack, a cuddling fluff ball Persian/deadly rat assassin:
and Oliver, a farty neurotic Rottweiler with a heart of gold:
Out in the pasture we have my horse Cali, a saintly Belgian deserving of her own post, Eddie, Roger’s saintly Quarter Horse, JoJo a highly unfriendly donkey named after a Boz Scaggs song which may be entirely appropriate, two Nubian yearling does named Rosemary and Brandy, one yearling Boer doe/sherman tank sized garbage disposal named Sage,
Pictured above, Brandy, Rosemary, Sage and Jojo on the cover of their single that’s about to drop.
Oh, and too many goddamned roosters.
Chicken woes have been the theme of our first 8 months here in the country. We are down to two bantam hens and four cocks, three of which are pictured above. I don’t need to be a seasoned farmer to know that’s the wrong ratio. Look for a lengthier rant on this in the newsletters to come.
So that’s who I am and what the Dispatch is, more or less. Welcome friends, to your place to hear me bitch about chicken predation and hear about Jojo’s gross abscessed leg (seriously, it’s so gross). Should be tons of fun!
Until next time,
KT