Sue Stein

Living on a hobby farm—the idea seems idyllic, doesn’t it? Yeah, you betcha’…not when you have to slog out to feed the livestock in twenty-below-zero weather, with a raging blizzard and 30 mile-an-hour winds. When you live in the frozen tundra otherwise known as Minnesota, that kind of thing tends to happen.

Or consider the delights of a Minnesota summer—when the temperature hovers above 90 degrees and the humidity is 10,000 percent. The animals still need to be tended to, and the copious quantities of manure disposed of. Yup. It’s all fun and games. At least until the manure piles up.

As a child, I dreamed of having a horse of my own. Now, as an adult, I do have horses—but I scaled down my aspirations, and substituted miniature horses. Much easier to handle, but still with a big horse-size personality in a tiny package. For some reason I’m still trying to figure out, I also added to the mix alpacas, a llama, a goat, and bantam chickens.

If you’ve ever dreamed of having your own hobby farm, living off the land, and communing with nature—the "Amuck" books will open your eyes to what it’s really like. You’ll laugh, you will probably cry a little, and you’ll scratch your head and wonder, “What in the heck was she thinking?!”