Thirteen seconds by the barn: it’s a real book. Tap to watch.
Signed first edition · Ships by September 26
Every viral post. The whole origin story. The material too incriminating for the internet, printed on paper where the algorithm can’t reach it.
34 of 40 first-edition copies claimed — six left in the first round.
$40 paperback · $19 of it goes to the animals
Want the hardcover ($75) or the Friends & Family / Book Club 3-pack ($100 — save $20)? They’re below.
Ships by September 26, 2026. Free shipping & handling in the US — I hate surprise fees as much as you do. Or pick it up in person and feed a baby goat. Full refund if it somehow doesn’t ship. Cards, PayPal & Venmo.
What your $40 already did
This is LeeLoo. She’s a one-year-old mini mule, and in September 2026 she was standing in a kill auction. The first nineteen people who pre-ordered this book — strangers, mostly — are the reason she’s standing in our pasture instead.
That’s not a marketing angle. That’s a receipt with a face on it. You buy a book about a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and an animal nobody wanted gets to keep going.
How this happened
I got bored, wrote a joke listing for a slightly haunted house — ghosts, serial-killer squirrels, a steelworker named Frank who just wants to smoke in peace — and it went viral. So I kept going. Every dumb question I had about the farm we were building, I asked the internet, in public, in the voice of a man who has no idea what he’s doing. Because I don’t.
Now there are goats with beards and opinions, a rescued mule, a tractor payment that leaves my account with military precision, and a Harbor Freight auger that tried to kill me. Every one of those became a post. People kept saying “this should be a book.” So here it is — 232 pages of it, in nine escalating stages of agricultural grief.
Yes, that’s really the title. No, Mariah couldn’t stop it.
What’s inside
Sixty dispatches in nine escalating stages of agricultural grief:
1,000-Pound Decisions — horses, baby horses, and shopping for animals described by defense attorneys
Tiny Bearded Anarchy — goat ownership, goat naming, and the myth of the goat-proof fence
Financial Self-Harm — tractors, trucks, trailers, and attachments: adult Pokémon that can kill you
Farm-Mart: Retail Therapy for the Damned — Rural King, Tractor Supply, and the Lowe’s employee who arrived after the war
My Castle Is Made of Sand — log cabin ownership, beaver bees, and a house with a skincare routine
Contractor Summoning Rituals — quotes that read like astrology and a handyman in witness protection
Plus: the property that is actively trying to kill me, my questionable cowboy transformation, the rural community that saved me, and a love letter to the woman who asked for a simple farm and got this instead.
Try before you buy. A handful of dispatches are free on the site, exactly as they appear in the book. If they don’t make you laugh, keep your money and buy hay directly. The goats won’t know the difference.
From the book
Six lines, exactly as they appear on the page. Every one links to the full free chapter.
“City people hold meetings. Country people hold flashlights.”
“Trees have alliances. They’re basically old Italian guys in lawn chairs. One starts to fall and the other two go, “Whoa… not today, Tony. We got ya.””
“Contractors do not say no anymore. They say, “I’ll send that over tonight,” then walk backward into the woods like Homer Simpson entering a hedge.”
“At this point I wasn’t hiring a handyman. I was subscribing to a recurring disappointment.”
“I own a… rounded rectangle. It’s the PT Cruiser of horse facilities. Technically functional. Spiritually disappointing.”
““Look at this guy. He thought he bought two goats.””
What readers are saying
Read it? Send a review: a sentence or three, your first name, your town, and one thing about you (goat owner, book club, never touched a farm). It goes up here.
“That was a fantastic read! Time permitting I would have read straight through in one sitting, as it kept me drawn in and wondering what was coming next. Excellent job!”
“I don’t farm, I don’t want to farm, and I laughed so hard on a plane that a flight attendant checked on me. The tree chapter alone is worth the forty dollars.”
“Funniest thing I’ve read since Carlin. Then the mule chapter got me and I had to put it down for a minute. It’s both, and that’s the trick.”
“Bought it for my dad, who has run cattle for fifty years and does not laugh. He laughed. He also said the contractor part was ‘not exaggerated.’”
“The receipt showing where the money goes is the reason I bought it. The book being this good is the reason I bought a second one for my sister.”
“I’ve followed the posts since the haunted house. Holding all of them in one book, signed, with a hay smell I’m choosing to believe is intentional? Perfect.”
Choose your copy
Three ways in. Every one is signed, every one ships September 26, and every one comes with a receipt showing where the money went.
The Paperback
$40
one signed copy
- 232 pages, 60 dispatches
- Signed first edition
- $19 goes straight to the animals
- Ships by September 26
- Free shipping & handling in the US
The Hardcover
$75
one signed hardcover
- Same book, case-wrap hardcover
- Survives a bookshelf, a move, a grandchild
- $48 of it walks straight out to the pasture
- Free shipping & handling in the US
- Prints a little slower than the paperback
Friends & Family / Book Club 3-Pack
$100
three signed paperbacks · about $33 each instead of $40
- Three copies, one address, one box — free shipping & handling
- Puts the book in front of two new people
- Ships September 26, same as the rest
- $60 becomes hay, meds, and donkey snacks
Hardcovers print slower than paperbacks. If the timeline matters, the $40 paperback ships first.
The Presses-Roll Promise
- Signed first edition. Every pre-order, every format, signed by the guy who lived it.
- Ships by September 26, 2026. Status as of September 15: waiting on Amazon’s listing approval, then the first round gets ordered, signed, packed, and mailed.
- Free shipping & handling in the US — I hate surprise fees as much as you do. The price on the button is the whole price.
- Full refund if it doesn’t ship. Every person, every dollar. You risk nothing but the twenty minutes you’ll spend reading free samples and realizing you want this on your coffee table.
- Cards, PayPal, and Venmo all work. No account needed.
- Or skip the mailbox. Come pick it up in person, meet everyone, and feed a baby goat.
What the $75 hardcover actually buys
Seventy-five dollars is a real number and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Here is precisely what it buys, and precisely how little of it has anything to do with a book.
$20 hay. $14 printing. $12 dog food. $10 animal meds. $8 taxes. $6 for Gus. $5 shipping. That’s $75, and $48 of it walks straight out to the pasture. The hardcover costs more to make, so more of it is real book — but the animals still take the biggest slice, because the animals always take the biggest slice.
Twenty dollars of hay is roughly two bales. Twelve dollars of dog food is a genuinely humiliating amount of kibble for one pug. Six dollars of donkey snacks is, according to Gus, an opening offer.
And the $100 Friends & Family / Book Club 3-pack
Three books at $40 each would be $120. The 3-pack is $100 — a $20 discount, about $33 a copy — because shipping three books to one house costs a lot less than shipping them to three houses, and I’d rather that savings go to you than to a padded envelope. Shipping and handling are free on the whole box. Roughly $21 prints the three books, $9 ships the box, $10 goes to taxes, and the remaining $60 becomes hay, dog food, animal meds, and an amount of donkey snacks that Gus considers insulting but acceptable. It also puts this book in front of two people who’ve never heard of this farm, which is genuinely the most useful thing anyone can do for us.
Where every dollar actually goes
Most books don’t come with a receipt. This one does. Here is the complete, unflattering breakdown of what happens to your $40 — and fair warning, the first thing you’ll notice is how much of it is gone before a single animal sees a dime.
Because here’s the part nobody tells you about self-publishing: it is expensive to make a book when you are not a publishing house. A real publisher prints fifty thousand copies and pays a buck-fifty each. I’m printing forty, and the printer charges me like I’m a guy printing forty — because I am. Every copy is short-run, every box ships from my kitchen table, and every fee is paid by a man who six months ago thought “print-on-demand” was a threat.
The $21 that leaves before the farm sees anything
$1.80 — PayPal fees. Somebody gets paid for the button you pressed, and it isn’t me. That’s 4.5% off the top for the privilege of accepting money on the internet. There is no negotiating with PayPal. I have tried. They do not have a phone.
$6.00 — Printing. This is what it costs to turn a manuscript into an actual physical object when your print run is measured in dozens instead of truckloads. No volume discount, no warehouse, no distributor. Just one copy at a time, printed and bound, at the rate they charge people who order forty of something.
$6.20 — Shipping & packaging. A padded mailer, the postage, and a federal employee physically carrying this book to your door. Say what you want about the postal service; they have never once refused to come down our driveway. That’s more than I can say for the handyman.
$7.00 — Estimated taxes. Not thrilling, but honest. The government would like its cut of the goat economy, and the government gets its cut of the goat economy. This is the largest single line on the receipt, which tells you everything about who actually profits from a self-published book.
Add it up and $21 of your $40 is gone before anything with hooves benefits. That is not a complaint. That is the cost of making a real thing in a small quantity, and I’d rather show you the number than hide it in “operating costs.”
The $19 that actually reaches the farm
$9 — Animal feed. The biggest slice, and it should be. Hay is what stands between this farm and a very awkward conversation with several large animals. Nine dollars is most of a bale, and a bale disappears faster than you’d think when horses, a mule, and a donkey are involved.
$8 — Vet bills. Vaccines, dewormer, hoof care, and the mystery ailments that appear exclusively on holidays and Sunday nights. Mariah is a twenty-year vet tech, so this money is spent by someone who actually knows what she’s doing — which is more than we can say for the rest of the operation.
$2 — Snacks for Gus. Our mini donkey. He contributes absolutely nothing financially but somehow has the strongest personal brand on this property. Two dollars of your book money goes directly to a donkey’s snack habit and there is nothing any of us can do about it.
You’ll notice one line that isn’t on the sign: the author. That’s on purpose. This book is a labor of love for the animals. If it ever makes money, it will be because forty copies became four hundred — and even then, Gus gets his cut first.
Questions nobody asked yet
Why $40? Because $21 of it is gone before the farm sees a dime — PayPal, printing, shipping, taxes — and the other $19 is feed, vet bills, and a donkey’s snack budget. The full receipt is up the page. Show me another book that comes with one.
When does it ship? By September 26, 2026. Here’s exactly where it stands: the book is waiting on Amazon’s listing approval; the moment that clears, the first round of pre-orders gets ordered, signed in the barn, packed, and mailed through the United States Postal Service, the same outfit that somehow finds this farm every single day. Shipping is free in the US. Or come get yours in person, meet everyone, and feed a baby goat.
Will copies be signed? Every pre-order gets a signed copy. My handwriting looks like a chicken walked through ink, which on this farm is a genuine possibility, so consider it authenticated either way.
Can I buy more than one? Yes. Books make excellent gifts for people whose life choices need context.
Is it funny if I don’t own a goat? Yes. Most of the people who’ve bought it don’t own a single animal. If you’ve ever used social media, like a love story, enjoy animals, or just like being thankful it’s all happening to me and not you, it’s for you. And if you have a big heart, every sale goes directly to animals society had forgotten.
Are there any shipping fees? No. Shipping and handling are free in the US on every option — the paperback, the hardcover, and the 3-pack. The price on the button is the whole price. I hate surprise fees as much as you do.
Can I pay with a card, or Venmo? Yes. The buttons take cards, PayPal balance, and Venmo. You don’t need a PayPal account.
Is it okay for kids? It contains adult language, poor financial judgment, and machinery capable of removing important body parts. Read it first, then decide. It is comedy, not advice.
The details
Front, spine, and back. The back cover thanks the cast and crew by name, including the ones actively plotting against me.
232 pages · 60 dispatches · self-published first edition · signed
Written by an actual unqualified farmer on an actual farm in Bloomingdale, Ohio. Contains adult language, poor financial judgment, and machinery capable of removing important body parts. It is comedy, not advice. Ask a professional before copying anything in it.
🐐 Want to actually come meet the goats?
People who bought the book started asking if they could visit — feed the goats, scratch Gus behind the ears, meet LeeLoo, see whether any of this is real. The answer is yes, and it’s free for readers.
Ships September 26.
34 of the first 40 are claimed, and the books ship by September 26. Get in now and yours goes out in the first round — signed in the barn, mailed free, and an entire farm full of animals eats because a stranger on the internet wanted to read about a man losing an argument to a goat.
Not ready? Join the list — it gets counter milestones, the shipping announcement, and first crack at whatever we come up with next.